Use it or loose it: the need for integrating social and environmental goals
With the objective of finding new ways of utilizing the potential of the Osa forests to contribute to the economic and social developement of the region, the TUVA Foundation (United Lands of Neighbors for the Environment), a non-profit costarican organization founded in 1990, is working with small producers to locate, extract, mill and sell high quality tropical woods without cutting down a single tree. TUVA's stated mission is the advancement of community-based conservation: a strategy that promotes the effective involvement of local inhabitants in the protection and management of the local ecosystems. TUVA's role is that of a facilitator in the process of integrating conservation initiatives within the rural development of the buffer-zones around Corcovado National Park, the most important in the country and one of biodiversity richest protected areas in the world.

To fulfill its mission TUVA has helped in forming the Osa National Wildlife Refuge, a new kind of protected area that mixes private and public lands and that integrates conservation goals with low-impact forestry production aiming at developing an ecosystem-based cooperative management model for a 5,000 ha. biological corridor next to the park. The main objective is to effectively enable local communities to make full use of their own organization, knowledge and capabilities to manage the local environment in ways which satisfy both their own perceived social and economic needs and the priorities set for the region by the National System of Conservation Areas.

Sharing the cost: flowing non-timber benefits to local owners
Traditionally, non-timber benefits resulting from natural forest management, such as the social functions and environmental services of the forest, flow to people other than the land owner so the social returns become larger than the private returns. Together with the US National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, TUVA has pioneered a system in which this conservationist organization, interested in forest habitat, pays $0.25 cents for every $1 of certified timber sold out of a REMAC management unit. Independent certification serves to guarantee the health of the forest habitat and local owners receive payment for a non-timber service of their forest production plots, so they do not have to bear all the conservation cost.