A UVM blog Allan’s Rural Livelihoods in a Globalized World Class

1. The material basis of Belgian colonization of the Congo:

Despite being one of the poorest countries on Earth in terms of GDP, the region of Africa within the DRC’s borders is practically exploding with natural resources. There is abundance in all the tropical agriculture like rubber, cotton, oil palms, beans, etc., and the ground is rich in minerals and valuable elements. This is what originally attracted Belgian colonizers in the late 19th Century to extract these resources with forced labor, and the country is still crippled by neo-colonial forces today.

2 and 3 The political power and ideology of the colonizers:

Belgium’s King Leopold II set his sights on the Congo in the late 19th Century, and sanctioned Belgium’s conquest of the Congo in the Berlin West Africa Conference of 1884, under the guise of ending slavery and modernizing the lives of Congolese people. This “humanitarian” cause quickly devolved into forced labor to build a railroad in order to extract natural resources and enable easy access to the land for Belgian troops. Leopold had a rather brutal private army of African soldiers led by European officials, called the Force Publique.

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Greetings! I am Allan Nash. My first assignment for this class is about the products and goods that are produced on the Osa Peninsula, where I will be staying this semester.

1. I will start with one of my favorites: Chocolate! Specifically, cacao bean farming. They are grown around the world, typically within around 10 degrees or so of the equator. The rainforest on the Osa Peninsula is a great environment to grow cacao trees. Costa Rica is also known for its coffee production, but most coffee growing in the country comes from the central higher elevations, where the cooler temperatures are a little more favorable for those beans. However, chocolate is prevalent in the lowland climate of the Osa, and there is extra money made by selling “chocolate tours”, where tourists are shown the process of turning cacao beans into chocolate. Once processed into chocolate, it can be sold as the delicacy known to all.

https://www.osatourism.com/rancho-raices-chocolate-tour/

2) Fish. Being a small tropical peninsula, it is no surprise that Osa gets a lot of great seafood. A lot of everyday food for locals is produced this way, with the abundance of tropical marine species to catch. The fresh produce is also perfect for seafood restaurants to sell and keep open. Aside from fishing strictly for seafood, sport fishing is also sold as a tourist experience, and brings in hundreds of. searching for economic information about the Osa’s fishing was hard because of how many sport fishing advertisements come up in search results.

https://www.crocodilebay.com/costa-rica-regaining-position-in-global-sport-fishing-world/

*also, this link brings up ecological concerns for overfishing and biodiversity collapse in the Pacific Ocean right off of the Osa: https://mpaforosa.com

3) Ecolodge stays

Tourism is kind of an “elephant in the room” when talking about a place like The Osa Peninsula. The irony of me travelling there to study as college student is not lost on me, although I will be getting out of the tourist bubble some at least. Anyways, there is very high demand for tropical beach and rainforest resorts in a place like this, but tourists are also at least somewhat aware of potential ecological damage that can be caused by the footprint of resorts and hotels, so many places try to emphasize sustainability, and the term often used to describe such places is the aforementioned “ecolodge”.

Here is a good example of one of the more luxurious and expensive ecolodges, called “El Remanso”: https://elremanso.com/en/ . Notice how they have a “sustainability” tab on their site!

4) Rice

Rice is another common crop on the Osa. It is one of many agricultural products of a typical lowland rainforest economy. As a product, rice basically sells itself. It is easy to grow in abundance, and is one of the most common foods used in Costa Rican dishes. I have stayed in the country before, and almost every meal I ate was some variation of rice with some toppings of other foods. I thought it was important in this list to include a basic food product that feeds a large number of people regularly, in addition to one of the minor delicacies like chocolate.

Here is a listing of a big rice farm right on the North edge of the Osa Peninsula: https://www.point2homes.com/CR/Home-For-Sale/Puntarenas/Playa-Zancudo/Huge-Rice-Farm-in-Osa-Peninsula/139734277.html

5) Palm Oil

This one brings up some unfortunate modern economic realities of the “globalized world” that this class is focused on. Palm oil is extracted from the fruit of palm trees, which are grown on tropical plantations around the world, close to the equator. The oil is unsurprisingly used in food products, but also in many non-food items like cosmetics, detergents, and other soaps to name a few. The reason it brings up “unfortunate” economic realities is because of the ecological destruction that palm oil plantations are known to cause in their environments. It is a very efficient crop, and has a wide variety of applications in products sold around the world, which is mainly why it is of such high concern.

Here is a basic source of info for Palm Oil, and some of the products it’s used in:

https://www.worldwildlife.org/industries/palm-oil#:~:text=It%20is%20also%20used%20in,is%20a%20very%20productive%20crop.