After a morning of whitewater rafting with his family, President Luis Guillermo Solís signed a decree banning dams from the Pacuare and Savegre rivers for 25 years, then thrust the document into the air and said, “For Costa Rica!”
Whitewater rafters, indigenous people and other advocates of the world-famous Pacuare River say it would be a disaster to dam this national treasure to produce electricity. They're currently in talks with the Solís administration to produce a presidential decree preventing the damming of this river for the foreseeable future. But with the Costa Rican Electricity Institute having promised in 2009 to build nothing on the Pacuare for 20 years, how real is the threat?
Costa Rica's population could begin shrinking earlier than previously expected as the number of children being born continues to fall faster than population experts...
