Introducing the BID-MAG

The BID-MAG was originally conceived as a new stage in the ongoing effort in transfrontier development cooperation between Costa Rica and Panama. The Program was inscribed in the context of a series of bilateral agreements signed by both countries over the course of the 1990s, the most important being the 1993 Agreement for Transfrontier Cooperation and Development. This agreement set forth a brief, but comprehensive, agenda for developing the region, including the establishment of a Permanent Binational Commission (CBP), with various subcommittees for attending environmental, local governance, security, productive and migratory issues of importance to both countries (Matul Romero, 2007).

The Commission was established featuring some representation of civil society, but it functions mainly as a means to organize concerted action between state agencies (Matul Romero, 2007). The main civil society actors involved in the commission rarely include any local organization – such as the indigenous ADIs – and is often limited to CATIE and some environmental NGOs, such as International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), all of whom have had noticeable influence in the execution of certain components of the wider Sixaola Program, given that the area

“constitutes a priority for conservation issues” (National Coordinator of BID-MAG, interview, February 23rd, 2014).

BID-MAG, itself, was devised in 2003 following an IADB donation oriented towards the development of the Regional Strategy of Sustainable Development of the Sixaola Binational River Basin (ERDS). This Strategy was conceived as the starting point for a medium to long-term intervention of the region devoted to three main objectives: 1) enhance productivity, 2) integrating better management of natural resources and 3) reducing local vulnerability to natural disasters (MIDEPLAN, 2003). In its inception, the ERDS suggested that the best way of achieving these goals were through the implementation of a single project to be executed in a coordinated fashion by both countries. However, that would end up being impossible, due to a combination of factors, but mainly, resistance from the national governments and several state agencies (Guillen, 2013).

Eventually, the project was divided into three different initiatives:

1) BID-MAG, which was implemented solely for Costa Rica, 2) the Sustainable Development Strategy for Bocas del Toro, which was the Panamanian counterpart of BID-MAG, and 3) the Integrated Ecosystem Management Project of the Sixaola Binational River Basin, that was

referred to in chapter 3 and which was implemented jointly by both countries. Each one of these projects was executed following differing logics of implementation (see Alvarez, 2014; Guillen, 2013), thereby making them completely separate from each other, despite having a shared origin.

Originally, BID-MAG was conceptualized as a “typical” IWRM, which expectedly included the establishment of various work units in the form of river management organisms and a clear overarching focus on dealing with key activities with implications to water supply sustainability (Nessim et al., 2004). However, the actual execution of the project differed considerably. Between the time the first loan proposal was sent to the IADB in 2004 and its eventual execution in 2011, the program morphed from an IWRM into an “on-demand” ICDP with a rhetorical disaster vulnerability component, losing all watershed management components and shifting the executory organism from MINAE – which had a much clearer environmental conservation bias – to MAG. Of course, this meant that the project was eventually executed following a more productivity-oriented logic, so while there was some degree of internalization of sustainability concerns, the overriding institutional objective for sifting between project proposals was undoubtedly fostering economic diversification and productivity (external evaluator BID-MAG, interview, March 22nd, 2016). This is the main reason why BID-MAG ended up using over 30% of the funding for the productive component in initiatives for stimulating plantain and palm tree monoculture cultivation, despite them being considered as ecologically unsustainable, while also investing around 40% in sustainable cacao agroforestry (BID-MAG, 2015).

Having said this, the wider emphasis of the intervention was consistent with the historical objective of “improving” Bribri and Cabécar agriculture, as have many other development interventions done over the past thirty years. As the ERDS states:

“(…) the fostering of organic production, productive diversification, the development of an industry that transforms local traditional production, an improvement in commercialization mechanisms and tourism are the best and most sustainable possibilities for implementing the Strategy” (MIDEPLAN, 2003: 10).

Yet, again, the most noticeable differences and tensions that underline this project relate to the prerogative of MAG of financing any types of productive endeavors, in spite of their environmental effects, whereas, other NGO practitioners, CATIE included, would have preferred to center the modernization process within the context of cacao agroforestry and other sustainable practices alone.

