Pattern Family: Love is the Intervention | Case: Costas Verdes, Costa Rica | Scale: Individual → Community → Ecosystem
Love is the Intervention: How a Surfer’s Promise Reforested a Coastline
Most environmental movements begin in the tone of fear or anger. This story is different. It begins with love: love for the waves, love for a beach, and most importantly, love and concern for the comfort of a beloved.
The Problem
Playa Hermosa on Costa Rica’s Pacific coast had almost no shade. Six kilometers of beach, and barely one patch of shadow. Max Tattenbach surfed there often. His girlfriend wanted to come along—to read, to be near the water. But the sun was relentless. So he made a promise: “I promised her I would reforest Playa Hermosa so we could enjoy the beach together.” That promise became Costas Verdes.
Fifteen years later, more than 100,000 native trees have been planted across 34 beaches. Howler monkeys, absent for decades, have returned. The coastline is being slowly, stubbornly reclaimed—not through fear, outrage, or protest, but through a commitment made to one person, renewed season after season through love.
The Intervention Move
Max did something that violated the conventional logic of environmental restoration: he ignored the scale of the problem. Most people who understood the scope of Costa Rica’s coastal deforestation experienced it as overwhelming. The appropriate response seemed institutional—government programs, major funding, coordinated policy, large organizations. Max was just a university student with an overheated girlfriend. There wasn’t time to organize an army. It was time to plant a tree.
This is a core move in Intervention Design: reframe the system at the scale where care can take root. Not the scale that looks proportionate to the problem—the scale that allows a human being to feel genuinely responsible.
The Hidden Leverage Point: Attachment
Costas Verdes surfaces a category of leverage that rarely appears on systems maps: Attachment. People protect what they love. Emotional attachment is power. Countless environmental interventions attempt to bypass the slow work of building heart connection. Costas Verdes asks a simple, powerful question: “How do we help people fall in love with a place and empower them to make a difference?”
Affection → Attention → Stewardship → Participation → Regeneration
The Love × Power Analysis
Year One: Love +10 / Power +1. Almost no institutional capacity. One person, a park ranger, some friends, and care so specific it had a name: Playa Hermosa. Her shade. This promise. Many analysts would identify this as weakness. The case reframes it as seed condition.
Year Fifteen: Love +9 / Power +8. Costas Verdes now possesses organizational capacity, public recognition, fundraising infrastructure, ecological evidence, and regional influence. 100,000 trees planted. Working toward 300,000 across 100 beaches. What it has not done is abandon the quality that started it.
Care can scale. Many interventions gain power by becoming more extractive, more bureaucratic, or more adversarial. The care that launched them becomes instrumentalized. Costas Verdes demonstrates that another path is possible.
Originally published on Love is the Intervention (IDT Substack), June 2026.
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