• Costa Rica beats out Dominican Republic as "happiest" place in world
• Independent British group claims Costa Ricans have world's highest life satisfaction
• Central American nation also praised for its environmental efforts

(CNN) -- Forget Disneyland! Costa Rica is the happiest place in the world, according to an independent research group in Britain with the goal of building a new economy, "centered on people and the environment."

In a report released Saturday, the group ranks nations using the "Happy Planet Index," which seeks countries with the most content people.

In addition to happiness, the index by the New Economics Foundation considers the ecological footprint and life expectancy of countries.

"Costa Ricans report the highest life satisfaction in the world and have the second-highest average life expectancy of the new world (second to Canada)," the organization said in a statement.

They "also have an ecological footprint that means that the country only narrowly fails to achieve the goal of ... consuming its fair share of the Earth's natural resources."

The Central American country, tucked between Nicaragua and Panama, touts its lush rain forests and pristine beaches. Its president, Oscar Arias Sanchez, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987 for trying to help end civil wars in several Central American countries.

This year's survey, which looked at 143 countries, featured Latin American nations in nine of the Top 10 spots.

The runner-up was the Dominican Republic, followed by Jamaica, Guatemala and Vietnam.

Most developed nations lagged in the study.

While Britain ranked 74th, the United States snagged the 114th spot, because of its hefty consumption and massive ecological footprint.

The United States was greener and happier 20 years ago than it is today, the report said.

Other populous nations, such as China and India, had a lower index brought on by their vigorous pursuit of growth-based models, the survey suggested.

"As the world faces the triple crunch of deep financial crisis, accelerating climate change and the looming peak in oil production, we desperately need a new compass to guide us," said Nic Marks, founder of the foundation's center for well-being.

Marks urged nations to make a collective global change before "our high-consuming lifestyles plunge us into the chaos of irreversible climate change."

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/07/05/costa.rica.happy.nation/index.html?eref=rss_travel

Liberia, Costa Rica

Sailing down Costa Rica’s Tempisque River on an eco-tour, I watched a crocodile devour a brown bass with one gulp. It took only a few seconds. The croc’s head emerged from the muddy waters near the bank with the footlong fish writhing in its jaws. He crunched it a couple of times with razor-sharp teeth and then, with just the slightest flip of his snout, swallowed the fish whole. Never saw that before.

These days, visitors can still see amazing biodiversity all over Costa Rica — more than 25 percent of the country is protected area — thanks to a unique system it set up to preserve its cornucopia of plants and animals. Many countries could learn a lot from this system.

More than any nation I’ve ever visited, Costa Rica is insisting that economic growth and environmentalism work together. It has created a holistic strategy to think about growth, one that demands that everything gets counted. So if a chemical factory sells tons of fertilizer but pollutes a river — or a farm sells bananas but destroys a carbon-absorbing and species-preserving forest — this is not honest growth. You have to pay for using nature. It is called “payment for environmental services” — nobody gets to treat climate, water, coral, fish and forests as free anymore.

The process began in the 1990s when Costa Rica, which sits at the intersection of two continents and two oceans, came to fully appreciate its incredible bounty of biodiversity — and that its economic future lay in protecting it. So it did something no country has ever done: It put energy, environment, mines and water all under one minister.

“In Costa Rica, the minister of environment sets the policy for energy, mines, water and natural resources,” explained Carlos M. Rodríguez, who served in that post from 2002 to 2006. In most countries, he noted, “ministers of environment are marginalized.” They are viewed as people who try to lock things away, not as people who create value. Their job is to fight energy ministers who just want to drill for cheap oil.

But when Costa Rica put one minister in charge of energy and environment, “it created a very different way of thinking about how to solve problems,” said Rodríguez, now a regional vice president for Conservation International. “The environment sector was able to influence the energy choices by saying: ‘Look, if you want cheap energy, the cheapest energy in the long-run is renewable energy. So let’s not think just about the next six months; let’s think out 25 years.’ ”

As a result, Costa Rica hugely invested in hydro-electric power, wind and geo-thermal, and today it gets more than 95 percent of its energy from these renewables. In 1985, it was 50 percent hydro, 50 percent oil. More interesting, Costa Rica discovered its own oil five years ago but decided to ban drilling — so as not to pollute its politics or environment! What country bans oil drilling?