The Cacao Project was but one of various projects that formed the

“Productive Diversification Component” of BID-MAG. Though it was executed in the form of 24 different smaller projects with as many Bribri and Cabécar communities in the Reserve, all of them were managed

directly by the NCP, with the support of CATIE. Overall, these projects were primarily oriented to address vulnerability to natural disasters by promoting forest cover and recovering “the (cacao) agroecological system that existed in the Sixaola and Talamanca Valleys, and which was destroyed in favor of plantain monoculture, leading the area to a high level of vulnerability” (Fallas Solano, 2012: 6). Hydrogeologically, the Talamanca Valley is first and foremost a flood plain, which has historically shown to be susceptible to pronounced weather events (such as seasonal rains and tropical storms), leading to negative destructive effects upon indigenous communities, which are often located near the riverbanks of the Sixaola and its tributaries. The operating assumption of the Cacao Project is that forest loss due to the expansion of productive land uses – especially plantain monoculture – lead to the sedimentation of the local rivers making them prone for more destructive flash floods (MIDEPLAN, 2003). Forest cover should be maintained to avoid any future natural event. Therefore, expanding cacao agroforestry becomes a means of increasing the income of local indigenous farms, which in turn (following the perceived rationality described in the previous section), would make the Bribri and Cabécar attach a greater value at conserving forests and biodiversity and adverting potential calamities produced from enhanced weather events.

The Cacao Project proposal nominally recognizes the history of Talamanca with cacao by acknowledging the presence of over 1.800 hectares cultivated with this produce, though almost no references are made with regards to cultural practices, meanings or territorialities attached to said cultivation (see Fallas Solano, 2012). On the contrary, the proposal clearly states that the problem that demands intervention in the Bribri and Cabécar farmlands is that of lack of productivity. Indeed, as a member of the Project Coordinating Unit of BID-MAG stated: “our priority consists in guaranteeing that technical assistance reaches the producer and that this translates into an improvement of productivity. Our objective is to surpass the current levels of production of the area, that, in average, are of about 100 kilograms per hectare (per year), and take them over 1.000 kilograms per hectare, given that the genetic material used permits that.” (interview, August 10th, 2015). The main project proposal argues that most of these problems are due to mismanagement of indigenous farms, given that cacao plants being used are extremely old, prone to be affected by monilia and are cultivated under low densities, thereby hindering productivity and potential profitability (Fallas Solano, 2012). Consequently, the project proposal concludes that the intervention should be made for augmenting productivity of indigenous farms, by offering technical assistance for them to cultivate cacao, in agroforestry systems, using densities of about 630 new plants (themselves genetically-modified grafts provided by CATIE) per hectare (Fallas Solano, 2012).

To support indigenous farmers, the Cacao Project focused on promoting cacao through two different actions. On one hand, the project was oriented to address one of the main perceived entry barriers by NCP,

which has to do with initial investment (Salazar, 2014). Indeed: “the true barrier for cacao farming in Talamanca is the initial costs regarding genetic material. If people want to plant in a pattern of 4x4 (meters between plants), that would entail over 600 different plants, which means an investment of over almost one million colones (about 2.000 U.S. dollars), which is a sum of money that very few indigenous farmers can give away” (NCP Official, interview, May 21st, 2014). This is without mentioning the fact that since the monilia crisis of the late 1970s and early 1980s, financial credit opportunities were shut down by banks (Rosenboom et al., 1990; NCP official, interview, May 21st 2014) or that, even if these forms of funding were present, they could not possibly loan to a Bribri or Cabécar landholders, given that the land is not formally theirs, but by the ADIs. Consequently, the Cacao Project meant to deal with these initial expenditures by giving away the cacao plants freely to local producers alongside farming tools and materials to the recipients whom required it, had lands ready and prepared for cultivation and also given proof of taking care of their former cacao cultivated plots, following the land management guidelines devised by the NCP (Fallas Solano, 2012). The Project also provided on-farm technical assistance to indigenous farmers and engaged in verification tours in order to guarantee that cacao plants were being trimmed down, grafted, cleaned and taken care of, following the dispositions of the aforementioned guidelines.

In other words, the cacao component of BID-MAG was based on the presumption of improving the sustainable production of cacao farms of the Bribri and the Cabécar, while also fostering biodiversity conservation and dealing with vulnerabilities to climate change. To do so the objective was – as in plenty other projects before it – to increase the viability, both economic and ecological, of cacao as a key produce in the complex dual agricultural system of the Reserves. In particular, this new project was based on a discourse that has historically linked cacao with wider ecological benefits. The main claim being made is that if there is need for sustainable land use and economically efficient management of space, then cacao agroforestry is the best choice. Indeed, the argument has been that this type of systems – unquestionably oriented towards deepening Bribri and Cabécar integration into national and global markets – is the best solution for solving the contradictions in the indigenous productive system (Somarriba et al., 2004). Moreover, according to the Sustainable Development Strategy, cacao agroforestry is also a key alternative for reducing vulnerability of local ecosystems, by providing anthropogenic links between farmlands, parks and biological corridors (see Harvey et al., 2006). Yet, despite these benefits, positive achievements of the Cacao Project have been difficult to identify.