By Margaret Thompson & María Suárez Toro
  

Final approval for Harken Energy Corporation to drill for oil off the Atlantic Coast in Costa Rica requires a full assessment of the environmental impact of the project.  Harken completed one environmental impact study (EIS) which was strongly criticized as vague and unprofessional by both the government and civil society in that country, and so was asked in January 2001 by SETENA (the environmental secretariat) to address several technical issues and legal deficiencies in their original study.    The revised impact study was submitted by Harken in March, 2001, but again appeared to have problems.  The World Conservation Union (IUCN) contracted with the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) to do an independent study of Harken´s EIS for SETENA to have independent expert criteria to assist them.  So IFAW hired two environmental experts from Tabasco, Mexico with extensive experience in environmental assessments of oil exploration to do an independent assessment of Harken's environmental impact study.

"We can choose!  The future is in our hands"--Poster by opponents to oil development in Costa Rica reflects concerns about the environmental impact

The results of the analysis by Alejandro Yáñez-Aranciba and David Zárate-Lomelí of the World Conservation Union were submitted in June, 2001 and were also highly critical of Harken's impact study.  The independent experts who come from an area in Mexico with lots of oil exploitation state that “the environmental impact assessment and its annexes present important technical limitations, which do not offer adequate information for the making of any decision about the environmental viability of the project.  Thus it is our recommendation to the government of Costa Rica to not approve the environmental impact study in its present form."

Beatriz Bugeda of Mexico spoke with FIRE about this independent assessment.  Beatriz is the Latin American Director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare, which arranged for this analysis of Harken's environmental impact study.  She noted that her group believes that oil exploration would have a terrible impact on the fragile ecosystems for which Costa Rica is widely renowned:
 
 

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Beatriz Bugeda

Beatriz noted that although her group has been involved in numerous environmental impact assessments around the world, they were surprised at the shoddy quality of this impact study by a U.S. American oil company, which should have considerable experience and expertise in this area:

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Beatriz explained that the independent assessment will be given to the Costa Rica government in hopes that the authorities will demand that Harken again revise its environmental impact study.  This independent analysis focused on technical and scientific issues rather than political issues, and found sufficient evidence of a "very negative impact" of the oil exploration on the environment:

 

A sign along a road on the southern Caribbean coast  says: "Punta Uva says No!  to the oil and Yes! to life"

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Costa Rica Serves as Symbol of Opposition to Oil Development in the Region and World
Costa Rica is one of several locations in the Central American region where oil development is being planned, according to Beatriz.  But she noted that such plans are surprising in Costa Rica which is world renowned as a leader in protecting the environment, so if the oil exploitation project receives final approval there, she said it would set a bad precedent for the region and even the world:

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