Professor Tom Simon (who teaches International Law at HNC, including a course covering Environmental Justice last semester) visited the Monteverde Institute (MVI) about a year ago…. and was quite emphatic that I shouldn’t even consider making a visit to Costa Rica without a comparable stopover.

MVI is located in Monteverde, one of the major eco-tourism sites in the world (home to the Cloud Forest Biological Reserve, among others) and the last twenty kilometers of roadway to get there is unpaved…. making sure that you really want to visit! The Institute offers academic, research and community programs – and they arranged an agenda for my visit that definitely covered all of those bases. First up was a trip to a nearby family-operated plantation growing organic ‘shade’ coffee…. and I can attest that their ‘Bella Tica’ coffee is absolutely delicious! (especially in early-morning balcony-sitting sessions overlooking the Pacific; please note posting below).

With Manolo & Fern in the cloud forest

Next up was a tour of the famed Cloud Forest Biological Reserve, and MVI arranged for an expert guide, Manolo, to lead our way. I’ve worked on environmental issues for more than four decades now, but it was really quite humbling to realize how little I knew about such fundamental ecological matters. Everything – and I mean everything! – just seemed very, very green to me…. but he was able to pick out birds nests and spider webs and tree growth patterns and butterflies, and honed in with his telescope to make it all readily evident. Fern Perkins, who runs MVI’s International Programs, added her own observations about lichens along the forested pathway – a subject area that I [formerly!] knew absolutely nothing about, but is Fern’s special area of expertise.

After lunch & discussions with Debra Hamilton (who runs the Institute), I gave a presentation entitled ‘China and Post-Paris Carbon Markets’ to the MVI students, faculty and staff. Costa Rica made a commitment many years ago to become carbon-neutral, and its INDC for the Paris meeting was one of the few deemed “sufficient” by the Climate Action Tracker. It was also one of the very first countries to explore carbon trading, issuing ‘certified tradable offsets’ (CTOs) for forestry projects in the mid-1990s, and participating in early AIJ (Activities Implemented Jointly) efforts under the Kyoto Protocol. We certainly hope to continue (and expand!) HNC linkages with MVI in the future.