Abstract

This article presents the main social and ecological effects of productive activities and environmental legislation in Costa Rica´s Chorotega region, during the period 1990-2014. Through the analysis of official, scientists and technical documents, it´s been determined that the Neoliberal and Sustainable Development production models have established a large environmental legislation and a production system based on the operation of agricultural and tourism units, which were always out of environmental legislation control, so they could exploit local ecosystems freely. Even their great operating conditions, the production units concentrated the wealth, so it was not distributed equally among local population that presents low social development.

Keywords: nature´s conservation; living conditions; neoliberalism; regional history; sustainable development