Costa Rica

Costa Rica  (  / ˌ k oʊ s t ə  ˈ r <span style="border-bottom-width:1px;border-bottom-style:dotted;" title="/iː/ long 'e' in 'bead'">iː <span class="IPA" style="font-family:'LucidaSansUnicode','ArialUnicodeMS';">k <span class="IPA" style="font-family:'LucidaSansUnicode','ArialUnicodeMS';"><span style="border-bottom-width:1px;border-bottom-style:dotted;" title="/ə/ 'a' in 'about'">ə <span class="IPA" style="font-family:'LucidaSansUnicode','ArialUnicodeMS';" title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)">/ , meaning "rich coast" in Spanish), officially the  Republic of Costa Rica  ( Spanish : Costa Rica constitutionally  abolished its army  permanently in 1949. <sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-7" style="line-height:1em;">[7] <sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-8" style="line-height:1em;">[8] <sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-9" style="line-height:1em;">[9]  It is the only Latin American country in the  list of the world's 22 older democracies. <sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-List22_10-0" style="line-height:1em;">[10]  Costa Rica has consistently been among the top Latin American countries in the  Human Development Index  (HDI), ranked 69th in the world in 2011. <sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-HDI11_6-1" style="line-height:1em;">[6] Costa Rica  or República de Costa Rica , pronounced:  <span class="IPA" style="font-family:'LucidaSansUnicode','ArialUnicodeMS';" title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)">[reˈpuβlika ðe ˈkosta ˈrika] ), 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.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;font-family:sans-serif;">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,<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-HDI10_11-0" style="line-height:1em;">[11]  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.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-HDI11_6-2" style="line-height:1em;">[6] The country is ranked fifth in the world, and first among the Americas, in terms of the 2012 Environmental Performance Index.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-EPI2012_12-0" style="line-height:1em;">[12]

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;font-family:sans-serif;">In 2007, the Costa Rican government announced plans for Costa Rica to become the first carbon-neutral country by 2021.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-13" style="line-height:1em;">[13] <sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-14" style="line-height:1em;">[14] <sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-15" style="line-height:1em;">[15] The New Economics Foundation (NEF) ranked Costa Rica first in its 2009 Happy Planet Index, and once again in 2012.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-HPI01_16-0" style="line-height:1em;">[16] <sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-HPI02_17-0" style="line-height:1em;">[17]  The NEF also ranked Costa Rica in 2009 as the greenest country in the world.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-18" style="line-height:1em;">[18]  In 2012 Costa Rica became the first country in the American continent to ban recreational hunting after the country’s legislature approved the popular measure by a wide margin.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-19" style="line-height:1em;">[19] <sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-20" style="line-height:1em;">[20]