Drawing on a decade of fieldwork in these communities, Isla exposes the duplicity of a neoliberal model in which the environment is converted into commercial assets, few of whose benefits flow to the local population.

Prologue
Introduction
Part I: Embodied Foreign Debt in the National System of Conservation Areas
1 - Political Economy: Building Costa Rica’s Neo-liberal State
2 - Political Ecology: Debt-for-Nature and Its Experts
Part II: Embodied Debt-for-Nature: Women, Peasants, Indigenous Peoples, and the Remaking of Nature
3 – The Land Plan in Arenal-Tilaran Conservation Area: New Natures and New Workers in Fortuna, Z-Trece, Abanico, and Miramar
4 - Genetics as a Site of Biotechnology or Biopiracy: Dispossession of Indigenous Peoples’ and Peasants’ Knowledge
5 – Forests as Carbon Sinks: Dispossession of Peasant Access to the Forest
6 - Scenery as Eco-tourism: Dispossession of Peasant Agricultural Land and the Rise of Prostitution
7 - Medicinal Plants in Micro-enterprises: The Dispossession of Rural Women’s Labour and Knowledge
8 - Mountains as Open-Pit Mining Sites: Dispossession of Peasants’ Water and Livelihood
9 – The Need for Alternative Relations

"The 'Greening' of Costa Rica is a very interesting case study of the link between political ecology and political economy by a long-term observer of green development in Costa Rica." -- Mary Mellor, Emeritus Professor, Department of Social Sciences, Northumbria University "A powerful statement about the life-threatening and destructive moves of green capitalism and what they mean for the survival chances of populations whose ways of living and knowing are transformed into sources of exploitation, destroying not only their livelihoods but also the survival potential of our planet." -- Mechthild Hart, Professor Emeritus, School for New Learning, DePaul University