Heavy metal pollutants enter watersheds because of deforestation, industrialization, and farming practices. Much research has been done on the Rio Tarcoles watershed, which includes Costa Rica’s capital city of San Jose, but much less has been performed on the Rio Parrita watershed, which lies adjacently South of the Tarcoles. This study aimed to examine the presence of metal pollutants in the Rio Parrita watershed and its possible implications on the wildlife that rely on it. Water and sediment samples were collected during the rainy season at the mouth of the Rio Tarcoles (high pollution control), Quebrada Terciopelo (low pollution control), and Rio Parrita watersheds and analyzed using ICP-MS to determine the concentrations of metallic elements along with the water’s pH and total dissolved solids (TDS). Statistical tests were used to analyze the differences in the availability of select metals in water and sediments that were frequently examined in relevant literature (Al, Fe, U, Cd, Tl, V, Ni, Cr). GIS maps were examined to delineate the watersheds and examine population densities in the Rio Parrita and Rio Tarcoles watersheds. Rio Parrita had significantly greater concentrations of Ni and Cr than either control river (p

Rivers all around the world have become increasingly polluted with heavy metals, largely due to industrialization and urbanization. Organisms exposed to high concentrations of heavy metals have shown evidence of biotoxicity and physical deformities. With biomagnification in mind, the possibility that this contamination may soon directly affect humans is a real concern, and policies in manufacturing industries worldwide may have to be reformed. In this study, we measured the concentrations of arsenic (As), cadmium (Cd), chromium (Cr), copper (Cu), nickel (Ni), and lead (Pb) in the Hatillo River and compared these values to those measured in the Tarcoles River, a highly polluted river, and Terciopelo Creek, a relatively clean river. The results showed that the Hatillo River had significantly lower levels of most detected heavy metals than both the Tarcoles and Terciopelo. Overall, sediments in all rivers showed high levels of heavy metal content--especially in chromium, copper, nickel, and lead--which could build up and affect organisms over a long period of time.

Heavy metals can serve as a significant component of pollution in watersheds. In this study, ICP-MS analysis was used to determine the heavy metal content (Cd, Cr, Cu, Mn, Pb, and U) in water and sediment of three different Costa Rican watersheds: the Tarcoles River, the Terciopelo Creek, and the Cacao Creek. While the metal content of each the Terciopelo Creek and Cacao Creek was expected to be lower than that of the Tarcoles River, the results showed that this held true only for Cr and Pb. Elevated levels of the other four metals (Cd, Cu, Mn, and U) in the Terciopelo and Cacao Creeks are likely due to natural, lithogenic origin instead of anthropogenic input.

Pollution from industrial sources, such as leather tanneries, jewelry factories, car batteries, and construction refuse, has been linked to increased concentrations of toxic heavy metals in rivers in Costa Rica. This study focused on the concentrations of arsenic, cadmium, chromium, copper, nickel, and lead in sediment and water in Rio Baru, Costa Rica, which has not been previously studied. The concentrations in Rio Baru were compared to two controls and the Environmental Protection Agency toxicity limits to determine pollution levels. Inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry was utilized to determine the concentrations of heavy metals in water and sediment samples from Rio Baru, Terciopelo, and Rio Tarcoles. Watershed analysis for Rio Baru was expected to reveal mostly agricultural sources of contaminants. Rio Baru was predicted to have levels of inorganic heavy metals between Rio Tarcoles and Terciopelo, with Tarcoles containing the highest levels. As, Cr, and Ni in Rio Baru were between unpolluted levels in Terciopelo and polluted levels in Rio Tarcoles, but Rio Baru had lower concentrations of Cu and Pb than both Rio Tarcoles and Terciopelo. Analysis of watersheds determined that Rio Baru’s watershed contained intermediate ratios of human development and agricultural sources of pollution. Further comparisons of watershed size with total dissolved sediment levels found a positive linear relationship, indicating a portion of differences in heavy metal concentrations were due to watershed sizes. Concentrations of heavy metals in Rio Baru’s water were below toxic limits for drinking water and placed Rio Baru within “good” sediment levels for As, Cd, Cr, Ni, and Pb. As geochemistry and proximity to industrial sources was not accounted for in methodology, further research would be necessary for determination of natural concentrations of heavy metals in Rio Baru.

