From protecting fishing communities to regrowing coral reefs, Guardian readers and environmentalists share how they’re working to defend the ocean
World Oceans Day, which took place on Monday, is marked by hundreds of beach cleans and events globally. Despite Covid-19 restrictions, environmentalists and readers from around the world shared how they are continuing to work to protect the ocean, and told us about the local marine issues that matter to them.
Continue reading...Group facing allegations that auditors are being duped in Costa Rica, where undocumented workers are being exploited
The Rainforest Alliance, one of the world’s most recognisable ethical certification schemes, is facing allegations of labour exploitation, use of illegal agrochemicals and the concealment of hundreds of undocumented workers at some of the pineapple plantations it certifies in Costa Rica.
Rainforest Alliance-certified pineapples are sold in their millions at a premium price to consumers across the UK and Europe on the promise that they have been grown and harvested according to strict ethical and environmental standards.
Continue reading...Carlos Alvarado seeks solution that will end conflicts over land despite previous delays
Costa Rica’s president has pledged to protect the rights of indigenous defenders following a spate of violence against native communities in his country.
Last month, an activist, Yehry Rivera, from the Brörán indigenous community in Térraba, Puntarenas province, was shot and killed after he was attacked by an armed mob while trying to reclaim ancestral land. The murder happened just two weeks after an indigenous leader of the Bribri indigenous people in nearby Salitre was shot in a surge of unpunished violence against native communities in Costa Rica.
Continue reading...A Costa Rican indigenous defender has been killed by an armed mob while trying to reclaim ancestral land – the latest in a spate of violence targeting native communities in Central America’s safest country.
Yehry Rivera, 45, from the Brörán community in Térraba, was shot dead around 11pm on Monday after being surrounded by a group of angry locals armed with sticks, machetes, stones and at least one gun.
Continue reading...Authorities found tonnes of cocaine stashed inside a shipping container of decorative canopy plants
Police in Costa Rica seized more than five tonnes of cocaine bound for the Dutch port of Rotterdam in the country’s largest ever drugs bust, officials said.
Authorities on Saturday found the cocaine in Costa Rica’s Caribbean port of Limon, stashed inside a shipping container of decorative canopy plants bound for the Netherlands.
Continue reading...The songwriting storyteller recorded thousands of cassettes for visitors to Cahuita, his paradise town in Costa Rica. Now the race is on to rediscover them
‘Welcome to Cahuita town, welcome one and all,” Walter Ferguson sings on the song Cahuita Is a Beautiful Place, offering an invitation to drink some rum and listen to calypso in this corner of Limón, Costa Rica. Its charming lyrical bounce and layered guitar sounds like the work of more than one man, although it is his work alone – and a song that might never have been heard if not for a project aimed at locating the thousands of one-of-a-kind cassettes that Ferguson recorded at home for friends and visitors wanting to take home a piece of this “beautiful place”.
In the run up to Ferguson’s 100th birthday in May, his son Peck (the 10th of Ferguson’s 11 children) and Swiss calypso fan Niels Werdenberg have spent two years on a labour of love: the Walter Gavitt Ferguson Tape Hunt. Their goal is to track down these lost gems, digitising songs that, in 2018, the Costa Rican government designated part of the country’s cultural heritage.
Continue reading...Costa Rica has become a precarious refuge for thousands of Nicaraguan exiles. In the streets of San José, they continue to feel President Ortega’s reach
This project was produced by Dawning, an organization devoted to investigative journalism. It is an independent effort, self-funded, non-partisan and non-ideological, in the tradition of journalism in the public interest.
Forty years ago, Daniel Ortega and his wife Rosario Murillo hid together in safe houses around Costa Rica’s capital while waiting for the imminent fall of the Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza. Today, thousands of their exiled compatriots hide in the same city, San José, awaiting the fall of the presidential couple.
Continue reading...Pressure grows on two-time Costa Rica president as former Observer journalist speaks out over alleged assault in 1990
Oscar Árias, the Nobel peace laureate and two-time president of Costa Rica, is facing mounting accusations of sexual misconduct after a criminal complaint alleging assault was filed against him.
Four women have now said they were assaulted by Árias. The complaint, filed by an unnamed activist, was followed by public allegations by Eleonora Antillon, a Costa Rican journalist, who said she too had been assaulted by Árias in the mid-80s, when she was working for his campaign.
Continue reading...Former president of Costa Rica denies claim from nuclear disarmament activist that he sexually assaulted her in 2014
Oscar Árias, the Costa Rican former president and Nobel peace prize laureate, has been enveloped in scandal after a sexual assault complaint was brought against him by a nuclear disarmament activist.
Árias denied the allegation, saying he has never acted against the will of any woman and has fought for gender equality during his career.
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