Plantations, pesticides, and the State: The making and unmaking of the Térraba-Sierpe delta

Abstract

This dissertation examines the making and unmaking of the delta Térraba-Sierpe in the southern Pacific of Costa Rica to explain why and how pesticide-contaminated waterscapes have been and continue to be produced in Costa Rica. The research combines approaches and methods from political ecology and tropical ecotoxicology to study the intersection of pesticides and plantations in waterscapes, and is divided into four chapters: (1) Regulation by impasse: Pesticide registration, capital, and the State (2) Pesticides and ecological regimes: A view from Costa Rica, (3) The making of the Térraba-Sierpe waterscape: thinking within and beyond the plantation and, (4) Tracking pesticides from upstream river waters to wetland fauna in the Terraba-Sierpe National Wetland: An ecotoxicology study of Anadara tuberculosa. _x000D_ _x000D_ Chapter two studies a two-decade long effort to reform the country’s pesticide registry system. It demonstrates that the registry’s gridlock, far from signalling regulatory failure, is a mechanism to maintain irresolutely valid registrations of old active ingredients. Chapter three reconstructs the chemicalization of Costa Rican agriculture from the vantage point of pesticide legacies and contemporary use in the South Pacific region. It argues that more than inputs, pesticides serve as stabilizing agents for an ecological regime that depends upon the surpluses that they marshal: as byproducts of extractive industries, as compounds that externalize harms, and as biocides that tap organisms’ susceptibility. The chapter exposes how the susceptibility of monocrops to pathogens, and the erosion of these target organisms’ susceptibility to pesticides, creates a patchwork of biotechnical and chemical fixes. Chapter four traces plantation extensions over time, in the legacies of the banana enclave in Palmar Sur, and space, through the effects of upstream plantations on the delta’s socio-ecological relations. It analyses how the United Fruit Company (UFCo), over the course of its decades-long occupation, converted the delta through hydrological infrastructure for drainage and irrigation. This ruined and largely abandoned water infrastructure has conditioned the spatial dynamics of successive land uses, in oil palm plantations and smallholder land occupations, and has increased the magnitude of floods due to climate events. The chapter shows how the interaction between plantation legacies and the effects of contemporary plantations impacts the livelihoods of local populations living along the Térraba river and its delta. Chapter six, included in Appendix 1, analysis the presence and distribution of pesticide residues in water and sediment in the Térraba Sierpe Wetland and the potential biochemical responses due to environmental exposure in the bivalve mollusk Anadara tuberculosa. Results make evident the presence of pesticides in the Térraba river waters and the northern Térraba-influenced wetland area, with diuron, carbendazim, diazinon and ethoprophos appearing at the highest concentrations. Considering the geographical distribution of these substances and their use in pineapple cultivation, the findings suggest a plausible association between this agricultural activity and the observed impact on the wetland aquatic environment. _x000D_ _x000D_ Overall, the thesis argues that the pesticide-contaminated waterscape of the Térraba-Sierpe delta is produced as a confluence of the chemicalization of agriculture developed in Costa Rica over the long twentieth century, the legacies of the plantation and its expanded boundaries, a frayed pesticide regulatory regime shaped by sedimented histories, i.e. regulation by impasse, and its interaction with global networks of pesticide production and distribution, and by the dispersion of pesticides from agricultural lands to aquatic ecosystems.

Date of Award	12 Jul 2023
Original language	English
Supervisor	Esteve Corbera Elizalde (Director), Marion Ruth Werner (Director) & María Laura Martín Díaz (Director)