Costa Rica Peace

The waterfalls and pools of Costa Rica.

Costa Ricans will not generally greet you with hello and goodbye. Instead, the standard salutation is pura vida: a phrase that literally translates to “pure life,” but which actually stands as a much deeper symbol of life in Central America’s happiest country and, in every sense of the word, its most peaceful.

Pura vida, which carries the meaning of everything from living well to being positive and a sense of happiness and contentment, is as much a statement of intent as a greeting. To someone who has never visited, that might sound a bit cloying. After all, do people really want to live surrounded by others saying how happy they are, and how happy we should all be?

To step foot in Costa Rica is to understand that pura vida is simply a fact of life. It is a place that feels like a paradise: from the beaches to forests, volcanoes and butterfly farms. It’s the Caribbean coast meets the Central American rainforest, where you can zip line between the treetops one day, climb the peak of volcanoes the next, descend into bat caves, and have a forest bath—in such lush surroundings, you become naturally open to all the scents, sights, and sounds of the earth. The people, the environment, and the culture are so peaceable that it just wouldn’t occur to those present to feel anything other than deliriously happy. You are lulled by the surroundings into exactly the state of contentment that pura vida symbolizes. There’s truly nowhere else like it.

This sense that the normal rules don’t apply is reflected in some of the country’s policies. For instance, it has no standing army, having abolished it in 1948, to invest the defense budget in health care, education, and social security. For many nations, not least one in a conflict-riven region, this might appear (or actually be) an act of desperate naïveté. But in Costa Rica, it has worked, helping to create thriving education and health services, while making it the most peaceful nation in Central America, according to the Global Peace Index.

Abandoning its army is not the only way that Costa Rica has sought to further the cause of peace. In 1980, President Rodrigo Carazo donated land that would become the base for the United Nations University for Peace. In 2001, along with the U.K., Costa Rica co-proposed a resolution for the establishment of an International Day of Peace, now marked annually on September 21. And in 1997, the country passed a law mandating the teaching of conflict resolution in all of its schools.

And while many of the planet’s natural ecosystems are under an onslaught of human and climate pressures, Costa Rica has also decided to declare peace on its rainforests, once ubiquitous but increasingly threatened. Once 75 percent forest-covered in the 1940s, the country had just a 26 percent canopy by 1983. Reforestation work to reverse that trend has now brought the figure back over 50 percent, with a government target of hitting 70 percent by 2021. That has helped ensure Costa Rica remains one of the most biodiverse nations on the planet, home to over 500,000 different species, including some that are unique to it. Costa Rica’s record is equally impressive on clean energy, having supplied over 98 percent of its electricity needs through renewable sources in 2016: principally wind, hydroelectric, and geothermal power.

Costa Rica has proved itself as a nation where peaceable, sustainable solutions can deliver meaningful change and an impressive quality of life for people. According to several indices, it ranks as the happiest place on the planet. It is a nation not without its challenges, especially when it comes to poverty and income inequality. But as a whole, Costa Rica shows that peace does not have to be an idealistic vision; it can also be a practical, long-lasting reality.