Or perhaps Thomas Friedman is just another eco-tourist immune to the reality of environmental degradation in a third world country. Friedman asserts in today’s New York Times that the U.S. could learn a thing or two about sustainable environmental policy and development from Costa Rica, a country that has taken a new approach to the old problem of weighing the economic benefits of environmentally degrading practices.

Carlos Manuel Rodríguez, who served as the Minister of Energy and Environment (yes, energy and environment) in Costa Rica from 2002 to 2006, says that government policies on the environment often fail in part because politicians have short term interests in mind—something that is no foreign subject to Americans familiar with what’s happened to environmental policy during the eight years of the Bush Administration. Rodríguez, now serving as a regional vice president for Conservation International, developed and maintained policies during his term in which all environmental resources come with a price tag, including a now five-year-old ban on oil drilling. From the article:

To pay for these environmental services, in 1997 Costa Rica imposed a tax on carbon emissions — 3.5 percent of the market value of fossil fuels — which goes into a national forest fund to pay indigenous communities for protecting the forests around them. And the country imposed a water tax whereby major water users — hydro-electric dams, farmers and drinking water providers — had to pay villagers upstream to keep their rivers pristine. “We now have 7,000 beneficiaries of water and carbon taxes,” said Rodríguez. “It has become a major source of income for poor people. It has also enabled Costa Rica to actually reverse deforestation. We now have twice the amount of forest as 20 years ago.”

As we debate a new energy future, we need to remember that nature provides this incredible range of economic services — from carbon-fixation to water filtration to natural beauty for tourism. If government policies don’t recognize those services and pay the people who sustain nature’s ability to provide them, things go haywire.

As with every Friedman column, his critics are already on the case. Some of the community disagrees; several commenters writing from Costa Rica and elsewhere both inside and outside the US point to flaws in the Costa Rican approach. Scott Pentzer writes from Costa Rica:

“We have lived in Costa Rica for five years now, and I can only say that the country we have lived and travelled extensively in is not the country Tom Friedman is writing about here. A few quick statistics…the Virilla river that runs through the center of the San Jose metropolitan area is the most polluted river in Central America, over 90% of Costa Ricans have no access to sewage treatment, several of the country’s cities have very iffy access to landfill services and trash collection is a perennial crisis. [...] As for the wisdom of including the environment and mining (and now telecommunications) in the same ministry, there is also the possibility of growth trumping nature. An example of this occurred just a couple of months ago, when President Oscar Arias and his environment minister cosigned a decree allowing a gold mining company to cut down over a hundred trees in a northern neotropical reserve, trees that the endangered Green Macaw needs to reproduce. For a gold mine! I could go on, and other newspapers have (see the Miami Herald article about the scourge of pineapple plantations destroying habitat and watersheds in Costa Rica). Unfortunately, Costa Rica seems to be this permanent Shangri La for U.S. travellers and observers. Local journalists at La Nacion and even the expatriate paper the Tico Times don’t hide the truth, and do Costa Rica much more of a service in telling the unpleasant truth than most international media do in simply helping the Costa Rican tourist board propagate its green image. Mr. Friedman, if you are still in Costa Rica, please use your real journalistic talents and ask some people about what is happening in places like Crucitas (the gold mine), Sardinal (where the local water supply is under threat to serve coastal hotels), and the fila Costena in southern region of the country where luxury homes have caused serious deforestation threatening downslope mangrove swamps. With all due respect (and regard) Costa Rica needs Tom Friedman the journalist, not Tom Friedman the well-connected columnist on vacation.”

And Dan writing from Ukraine points out that combining the departments of energy and environment could be dangerous if (when) the Republicans regain power here in the U.S.

While taking these criticisms into account, I think Friedman’s argument and the holistic approach adopted by the government in Costa Rica, while certainly not flawless, deserve serious attention and reflect a means of recognizing the economic value the environment provides that we can all benefit from, one that is both top-down as much as it is bottom-up.