Students Help Rain Forest Neighbors Build Sustainable Future

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Every year, students from the U.S., Canada, Europe and San Jose -- just over the mountain -- travel to the rural Costa Rican town of Monteverde, adjacent to that nation¹s magnificent and seriously endangered "Cloud Forest." They come to study and work in community projects that support a sustainable future for the area, as part of a University at Buffalo summer-abroad program.

Started in 1991, ³Sustainable Futures,² an eight-week program created by UB, has developed community projects in Monteverde in planning, architecture and landscape architecture that support a sustainable future not only for the endangered forest, but for the communities that surround it.

The program, which features hands-on community projects and a seven-week homestay with a Costa Rican family, is co-sponsored by the University of Maryland and the University of Costa Rica.

It is offered in cooperation with the Monteverde Institute, the internationally regarded Costa Rican nonprofit educational institution founded by members of the Monteverde community.

€ Studio practicum: Participants will enroll in a six/seven-credit-hour studio practicum that offers supervised application of architecture and planning principles. Students will work with faculty and local organizations to define and respond to some need or opportunity that both supports the changing economy of the area and encourages rain forest conservation.

€ ³Master Plan for the Monteverde Institute and the Monteverde Conservation League,² a physical development plan for two local institutions that included programming and architectural design.

€ "Productores de Monteverde,² assistance to the local, cooperatively owned dairy plant -- the largest employer in the area -- for immediate site improvements and long-range planning that helped clean up and prevent future whey pollution of the river by instituting a new animal husbandry program.

€ "Enlace Verde,² the planning and development of a "green necklace" or "green corridor" along the Rio Guacimal, which borders the Cloud Forest. This entailed establishment of conservation easements with many owners of private property in order to preserve the rain forest environment on private land so that animal denizens could migrate, feed and move freely to the river and other areas without leaving their habitat. "Enlace Verde" has been very successful in developing community support for the idea of a shared environment. It is now being expanded.

€ "Master Plan for El Bosque Eterno de Los Ninos,² programming and site development for the Children's Rain forest Project, a site-specific education program, as well as a world-wide education and conservation project based in Monteverde, through which children around the world purchase, and thus preserve, existing tracts of rain forest.

€ In addition to their studio work, students will take part in a three-credit-hour seminar that is an academically centered investigation of the theory and practice of sustainable futures. It will serve to review and critique the idea of sustainability, testing theories against local conditions and experiences. Topics covered include current theories of sustainability, whether eco-tourism is a sustainable strategy and institution-building as community development.

€ They also will take a one- to three-credit-hour course on placemaking and intervention theory, which will support the studio-based work by engaging the theory of intervention, placemaking, group dynamics, leadership skills, partnering and effective intervention strategies in a highly interactive mode.

n Students for whom Spanish is not a first language must take the equivalent of two credits of Spanish through the Monteverde Institute while participating in the program.

€ Students also may attend a lecture series by local and visiting scholars, and participate in field trips in Costa Rica to visit current projects working toward sustainability and to various institutes and forest reserves in the zone.

Faculty includes Robert Shibley, professor of architecture and planning, University at Buffalo; Lynda Schneekloth, professor of architecture, University at Buffalo; William Page, professor of planning, University at Buffalo, and Margarita Hill, professor of landscape architecture, University of Maryland. Several adjunct faculty from the U.S. and Costa Rica also will be involved in instruction and planning.