Rodríguez also helped to pioneer the idea that in a country like Costa Rica, dependent on tourism and agriculture, the services provided by ecosystems were important drivers of growth and had to be paid for. Right now, most countries fail to account for the “externalities” of various economic activities. So when a factory, farmer or power plant pollutes the air or the river, destroys a wetland, depletes a fish stock or silts a river — making the water no longer usable — that cost is never added to your electric bill or to the price of your shoes.

Costa Rica took the view that landowners who keep their forests intact and their rivers clean should be paid, because the forests maintained the watersheds and kept the rivers free of silt — and that benefited dam owners, fishermen, farmers and eco-tour companies downstream. The forests also absorbed carbon.

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. We end up impoverishing both nature and people. Worse, we start racking up a bill in the form of climate-changing greenhouse gases, petro-dictatorships and bio-diversity loss that gets charged on our kids’ Visa cards to be paid by them later. Well, later is over. Later is when it will be too late.

Find this article at: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/12/opinion/12friedman.html?em

Costa Rica has been one of the most popular retirement destinations for Americans abroad, and it has boomed as a choice for second homes. No province is as hot for part-timers as Guanacaste on the northwest Pacific coast.

"Costa Rica's appeal as a second-home destination is even greater today: For the first time since real estate began skyrocketing five or six years ago, prices have softened," says Barry Golson, author of Retirement Without Borders: How to Retire Abroad. "With gorgeous jungle, mountain and beach landscapes, Costa Rica continues to set the tourism pace in Central America."

Costa Rica put eco- and adventure tourism on the map, and Guanacaste is home to 98% of the world's rare dry tropical forest. It sits in the hurricane-free zone, and has mostly dry, sunny days from November to April.

It is also home to Arenal, a large man-made lake (the volcano of that name is in Alajuela province), and the pink sand beach Conchal. Outdoor adventure is a big attraction, especially surfing, sportfishing and, increasingly, golf. The Pan American Highway passes through its center, and air travel is easy to Liberia, the provincial capital. "When I came six years ago, there were three direct U.S. flights a week. Now there are more than 50," says Luis Argote, general manager of the Four Seasons Resort Costa Rica at Peninsula Papagayo.

Though many retirees and expat employees live in Liberia, virtually all vacation ownership property is on the coast. Throughout Guanacaste, the cost of living is low, as are taxes. "For many buyers, property taxes are less per year than they pay per month at home, like $3,000 a year on a $2 million home," says real estate agent Steve Grubba of Peninsula Papagayo.

Three Guanacaste Neighborhoods:

• Tamarindo: This small former fishing village has long been a tourist magnet popular with surfers. It boasts three beaches and is filled with restaurants and hotels. It is also home to the Tamarindo National Wildlife Refuge, where visitors from around the world come to watch (supervised) leatherback turtles lay eggs. Lots near the beach begin in the low $60,000s and new construction homes from just over $100,000. At the same time, new luxury high-rise condominiums fetch about $500,000.

• Playas Flamingo & Potrero: These twin beaches form a rustic but popular second- and year-round-home community. Flamingo is more heavily developed with luxury hilltop homes overlooking the sea, plus hotels, restaurants and a casino. Potrero is quiet and secluded with a small village and more modest homes. New homes in gated Potrero communities begin at $150,000, while Flamingo commands upward of $300,000. In both, condominiums begin at slightly lower prices.

• Peninsula Papagayo: The country's highest profile development spans 2,300 acres with 15 miles of coastline and will be home to several resorts, golf courses, leisure facilities and residential communities. Right now there is a Four Seasons hotel with its own residences (from $2.65 million), a wide array of lots for $600,000-$3 million, one golf course and more than 300 marina condos (some still under construction) from $250,000. The peninsula is surrounded by Santa Rosa National Park.

Find this article at: http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/housing/2009-01-08-guanacaste-costa-rica_N.htm

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