This dissertation comprises four chapters. The unifying theme is the evaluation of environmental programs. Specifically, each chapter examines some facet of the impacts of protected areas. The first chapter examines the heterogeneous environmental and economic impacts of protected areas in Costa Rica. Previous studies suggest that Costa Rica's protected area system induced both reduced deforestation and alleviated poverty. We demonstrate that these environmental and social impacts were spatially heterogeneous. Importantly, the characteristics associated with the most avoided deforestation are the characteristics associated with the least poverty alleviation. In other words, the same characteristics that have limited the conservation effectiveness of protected areas may have improved the social welfare impacts of these areas. These results suggest that `win-win' efforts to protect ecosystems and alleviate poverty may be possible when policymakers are satisfied with low levels of each outcome, but tradeoffs exist when more of either outcome is desired. The second chapter explores in more detail the heterogeneous impacts of protected areas in Costa Rica and Thailand. In particular we investigate the potential for protected areas to act as a mechanism for poverty traps and use semiparametric models to identify the spatial congruence of environmental and economic outcomes. We find no evidence that protected areas trap historically poorer areas in poverty. In fact, we find that poorer areas at baseline appear to have the greatest levels of poverty reduction as a result of protection. However, we do find that the spatial characteristics associated with the most poverty alleviation are not necessarily the characteristics associated with the most avoided deforestation. We demonstrate how an understanding of these spatially heterogeneous responses to protection can be used to generate suitability maps that identify locations in which both environmental and poverty alleviation goals are most likely to be achieved. In the third chapter we address the mechanisms through which protected areas affect economic outcomes. Using recently developed quasi-experimental methods and rich biophysical and demographic data, we quantify the causal post-treatment mechanism impacts of tourism, infrastructure development and ecosystem services on poverty, due to the establishment of protected areas in Costa Rica prior to 1980. We find that nearly 50% of the poverty reduction estimated in a previous study can be attributed to tourism. In addition, although the mechanism estimates for the infrastructure and ecosystem services proxies are negligible, we argue that the results provide evidence that enhanced ecosystem services from the establishment of protected areas has likely helped to reduce poverty. The results provide additional information to policy makers that wish to enhance the future establishment of protected areas with complementary policy. The final chapter studies the economic impacts of protected areas in Bolivia. We find that municipalities with at least 10% of their area occupied by a protected area between 1992 and 2000 exhibited differentially greater levels of poverty reduction between 1992 and 2001 compared to similar municipalities unaffected by protected areas. We find that the results are robust to a number of econometric specifications, spillover analyses and a placebo study. Although the overarching results that Bolivia's protected areas were associated with poverty reduction are similar to previous studies , the underlying results are subtly, but significantly, different. In previous studies it was found that controlling for key observable covariates lead to fundamentally antithetical results compared to naive estimates. Conversely, these results indicate that naive estimates lead to an over-estimation of the poverty reducing impacts of protected areas. The results expose the heterogeneity of protected area impacts across countries and, therefore, underscore the importance of country-level impact evaluations in order to build the global knowledge base regarding the socioeconomic impacts of protected areas.

The erosion of partisan identification (i.e. dealignment) and its impact on the declining support for traditional parties has been widely documented in Western countries. However, this phenomenon does not appear to be a Western peculiarity. Costa Rica, Latin America's most stable democracy, seems to be following a similar hitherto unstudied path. The present thesis analyses electoral change in this nation. The study assesses whether Costa Rica is undergoing a long-term electoral change; and if so, how the process could be classified and explained. Moreover, it also evaluates how well the theories developed to explicate electoral change in Western democracies illuminate the Costa Rican case. The thesis is divided into five parts. Part I poses the research's methodological and theoretical framework. Part II contextualises the problem via a historical account of political parties' development, and an assessment of the electoral system. After analysing the main evidence of change in citizens' electoral behaviour and political attitudes, Part III characterises the process. Then, Part IV concentrates on explaining it. Finally, the central findings are presented in Part V. The thesis concludes that: 1) Costa Rica is undergoing a long-term electoral change process. This process can be defined as secular dealignment. 2) In the case studied, the erosion of citizens' partisan identification (partisan dealignment) has resulted in a growing electoral flux and the decline of electoral support for the traditional parties (electoral dealignment). 3) Dealignment in Costa Rica is basically caused by the decline of the PLN's (the country's oldest, most important party) historical loyalties. 4) The PLN's partisan identification is eroding due to the combination and mutual influence of political factors and social transformations. While many of the sociological determinants of dealignment in Costa Rica find parallels in developed democracies, some political factors seem to be specific to this country and most probably to Latin American nations. In general terms, this thesis demonstrates the relevance of in-depth, context-sensitive case studies for comparative electoral research, shows that such studies can be undertaken in Latin America, and highlights the theoretical and empirical benefits of election studies outside advanced industrial democracies.

