Impacts of the 1997-98 El Niño Event in Costa Rica

With the announcement of the 1997-98 El Nino at the beginning of 1997, Costa Ricans began a massive response at the national level. National media, government ministries, agriculture and fisheries began preparations based on prior experiences with El Nino phenomena since 1982. As such, Costa Rica represents an intriguing case study of early warning and response to climatic anomalies. Significantly, not all prevention strategies worked as planned, and some had unforeseen consequences. These experiences provide a revealing window on the possibilities of response to early warnings, and the limitations of such strategies. One initial conclusion of the review of the 1997-98 El Nino response is that Costa Rica in fact has adopted a “culture of preparedness,” as recommended by international disaster prevention efforts, such as the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR 1998). This preparedness is especially clear in contrast to the lack of preparation on the part of other Central American countries. A more sobering observation is the delicate policy decision of climate prediction. As probabilistic statements, forecasts have a likelihood of error; the impact of mispredictions must be carefully weighed with the benefits of early preparation, and led to very different approaches on the part of the various organizations involved in the early analysis of the 1997-98 event, with different institutions favouring more and less speculative forecasts.