Current Projects

To reduce the negative environmental and social impacts caused by intensive mercury use in Costa Rica’s artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) sector

To assist GEF-Eligible Parties to the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit Sharing to prepare and submit their First National Reports on measures that each Party has taken to implement the Nagoya Protocol.

To assist GEF-Eligible Parties to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety to prepare and submit their Fifth National Reports on measures that each party has taken to implement the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety.

To strengthen Costa Rican institutions to accelerate nature-positive, net-zero pathways.

In response to outcomes of COP 15 of UNCCD, decisions 9 and 11 of COP15, this project aims to support eligible countries to utilize GEF resources for implementing the Convention and the UNCCD Strategy (2018-2030), which is a comprehensive global commitment to avoid and reduce desertification and land degradation and to restore the productivity of degraded land to achieve Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN). The project will support Parties to enhance their national-level institutions and technical capacities for effective and timely preparation and submission of the 2026 UNCCD national reports. To achieve this, the project will offer technical support to the UNCCD National Focal Points, equipping them with the technical tools to collect data and submit national reports through the Performance Review and Assessment of Implementation System (PRAIS) reporting tool.

The objective of the Enabling Activity (EA) grant is to support countries in 1. Assessing the extent to which their current legal, policy and institutional framework allows for promptly becoming parties to the Agreement under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biological Diversity of Areas beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ Agreement) and enables their implementation of the Agreement. 2. Carrying out preparatory work in the context of their ratification, approval, acceptance or accession process towards becoming parties to the BBNJ Agreement. 3. Supporting their readiness to implement the BBNJ Agreement.

To enhance national-level institutional and technical capacities for the 2021-2022 UNCCD reporting process in the context of the UNCCD Strategic Framework 2018-2030 and SDG15.3

Reduce greenhouse gas emissions through the large-scale deployment of electric public transport vehicles in the Greater Metropolitan Area of Costa Rica.

To implement innovative technical small-scale solutions in the Wider Caribbean Region using an integrated water and wastewater management approach building on sustainable financing mechanisms piloted through the Caribbean Regional Fund for Wastewater Manag

Assist Costa Rica in the development of its National Action Plan, raise national awareness on the Minamata Convention and build initial national capacity for the early implementation of the National Action Plan

Costa Rica complies with the requirements of the transparency framework under the Paris Agreement on Climate Change

Accelerating improvements in energy efficiency under Costa Rica’s public procurement programs and reducing Costa Rica’s energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions.

To enable country Parties to collect necessary biophysical, socioeconomic data, establish sound reporting and monitoring systems at national level and report against the UNCCD Strategy

To mitigate climate change by transforming national and regional markets to energy-efficient products.

To Assist GEF-Eligible Parties to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety to prepare and make timely submission of their Third National Reports on measures that each party has taken to implement the Protocol in line with Article 33.

To support the development of national fuel economy policies in 20 countries, 6 countries through GEF-5 STAR Allocations and 14 without GEF funding, using existing tools developed with GEF-4 support (examples are the fuel economy baseline calculation methodology and online GFEI toolkit). In addition, to support coordination of the 20 country projects at the regional level to ensure that results are disseminated to other countries within the region. This will result in reduced vehicle fleet CO2 emissions in these 20 countries inline with the Global Fuel Economy Initiative's target of a 50% improvement of the overall global fleet fuel economy by 2050.

To facilitate access to GEF funding by 52 countries for Enabling Activities to meet their obligations under the UNCCD a) alignment of NAPs with 10 – Year Strategy and b) Reporting and Review process

In the context of the Cartagena Convention and its LBS Protocol2, to pilot revolving financing mechanisms and their related wastewater management reforms that can be subsequently established as feasible instruments to provide sustainable financing for the implementation of environmentally sound and cost-effective wastewater management measures.

To strengthen regional capacity for the sustainable monitoring of chemicals (POPs and Mercury), to support the effectiveness evaluation of the Stockholm Convention and the implementation of the mechanism of the Minamata Convention.

The overarching aim of the project is to strengthen Costa Rica’s climate transparency system through the enhancement of SINAMECC, thereby enabling more effective climate action planning, monitoring, reporting, and policy implementation. This will ultimately support Costa Rica’s broader goals of achieving net-zero emissions and building resilience to climate risks.