Costa Rica becomes the first country in the world to access climate finance through LEAF

Environmental Defense Fund is thrilled to see the Architecture for REDD+ Transactions (ART) issue Costa Rica's jurisdictional credits — a milestone that demonstrates that the jurisdictional REDD+ model of forest conservation can successfully move from program development to carbon credit transactions at scale. The issuance demonstrates the LEAF Coalition’s proof of concept, which EDF has worked toward since the Coalition's founding in 2021.

For the first time, funds from LEAF’s public and private sector buyers can flow directly to Costa Rica and its people, providing meaningful recognition of their decades-long commitment, and excellent leadership, to reducing deforestation and forest degradation.

Certified reductions resulted from forest conservation, reforestation, and restoration activities in over 3.1 million hectares of registered forest area - about the size of the State of Maryland or Belgium - and about half of Costa Rica’s land area, with over one million credits issued to the country.

These also include the first TREES removals credits ever issued, demonstrating that jurisdictional REDD+ programs can deliver not just emissions reductions but high-integrity, nature-based emissions removals — a powerful signal to the broader carbon market.

"This is the moment we've been working toward since LEAF launched. With Costa Rica's credits now issued by ART—including the first-ever TREES removals credits—we finally have proof of concept that public and private finance works at scale to drive real, high-integrity forest conservation—and with Indigenous Peoples and local communities at the table from the start. EDF has backed this from day one, and seeing it click into place, with Ghana poised to follow, is incredibly exciting,” said Santiago García Lloré, Director, Forests Partnerships, Environmental Defense Fund.

LEAF has come a long way. When the Coalition launched, there were no jurisdictional REDD+ buyers or sellers in the voluntary carbon market. Today, LEAF has secured over $1 billion in financial commitments from more than 30 companies and 4 governments, signed agreements to deploy over $300 million across five forest nations and states — Costa Rica, Ecuador, Ghana, Nepal, and Pará — and built a pipeline of 28 eligible proposals with the potential to cut deforestation emissions by more than half a billion tonnes.

This is what scaling climate finance for forests looks like — and we're just getting started. Ghana is expected to follow later this year with its own ART TREES credit issuance, which will make it the first country in Africa to receive climate finance through LEAF. The momentum is real, and the model is working.