Welcoming remarks – Peter H. Raven, Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis – February 15, 2013

Good morning!  I’m very pleased to send warm greetings to you all, along with the sincere wish that I could be there too!  I sincerely hope that this will be just one of the first of a series of comprehensive meetings of institutions and individuals who are deeply involved with this beautiful and biologically significant Monteverde-Arenal region.  In a world where biodiversity is being lost so rapidly, but nowhere more so than in the tropics, the Monteverde-Arenal region stands out as a gem, a place where actions and knowledge can be melded to provide many more enhanced opportunities for citizens, students, scientists, and especially for the survival of biodiversity here on this remarkable “Green Mountain.”  

Discussions at the joint birthday party of OTS and ATBC in San José last June highlighted the reasons that both organizations have flourished not only in the land of their birth but throughout the world.  Since World War II, Costa Rica has, like most of the tropical world, grown rapidly in population and destroyed a large proportion of its natural forests and other resources.  At the same time, it has continued to offer a peaceful setting in which education, science, health, and peace could be pursued at times more effectively than in much of the rest of the world.  In addition, Costa Rica, with a deep respect for the value of ecosystem services, has organized one of the most impressive programs for the conservation of natural areas anywhere in the world. Because of these factors, studies conducted in Costa Rica have often contributed substantially to the development of the increased knowledge of tropical organisms and ecosystems that is available today.

At this meeting, we are considering the special value of preserved and altered lands in the Monteverde-Arenal area of the Sierra de Tilarán for conserving biodiversity, increasing knowledge, and building the sustainable world of the future.  How can the talents and activities of the many organizations who have permanent facilities in this region or visit it repeatedly become a conceptual entity with more facilities, educational opportunities, more extensive conserved and restored areas, an enhanced  contribution to sustainable tourism, and lasting value that has the potential of outliving us all?

Leading the way to our current considerations, Nalini Nadkarni organized a special symposium on many of the biological, geological, and human aspects of the Monteverde-Arenal area, a region that she has come to love and appreciate so well because of her experiences here, including a great deal of experimental work, and the simple beauty and charm of the place and the people who come here or make this their home.  Participants made it clear what a remarkable intersection of community, social, economic, spiritual, and scientific elements work together here to have created a uniquely productive and cooperative environment for research and understanding tropical ecosystems.  In the discussion that followed the symposium, we began to visualize ways in which the activities and facilities of all these diverse institutions could enhance one another and lead to a situation in which the whole could clearly be greater than its parts.  Human endeavors usually succeed best where there are strong individual motivations to achieve particular goals coupled with consultation, cooperation, and mutual encouragement overall.

Over this weekend, I hope that we can move toward a conceptualization of the whole Monteverde-Arenal Area as a conservation, research, and education site, fully integrated with the welfare of all of the people who inhabit the region. I hope that many strategies will emerge from our discussions that will allow each one of our institutions to achieve its goals better. Because the biology of this area is so unusually rich, its human potential so strong, and the interest in learning more about the ecosystems and putting that knowledge to work, I am confident that a strong, united Monteverde-Arenal Regional Initiative and the resulting action plans will help sustain these and other tropical forests for endless generations to come.

I would like to close by offering special thanks to Deb Hamilton and the Monteverde Institute for graciously handling all of the Conference logistics and creating this special opportunity for us all.