Comercio de servicios ambientales y desarrollo sostenible en Centroamérica: Los casos de Costa Rica y El Salvador

The document examines the emergence of markets for global environmental services in Central America, focusing on Costa Rica's leadership in carbon credit mechanisms and El Salvador's potential to leverage shade-grown coffee for biodiversity and carbon sequestration. It highlights the critical role of institutional frameworks in successfully transitioning to a 'service-based' environmental economy and discusses potential conflicts between these mechanisms and World Trade Organization (WTO) rules.

• Costa Rica has established a pioneering institutional framework to trade environmental services, including the creation of Certified Tradable Offsets (CTOs) to sell greenhouse gas emission reduction credits to industrialized nations.
• Costa Rica's strategy for sustainable development is anchored in the tourism and energy sectors, both of which depend on the maintenance of forest cover to remain viable.
• The Costa Rican government has implemented a Payment for Environmental Services (PSA) system, funded by a fuel tax, to remunerate landowners for forest conservation and reforestation.
• In El Salvador, shade-grown coffee plantations act as critical substitutes for natural forests, providing essential environmental services such as water regulation and biodiversity habitats in a highly deforested landscape.
• El Salvador is utilizing the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor and GEF funding to implement a 'biodiversity-friendly coffee' project, aiming to create a certified export product that provides a price premium for producers.
• The economic viability of the coffee sector in El Salvador has declined significantly, with its contribution to the GDP falling from nearly 10% in 1981 to less than 3% in 1997, leading to land conversion for urban and industrial use.
• There is a potential conflict between the Kyoto Protocol's flexible mechanisms and WTO rules, specifically the 'most-favored-nation' principle, because Kyoto creates exclusive trading relationships only for signatories of the Framework Convention on Climate Change.
• Costa Rica's Joint Implementation (AIJ) projects show that forest-based carbon sequestration is generally more cost-effective than energy-based projects, with net costs for some forest projects as low as US$2.12 per ton of carbon.

APA

Cuellar, N., Herrador, D., González, M., & Rosa, H. (1999). Comercio de servicios ambientales y desarrollo sostenible en Centroamérica: Los casos de Costa Rica y El Salvador. International Institute for Sustainable Development. https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/prismafullrprt_s.pdf

Chicago

Cuellar, Nelson, Doribel Herrador, Martha González, and Herman Rosa. Comercio de servicios ambientales y desarrollo sostenible en Centroamérica: Los casos de Costa Rica y El Salvador. International Institute for Sustainable Development, 1999. https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/prismafullrprt_s.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Cuellar |first1=Nelson |last2=Herrador |first2=Doribel |last3=González |first3=Martha |last4=Rosa |first4=Herman |title=Comercio de servicios ambientales y desarrollo sostenible en Centroamérica: Los casos de Costa Rica y El Salvador |publisher=International Institute for Sustainable Development |date=September 1999 |url=https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/prismafullrprt_s.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{cuellar1999comercio, author = {Cuellar, Nelson and Herrador, Doribel and González, Martha and Rosa, Herman}, title = {{Comercio de servicios ambientales y desarrollo sostenible en Centroamérica: Los casos de Costa Rica y El Salvador}}, institution = {International Institute for Sustainable Development}, year = {1999}, month = sep, url = {https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/prismafullrprt_s.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }