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Costa Rica
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Costa Rica is an active member of the international community and, in 1993, proclaimed its permanent neutrality. Its record on the environment and human rights and advocacy of peaceful settlement of disputes give it a weight in world affairs far beyond its size. The country lobbied aggressively for the establishment of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and became the first nation to recognize the jurisdiction of the Inter-American Human Rights Court, based in San Jose. In 2007 Costa Rica was elected for the third time to serve as a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council (January 2008-December 2009).
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Costa Rica is a democratic republic with a very strong system of constitutional checks and balances. Executive responsibilities are vested in a president, who is the country's center of power. There ... are two vice presidents and a 15-member cabinet. The president and 57 Legislative Assembly deputies are elected for 4-year terms. In April 2003, the Costa Rican Constitutional Court annulled a 1969 constitutional reform which had barred presidents from running for reelection. As a result, the law reverted back to the 1949 Constitution, which permits ex-presidents to run for reelection after they have been out of office for two presidential terms, or eight years.
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Visitor Overcapacity - The number of tourists visiting Costa Rica has increased by at least 6% annually for the past several years. (State Department, 2001). While those invested in the ecotourism sector may celebrate such rapid growth, environmentalists worry that the nation's delicate ecosystem may not be able to withstand an unlimited flow of tourists. (Hicks, 2001). For instance, one of Costa Rica's most popular parks, Manuel Antonio, takes in an average of 1,000 visitors a day during the high season. The unregulated flow of tourists through the park has taken a toll on its plant and animal life, and as the wildlife has grown accustomed to humans local monkeys have been turned into garbage feeders.
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Costa Rica has no long rivers. The principal stream is the San Juan River, the outlet of Lake Nicaragua. The San Juan River forms part of Costa Rica’s boundary with Nicaragua to the north. The Reventazón River drains the southern central plateau, flowing eastward through deep gorges to the Caribbean. The Río Grande de Tárcoles drains the northwestern part of the central plateau and empties into the Pacific. Costa Rica's only natural lake of any significant size is Lake Arenal, which is located on the eastern side of the Cordillera de Guanacaste.
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In a discussion of the climate in Costa Rica one cannot omit El Niño, "The Child". It is a poorly understood weather phenomenon that occurs every two to seven years. It is originally detectable as an unusual warming of a section of the Pacific Ocean. In 1997 El Niño struck Costa Rica once again, disrupting normal weather patterns considerably. Some scientists have postulated that this phenomenon might have been partially responsible for the disappearance of several species of frogs in the late 80's, which are extremely dependent on water. Each time it occurs analysts across the world hold their breaths waiting to see the effects it has on different regions, because they can often be disastrous.
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Costa Rica joined other Central American provinces in 1821 in a joint declaration of independence from Spain. Although the newly independent provinces formed a Federation, border disputes broke out among them, adding to the region's turbulent history and conditions. Costa Rica's northern Guanacaste Province was annexed from Nicaragua in one such regional dispute. In 1838, long after the Central American Federation ceased to function in practice, Costa Rica formally withdrew and proclaimed itself sovereign.
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Costa Rica