Beyond sand and water

Abstract

The city of Puntarenas in Costa Rica is one of the many examples along the country’s pacific coast, where settlements have developed and survived by the extraction/exploitation of marine resources and the chain of industries that follow. Currently, these coastal communities are being affected by an amount of socio-economical issues, some examples being the significant percentage of unemployment, pollution, ecological degradation and flooding, which on communities of the pacific coast happen on average 42 times a year. Puntarenas has a particular condition of being a territory generated by sedimentation, not only allowing for human settlement and economic activities but also manifested in the ecological processes surrounding it. The sand stretch is a result of recent sedimentation patterns, a simultaneous dynamic of littoral and sea currents which over the years resulted in a series of morphological transformations, though becoming less strong once human settlement happened. Another consequence of this morphological process is the generation of a mangrove ecosystem which for years has benefited from the sedimentation and its spatial relation with the sand stretch barrier. Now these natural dynamics have been strengthened by climate change and anthropogenic activity, increasingly threatening the future of the landscape and the life within. Under this conditions flooding will evolve from what the residents of Puntarenas have perceived so far as a temporary phenomenon to becoming a permanent event. The combination of the structural, ecological and social vulnerabilities of the site highlights the need for a more systematic approach, where the ongoing natural processes are not only making room for ecology but also enriching human life and providing resilient and adaptive measures towards the future conditions.