Costa Rica restored its forests and switched to renewable energy – what can the world learn from this?

Doris Ríos ducks gracefully under the barbed wire fence, wearing knee-high black rubber boots, a black dress, and the black horn of a beetle dangling from a beaded necklace. Until recently, this barrier would have kept her out of a farm operating on the Cabécar Indigenous Land. Now, the fence protects rows of young guava trees that she and other indigenous women planted on land they reclaimed from the company that previously occupied it illegitimately.

The earth is healing. Ríos’s dark eyes are piercing as she stops to survey the terrain, her black hair falling softly in layers from chin to collarbone. She looks at a green hillside where young seedlings are just beginning to appear above the tall grass. The trail on the other side of the barbed wire is orange dirt; it turns into powder when dry and turns into muddy clay when wet.