Costa Rica recorded more than 10 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent in net forest carbon removals over 2020 to 2023, according to a UN technical report published on Friday and reported by Carbon Pulse. The figure matters well beyond one country’s greenhouse gas ledger. It is the largest internationally reviewed block of national REDD+ results to emerge this year, and it lands just months after Costa Rica became the first country to verify forest removals under ART’s TREES standard for sale to the LEAF Coalition and Norway. For buyers of jurisdictional forest carbon, the supply side of the market now has a reference case: a country whose numbers have passed both UNFCCC technical review and the most demanding private standard.
What the UN Review Confirmed
The document is the technical analysis report on the REDD+ technical annex to Costa Rica’s first biennial transparency report, published by the UNFCCC on 14 August. Under the Paris Agreement’s transparency framework, countries seeking results-based finance for REDD+ submit their results against a forest reference emission level, and a UN expert team assesses whether the data and methods are consistent with the agreed guidance.
Costa Rica reported results for the 2020 to 2023 period, and the total crossed 10 million tonnes of CO2e in net removals over the four years. That is not a projection or a credit issuance figure: it is a national accounting result that has survived international technical scrutiny. In a market where the central complaint about forest carbon has been unverifiable baselines and inflated claims, a UN-reviewed national result is the strongest form of evidence the current system produces.
From UN Accounting to Paid Tonnes
The technical analysis is one of three finance channels Costa Rica has stacked on the same forest performance. The second is results-based payments: the country’s REDD+ results have been monetized through a Green Climate Fund results-based payments project, which UN-REDD describes as instrumental in enabling verification at scale, alongside its emission reductions programme with the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility.
The third channel is the market. In June, Costa Rica became the first country to verify national REDD+ removals under TREES, the standard issued by the Architecture for REDD+ Transactions. The verification covers 1,095,881 tonnes of CO2e from the 2017 to 2019 monitoring period, to be purchased through the LEAF Coalition and the Government of Norway at a floor price of $10 per tonne. That implies at least $10.9 million in climate finance from a single crediting period, with proceeds tied to the country’s REDD+ strategy and its payments for ecosystem services programme, which has operated for three decades through state institutions FONAFIFO and SINAC.
The sequencing is the point. The same national forest monitoring system now feeds UN compliance accounting, concessional results-based payments and private market credits, each with its own integrity screen. Fewer than a handful of countries can say that today.
Why the Volume Matters for Buyers
Jurisdictional REDD+ has spent years as a promise rather than a product. The TREES standard was designed to fix the integrity failures of project-scale forest credits by crediting whole national or subnational programmes against conservative reference levels, but verified supply has been slow to arrive. Costa Rica’s first verified batch is modest, just over one million tonnes, yet the newly reviewed 2020 to 2023 results suggest the underlying performance is an order of magnitude larger.
The scale signal runs both ways. Costa Rica’s AFOLU emissions have fallen from 14.3 million tonnes of CO2e per year in 1998 to roughly 1.2 million tonnes per year in 2023, according to UN-REDD. Forest protection there is a completed transition more than an ongoing avoidance story, which is exactly why its credits are removals and why they clear standards that avoidance credits increasingly fail.
What It Means for Buyers and Developers
For corporate buyers, Costa Rica’s trajectory sets the benchmark other jurisdictions will be measured against: UN-reviewed national results, ART-TREES verification, and sovereign buyers like Norway alongside LEAF’s corporate members. Expect a widening price gap between jurisdictional credits with that pedigree and project-scale forest credits without it. The $10 floor on the LEAF deal is a dated reference, but it anchors the low end for high-integrity jurisdictional supply.
For governments and project developers elsewhere, the pipeline is visible. UNDP says it is supporting Ecuador and the Brazilian state of Pará, both at advanced stages of the same ART-TREES process, with Costa Rica’s experience feeding peer learning across Latin America. Each new verified jurisdiction adds supply, but it also raises the documentation bar for everyone behind them.
What to Watch
Three markers will show whether Costa Rica is a template or an outlier. First, whether its 2020 to 2023 results, now UN-reviewed, get submitted for TREES verification and converted into marketable credits, which would multiply its verified volume several times over. Second, the pace of TREES verifications for Ecuador and Pará, the two jurisdictions closest behind. Third, pricing: whether LEAF-scale buyers continue to pay a premium floor for jurisdictional removals as more countries reach the market, or whether growing supply compresses the premium that early movers like Costa Rica currently command.