The purpose of this dissertation is to examine to what extent Sen's freedom-centred view of development, with its existing theoretical foundations, offers sufficient theoretical insights for guiding development policies towards the enhancement of human freedoms. The theoretical part of the dissertation focuses on the three foundational building stones of Sen's freedom-centred view of development. First, the capability approach sets the evaluation space of development in the capabilities that people have reason to choose and value, but by doing so, it is argued that Sen's capability approach contains tensions between human freedom and human well-being that can be loosened by thickening this evaluation space with a substantial view of human well-being. Second, the capability approach views individual agency as central in development, but because of the socio-historical dimension of human freedom and agency, it is argued that concepts of collective capabilities and of socio-historical agency are more central in promoting human freedoms. Third, promoting human freedoms cannot be dissociated from democratic policy-making. But because the link between the two is not necessary, it is argued that the capability approach's consequentialist evaluation of human well-being will have to be thickened by a procedural evaluation which assesses the exercise of political freedom through certain normative principles of decision-making. The empirical part of the thesis illustrates these theoretical arguments through the analysis of two case studies, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic. The case studies particularly point to a country's socio-historical agency, or collective capability in promoting human well-being, through socio-historical narratives. These narratives assess a country's collective capability in promoting human freedoms by looking at the country's socio-historical reality, and how its members have appropriated that reality in the course of the country's history, opening up or closing down opportunities for realising policy decisions towards the removal of unfreedoms.

This thesis investigates the variability in management practices on coffee and banana farms in an attempt to identify practices that reduce the environmental impact of export crop production. Different banana production systems are studied to determine their level of environmental impact. Insect sampling and bird surveys are used to assess the level of ecological quality on banana farms and their surrounding environments. The first two studies are based on interview methods and focus more on the social aspects of the production system. Paper I identifies how farmers utilize labor and herbicides in weed control practices, and found that small-scale coffee farmers overuse herbicides when their relative use of herbicides to labor to control weed densities is compared to their large-scale counterparts and small-scale organic producers. Paper II attempts to identify variability in management practices for the production of export bananas, but instead finds that there is only one type of export banana production system. However, there are lessons to be learned from organic and banana-coffee intercropping systems of production. Papers III-V use the information gathered in the interview studies of Paper II to give context to the results from analysis of ecological indicators collected from banana farms. Paper III is a comparison of insect community composition on high-input, low-input and organic banana farms. Paper IV is an analysis of aquatic macroinvertebrate in surface water sites upstream and downstream of banana farm canal entry points. Finally, Paper V is a comparison of ecological effects of management practices between Rainforest Alliance certified farms and non-RainforestAlliancecertified farms. Results showed that low-input banana production is not as good as organic production with regards to ecological impact, but it can still make a difference when compared to high-input banana production. Rainforest Alliance certified farms, however, are not low-input systems and the changes that they make in production practices are not enough to influence the quality of the ecological system. These results are encouraging for low-input production systems, but show that standards for Rainforest Alliance certification need to be tougher in order to make an impact on ecological indicators. / At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 2: Submitted. Paper 3: Submitted. Paper 4: Submitted. Paper 5: Manuscript.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Nazarene Theological Seminary, 1989. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 95-98).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Nazarene Theological Seminary, 1989. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 95-98).