Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

The article is a review of the policies of the agricultural sector based on the results of an extension project with small producers and one of research related to inter-institutional articulations developed in the Chorotega Region in Costa Rica.This paper aims to highlight the gaps in Costa Rican agricultural sector policies related to the reduction of poverty and the generation of employment directed to small agricultural producers.

Good teaching practices help schools to conceive technology in a responsible, ethical and equitable way. Thinking of the generation of learning in a holistic way leads to the visualization of technology, not as the end, but as the means to achieve objectives. Understanding the new technological trends from a critical and relevant perspective opens a panorama that translates into opportunities for integral growth of all the people involved in the process of teaching and learning. We might ask the question proposed by Lévy (2007):How can we keep our teaching practices in a way that meets the requirements of these new processes of transaction knowledge? It is not a question of using technology at any cost, but of accompanying, consciously and deliberately, a civilization change that will deeply challenge, again, institutional forms, mentalities, and the culture of traditional education systems and, above all, the roles of the teacher and the student.These new roles are presented in the context of new technology scenarios and should be designed within a strategy providing equal opportunities that will empower actors to maintain the culture and identity in front of the globalization and the barriers an information society presents to a knowledge society.

Climate change is currently a challenge for human beings, it’s effects occur in all aspects of life: biodiversity (flora and fauna), the provision of water for human consumption, industry and agricultural sector, alteration of the productive systems, and food security; knowing the origin and evolution of this last concept is fundamental to establish its relationship with climate change and pose the challenges that are faced.These challenges must be addressed by all sectors: decision makers, institutional, academic and civil society, in order to address it in the most appropriate way and provide solutions. This section aims to address two basic questions: what has been the origin and theoretical-conceptual evolution of the concept of food security and what are the main challenges in the relationship between food security and climate change?

This article describes the systematization of lessons learned and significant experiences obtained from the joint construction process of the Kúlkuok I Cha Seventh Grade Mathematics textbook in the Bribri and Cabecar territories in Costa Rica. This text provides the first attempts to incorporate ethnomathematical knowledge of these native peoples and to contextualize secondary education curriculum. The article intends to present the qualitative process of construction as a critical process of transcendence, giving voice to the participants of the process and showing illustrative images. So, the results shown are processes of university extension to the community, which are described in the systematization as a resource to share the work of this initiative and the tasks carried out in the Bribri and Cabécar communities through the dialogue between different types of knowledge. A qualitative participative methodology with narrative design was implemented. Written and oral testimonies of participants in the process were collected. The most important results were a frequency distribution revealing the most significant experiences for the team and the lessons learned in the construction stages of this text.

The present work seeks to promote wastewater gardens as an efficient system of low-cost treatment for sewage water. This intention came up from the benefits obtained with the implementation of five of these methods as part of a project conducted in Barra Honda and La Vigía de Nicoya, Guanacaste, Costa Rica. In fact, the project “Improvement in the treatment of sewage water through wastewater gardens” was implemented with the purpose of informing individuals, institutions and the country about these systems, and raising awareness of and interest in initiatives that encourage research efforts, awareness raising and development of these methods, and thus, to continue advancing in the articulation of efforts from the institutional and community level in order to improve the public health and the natural ecosystems. Zuñiga (2015) says that “due to little attention and importance given to the treatment of sewage water in Costa Rica in the regulatory field, in its practice and in its supervision, this process remains the most important challenge in order to manage the pollution risk of water bodies.”

Nowadays, both the environmental theme and sustainable development theories occupy a central place in the debates of several areas of knowledge, requiring a more in-depth reflection on human behaviors among themselves and the natural environment. In light of this, it must be considered that societies based on the capitalist mode of production present a great difficulty in ensuring human, social and environmental development that is sustainable and, at the same time, has advanced towards dehumanization and destruction of the planet. Based on the method of socio-historical-analytical procedure and a feminist approach, this paper seeks to analyze the relationship between women and the environment, inquiring if there is any relation between exploitation and domination of nature and domination and subordination of women in the gender relations. Studies based on ecofeminist theories have found that there is a consistent link between the exploitation of the natural environment and women. This link is supported by processes based on the capitalist mode of production and on patriarchal human relations, since there is an objectification of both women and nature. This shows that the proximity between women and ecosystem is much closer than by a natural factor, but by the conditions of power imposed. Thus, in front of the environmental crisis, the ideas and experiences of care and solidarity experienced by women are valid in order to propose alternatives for changes aimed at a sustainable development.

La Reserva Biológica Lomas Barbudal (RBLB) se encuentra ubicada en San Ramón de Bagaces, Guanacaste y cuenta con una extensión de 2 645,71 hectáreas. El objetivo de este trabajo es analizar la situación del componente arbóreo en esta reserva, con el propósito de determinar en qué condición se encuentran los recursos forestales existentes por medio de un inventario forestal, el cual incluye servicios ecosistémicos, índices de diversidad, importancia ecológica y caracterización del bosque. El resultado demostró que las especies con mayor índice de valor de importancia (IVI) fueron: Sweitenia macrophylla, Bursera simarouba, Astronium graveolens y Pseudobombax septenatum. Por otra parte, la mayoría de individuos registrados presentó buena forma, lo que demuestra el alto potencial semillero de esta reserva, así como su importancia en cuanto a conectividad con otras áreas protegidas.

The present paper aims to understand the life experiences of two male witnesses about events that occurred in the aftermath of the 1948 Civil War and Post-War in Costa Rica. It should be noted that the fact in question left them marked, in one way or another, for the rest of life in their personal development. The fisrt one, who lived the experience of war in his childhood as the son of a Communist leader killed in the Codo del Diablo early in the postwar period at the hands of the Costa Rican State; and the second, witnessed these events during his adolescent time, in which he was a combatant of the “figuerista” side during the war. These stories were collected through two semi-structured interviews that were adequate for each particular case, with duration between half and one hour each, which were carried out in the first half of 2015. The research also offers a theoretical-methodological and contextual studies balance that was considered adequate as a way of historical analysis with respect to the testimonial sources used. 

The autor points at the importance of comprising the subjective and creative abilities of human beings in the approach to social reality. Using her own experience as a sociologist, she embraces us to become aware of the limitations that scientific method imposes, which can be surpassed through an artistic investigation as a modular epistemological model that offers the possibility of combining investigation, methodology, creativity, objectivity, subjectivity, knowledge and intervention in a sole sequence, much more similar to human being´s way of feeling and being.