CEDPO
🌐Centro Estratégico de Desarrollo de la Península de Osa (CEDPO) is a collaborative platform working to unify local, Indigenous, and institutional actors around a shared vision for a regenerative future in Costa Rica's Osa Peninsula, rooted in system mapping, community governance, and ecological stewardship.
Bioregional Context
The Osa Peninsula, located on the southern Pacific coast of Costa Rica, is one of the most biodiverse regions on Earth. Home to roughly 2.5% of the planet's terrestrial species in less than 0.001% of its land area, it includes Corcovado National Park, extensive lowland rainforests, mangroves, and marine ecosystems.
- Network Affiliation
- BioFi Project
Background
The Osa Peninsula stretches along Costa Rica's southern Pacific coast, a landscape that National Geographic has recognized as one of the most biologically intense places on Earth. This remarkable region contains 2.5% of the world's biodiversity and 5% of all plant and animal species within just three millionths of Earth's surface—a concentration of life that defies comprehension. The peninsula encompasses Corcovado National Park, the largest undeveloped stretch of lowland rainforest globally, Central America's largest Pacific coast mangrove forest, and the Gulf of Dulce, one of only four tropical fjords in the world. This ecological richness exists alongside Ngäbe Indigenous communities and Costa Rican cultures who have stewarded these lands for generations.
Yet this extraordinary place faces mounting pressures: unsustainable development patterns, accelerating international land acquisition, poverty existing alongside conservation efforts, and cultural erosion. These challenges create vicious cycles where economic desperation drives illegal deforestation, poaching, and mining—activities that undermine the very ecosystems communities depend upon.
Origins and Network
The Centro Estratégico de Desarrollo de la Península de Osa (CEDPO) emerged from a decade-long collaboration between Regenerative Earth and local Osa Peninsula communities, formally established in June 2022. The organization represents a strategic response to the region's complex challenges, bringing together diverse actors around a shared vision for regenerative development.
Activities
Participatory Systems Mapping
The foundation for CEDPO was laid through a participatory systems mapping process initiated in 2015, led by Regenerative Earth in collaboration with local communities and Indigenous groups. The resulting systems map identifies existing capacities, unmet needs, root causes, feedback loops, and leverage points for regenerative intervention. The mapping revealed a shared vision centered on a regenerative economy that supports thriving communities and culture, where jobs are reliant on healthy ecosystems, creating incentives for ecological stewardship. It also illuminated key challenges: unsustainable development, international land acquisition accelerating over recent years, unsustainable agriculture, poverty alongside conservation driving illegal deforestation and poaching, fragmentation among working groups, and cultural erosion. This systems analysis guides CEDPO's theory of change, objectives, strategies, and project selection criteria across environmental, social, and economic sectors.
Multi-Stakeholder Governance
CEDPO’s governance is nested and statutory: a national rural-development mandate, university research capacity, an NGO fiscal backbone, and a territorial council (SETO) that mixes elected municipal and community seats—including Indigenous representation—so decisions stay accountable to place. Partners such as Regenerative Earth, INDER, PIOSA, and SETO each play a role, but the design point is co-stewardship under Law 9306: SETO meets monthly, steers the 2024–2030 territorial plan, and has moved roughly $4 million into regional priorities in recent years—including electricity for Indigenous communities that lacked grid access.
Project Portfolio Development
CEDPO has backed about 15 initiatives chosen through its systems map—spanning environment, society, and economy. Examples include: - Ngäbe communities: knowledge exchange, seed saving, traditional agriculture and medicine, productive-system strengthening, and ecotourism grounded in Ngäbe practice (phase one complete). - AsaOsa (recyclers’ association): operational support for the peninsula’s main recycling hub, where informal wages lag the environmental service provided. - Women-led enterprises: native vanilla in agroforestry (including export links) and meliponiculture for pollinators and income. - Marine work: Racing Coral trains divers in reef gardening in the Golfo Dulce; Mar y Tierra links land use, education, and monitoring to integrated watershed–coastal management.
Bioregional Financing Facility Development
A bioregional funding mechanism currently in development, the CEDPO Financing Facility is designed to receive donations and investments from Costa Rican donors, the Costa Rican government, and international sources. The facility will support the core CEDPO operations team, finance locally led regenerative projects, strengthen community organizations and governance, and maximize available resources through connections with government institutions, NGOs, and universities. CEDPO aims to raise $100,000 annually for operational needs. As of 2025, $35,000 has been secured, hoped to be a three-year commitment, leaving approximately $65,000 annually to be raised.
Vision and Legacy
CEDPO's three-year plan (2025-2027) includes establishing the Costa Rican Bioregional Financing Facility, building out the core operations team, and continuing strategic investments in projects that promote a regenerative future for the Osa Peninsula. The organization aims to ensure that development serves local communities while preserving the region's extraordinary ecological integrity, avoiding the extractive patterns seen elsewhere in Costa Rica.
Osa’s challenges do not map neatly onto other regions: deep inequality, youth pulled into illicit economies for income, and tourism pressure that can repeat Guanacaste-style displacement when capital is foreign and skills stay imported. CEDPO points instead to Arenal San Carlos—locally owned hotels and restaurants—as the counter-pattern: build capabilities so residents lead development and keep value and stewardship in place.