Costa Rica’s NDC aims to achieve carbon neutrality by 2021 with its total net emissions comparable to the emission level in 2005. The agriculture, forestry, and other land use sector (AFOLU) is highlighted in this context. The NDC also aims to advance ecosystem-based adaptation practices that include increasing forest coverage in the country from 54% to 60%. Government of Costa Rica (GoCR) recognizes agriculture as a key source of mitigation accounting for 37% of the total GHG emissions and emphasizes the importance of increasing resilience of agriculture sector (e.g. Café NAMA).

A key challenge is to attract capital into the AFOLU sector to implement national commitments and achieve the targets – a challenge which is exacerbated by the current fiscal deficit of the government.

Innovative mechanisms are therefore needed to attract alternate funding sources, including private sector capital. In this context, the GoCR intends to transform “Environmental Bank Foundation (FUNBAM)” into a specialized financing entity for sustainable development and requested support from GGGI aimed at designing, restructuring and scaling up the vehicle.

The project aims to strengthen FUNBAM as a specialized financing vehicle for sustainable development. The GoCR partnered with GGGI to design, restructure, and scale up an existing financing vehicle which is now called FUNBAM 2.0. In 2017-2018, the focuses are to provide technical assistance on investment plan development, projects origination and structuring, and fund mobilization.

• An investment plan for FUNBAM 2.0’s pipeline projects developed
• Project(s) identified and structured through fund mobilization