The talk of sustainability began before the presentation given later in the day. Our tour guide told us that because of climate change the clouds have been pushed higher into the sky and away from the forest. Unfortunately this could eventually change the cloud forest to a rainforest.

With Monteverde’s sustainable development their key parts are environmental, social and economic. To keep themselves sustainable, diversity is necessary in their cycle. During climate change, it is difficult to keep an economy sustainable when there are multiple different facets affecting the economy.

Conservation in Monteverde has a cycle and tries to model a circular economy. Circular economies entails giving incentives to reusing products rather than throwing them away and only relying on new forces and materials. There are 16 principles for a circular economy that focus heavily on designing to make it more efficient, how to source your product efficiently, reusing the product, and focusing on quality.

During Covid their economy crashed and did not have a diverse economy. To try to bring back the economy they renewed seedlings in boxes for people if they did not have backyards to grow their own food. This allowed for less spending on food and had people grow food themselves. In addition they also tried to find a way to have less waste so they would use the extra bananas from their coffee plantation to give out to people.