Costa Rica - Introduction

Costa Rica , officially the Republic of Costa Rica , is a country in Central America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, Panama to the southeast, the Pacific Ocean to the west, and the Caribbean Sea to the east.

Costa Rica constitutionally abolished its army permanently in 1949. It is the only Latin American country to have been a democracy since 1950 or earlier.^[10] Costa Rica has consistently been among the top Latin American countries in the Human Development Index(HDI), ranked 62nd in the world in 2012.

Costa Rica was cited by the United Nations United Nations Development Programme(UNDP) in 2010 as one of the countries that have attained much higher human development than other countries at the same income levels and, in 2011, was highlighted by UNDP for being a good performer on environmental sustainability and having a better record on human development and inequality than the median of their region. It was also the only country to meet all five criteria established to measure environmental sustainability. The country is ranked fifth in the world, and first among the Americas, in terms of the 2012 Environmental Performance Index.

In 2007, the Costa Rican government announced plans for Costa Rica to become the firstcarbon-neutral country by 2021. The New Economics Foundation (NEF) ranked Costa Rica first in its 2009 Happy Planet Index, and once again in 2012. The NEF also ranked Costa Rica in 2009 as the greenest country in the world. In 2012, Costa Rica became the first country in the American continent to ban recreational hunting after the country’s lThe 2011 census classified 83.63% of the population as white, castizo or mestizo. Mulattoes (mix of white and black) represent now 6.12% of the total population, 2.4% as Amerindian, 2% as Black and less than 1% as Asian. Native and European mixed blood populations are far less than in other Latin American countries. Exceptions are Guanacaste, where almost half the population is visibly mestizo, a legacy of the more pervasive unions between Spanish colonists and Chorotega Amerindians through several generations, and Limón, where the vast majority of the Afro-Costa Rican community livesegislature approved the popular measure by a wide margin.Religion in Costa Rica
 Catholicism (70.5%)  Protestantism (13.8%) Irreligion (11.3%) Buddhism (2.1%) Other religions (2.2%)