An historic debt relief agreement with the United States frees up tens of millions of dollars to protect Costa Rica’s lush tropical landscape.

The debt-for-nature swap was made possible by a partnership between The Nature Conservancy, Conservation International (CI), and the governments of the United States and Costa Rica.

Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF) investments helped facilitate the design and negotiation of the swap through grants to several nongovernmental organizations in the Mesoamerica biodiversity hotspot.

“The Costa Rican tropical forests are home to a rich variety of life and provide the natural resources people in the region depend on,” said Peter Seligmann, CI Chairman and CEO. “These forests also are globally important for the role they play absorbing and storing carbon from the atmosphere, slowing global warming.”

Cutting and burning tropical forests contributes 20 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions, which is more than all the world’s cars, trucks, trains and planes combined. Costa Rica has reversed a deforestation trend that saw it lose almost 80 percent of its original forest cover. It has replanted and reclaimed previously deforested areas, with 52 percent of the country now forested again.

The agreement, announced in October, will ensure the protection of the nation’s most critically threatened tropical forests, with the United States forgiving $26 million of Costa Rica’s debt and Costa Rica pledging to spend that amount on tropical forest conservation programs over the next 16 years.

The U.S. government contributed $12.6 million appropriated by the Tropical Forest Conservation Act (TFCA), with CI and The Nature Conservancy providing an additional $1.26 million each to the purchase of the debt at a discounted rate.

With CEPF support, Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad (INBIO) led the country’s biodiversity gap analysis process known as GRUSA II, the findings of which were adopted by the TFCA to define its priority sites and activities.

CEPF also helped cover the salary of CI’s Costa Rica representative who participated in the TFCA negotiation process and also heads the Southern Mesoamerica coordination team.

The representative worked with the partners to determine the swap's geographic and thematic priorities as well as its grant-making mechanisms, which will help fund conservation efforts by local groups. In addition, the representative led CI’s fund-raising effort, which resulted in the organization’s contribution to the debt swap.

The landscapes that stand to benefit include the Osa Peninsula where the rain forest meets the sea, La Amistad National Park containing Costa Rica’s largest untouched tract of rain forest, Tortuguero’s fragile habitat near the Caribbean Sea, the Maquenque wetlands and lagoons in the north, Rincon de la Vieja Volcano’s dry forests, and the central dry forests of Nicoya Peninsula.

CEPF has supported partner conservation efforts in four of these critical areas since 2001. Its grants also helped the TFCA team define specific investments priorities to be funded by the swap for several of them.

In Maquenque National Wildlife Refuge, CEPF support enabled the Centro Científico Tropical to play an instrumental role in the protected area’s creation in 2005. CEPF funded the Executive Committee of the San Juan - La Selva Biological Corridor, a partnership of 20 nongovernmental groups and government agencies, which worked hand-in-hand with the Costa Rican Environment Ministry.

CEPF funds helped to secure community support, conduct baseline technical studies, and complete a management plan. The management plan will be the guiding document for TFCA investments in the area.

In the Osa Peninsula, a grant to INBIO brought a multi-disciplinary team of biologists together to conduct field surveys and compile findings from previous biological work to identify priorities and a zoning plan for connectivity between Corcovado and Piedras Blancas national parks. The TFCA used the INBIO project findings to define the location and scope of its investments in the Osa.