Costa Rica’s "Payments for Environmental Services Program" highlighted by UNFCCC

What Is the PES Program?
Costa Rica’s Payments for Environmental Services (PES) is a pioneering national state-backed incentive scheme launched in 1997 to support forest conservation and restore degraded ecosystems.
Landowners are paid directly for delivering four key environmental services like carbon sequestration, biodiversity protection, water regulation, and landscape beauty, through sustainable land use, reforestation, and forest management

How It’s Funded
• Financed from fuel taxes and water usage charges
• Revenue also comes from carbon credits, Certificates of Conservation, and collaborations with public and private sector partners

Impact & Reach
• 18,000+ families have benefitted
• Covers over 1.3 million hectares via long-term (5 or 10 years) contracts
• Attracted over USD 524 million in investments by 2020

Why It Matters
• Reversed decades of rampant deforestation: forest cover dropped from ~50% in 1950 to 25% by 1995, but has since rebounded
• Integrates social justice features for e.g., extra points for female landowners and tailored opportunities for indigenous people thus ensuring equitable participation and benefits

Ecosystem & Climate Benefits
• Successfully protects primary and secondary forests and fosters sustainable plantations
• Supports integrated watershed management, local biodiversity, carbon sequestration, and scenic preservation

Human & Community Gains
• Families use payments for essentials like food, schooling, healthcare, and to fund community projects (e.g., health centre construction)

Costa Rica’s PES illustrates that well-designed, publicly funded ecosystem services payments anchored in fairness, gender-responsiveness, and community engagement can effectively restore forests, enhance biodiversity, regulate water systems, sequester carbon, and uplift local livelihoods.

https://t.me/CivilsCatalyst

A case study that can be used in multiple different types of essays - Forest are the best case studies for economic excellence. Ecology is permanent economy. There are better practices to 'Best Practices'. All ideas with large consequences are always simple and many more.

Remember you need the skill of connection more than you need content.

Inderjeet Singh Sidhu 88 year retired senior police officer cleans his locality at 6am every day. Hats off to the hero. He is a great example to be emulated.
What are the virtues that you can notice in his sense of duty? Can it be a great example for multiple themes in essay topics.

https://new.uniquejapan.com/ikebana/ma/

Read this Japanese concept of Ma which means empty space in literal sense but is a lot more deep. Can it be relevant in multiple areas?

Excerpted - The key point I would take away from the concept of Ma is to slow down and step back, feel and see from a whole perspective. Not only does this lead to personal growth, it reminds us that our actions play a role in shaping the world we share. This is ultimately where we find fulfillment.

Can Ma be used before we enter into solutions section.? Your thoughts?

In one of the tests I have given the topic - Public trust and effective governance hinge on the integrity of institutions.
Several students have referred to the ECI in it. I think these quotes can add some sharpness to that.
“India’s election is of a size which is just unthinkable - more voters than all 50 countries of Europe, 54 of Africa, and 43 of North and South America put together."
“This is not just the biggest election in the world. I dare say - it’s the biggest human event management in the world.”
“In a forest in Gujarat, we set up a polling station for just one priest. A team sleeps there overnight just so he can vote.”
S Y Qureshi (former CEC and author of the book on Indian elections The Undocumented Wonder)

The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review

@ Commissioned by the UK Treasury and led by Professor (Sir) Partha Dasgupta of Cambridge University
@ Highlights the urgent need to recognize nature as a core part of economic decision-making.
@ It argues that humanity is demanding more from nature than it can sustainably provide, resulting in degraded ecosystems, lost biodiversity, and increased risk to future prosperity.
@ Biodiversity provides resilience and insurance against ecological shocks. Loss of species weakens ecosystem stability and increases the risk of collapse.


Our economies rely on the services nature provides, such as clean air, food, water, and climate regulation. However, these are often undervalued or ignored in traditional economic models.
GDP, for instance, fails to reflect environmental degradation and loss of natural capital.

Key solutions include
1. replacing GDP with measures that track inclusive wealth
2. reforming subsidies that harm biodiversity (e.g., fossil fuels, unsustainable agriculture).
3. investing in nature-based solutions, and fostering global cooperation.
4. Education and community empowerment. Indigenous and local communities should be central actors in conservation. Recognize and support their rights and traditional ecological knowledge.
5. Embed nature in economic decision-making.
6. Invest in natural capital.

The report calls for a fundamental shift in how we think, measure, and act on development to ensure a more resilient and equitable future.

https://t.me/CivilsCatalyst

To make our essays stand out, we can refer to authors and book takeaways on the given subject. It helps to add some intellectual heft to our content. Hence I am sharing such things with you all here. This book can be useful in any essay pertaining environment or ecology.

Eg. Forests precede civilizations deserts follow it. 2024

A good essay. I would urge you all to read it.

"The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you" Werner Heisenberg, a Nobel Prize-winning German physicist and pioneer of quantum mechanics. (Quote for religion, science, spirituality debates)

In challenges and solutions we often use digital addictions and over usage of screen times but lack sharpness. These data points can be used. From yesterday's news on CNBC.

Vinod Kamble crying because UPSC aspirants keep comparing him with Sachin in their essays and make him feel inadequate even today. On a lighter note😁

At least compare Prithvi Shaw with Shubman Gill for a fresh perspective.

James Mcgregor Burns gave the idea of transformational leadership that can be useful in many essays and Ethics paper. It is defined as a process in which leaders and followers raise one another to higher levels of morality, motivation, and purpose. Unlike transactional leadership, which is based on exchanges or rewards for compliance, transformational leadership inspires and transforms people by appealing to their values and sense of meaning.

It is based on - mutual elevation, based on morality, change oriented and driven by a vision.

Key ideas -
1. Leader acts as a role model, earning respect and trust by demonstrating strong values and ethics.
2. Leader communicates a clear, compelling vision that energizes and unites followers.
3. Encourages creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving among followers.
4. Treats each follower as unique, mentoring and supporting their personal development.

Examples of blend of science and religion -
I. Indian
• Traditional examples -
○ Charaka saw health as a balance of body, mind, and spirit, aligning closely with Vedic metaphysics.
○ Sushrutha's Sushruta Samhita invokes the Goddess Dhanvantari.
○ Nagarjuna was a Buddhist monk and expert in Chemistry and material transformation.
○ Kanada -the Founder of Vaisheshika or atomist school in India. Saw anu i.e. atoms as created and guided by God.
○ Ayurveda - Blends both.
• Modern examples -
○ Prafulla Chandra Ray - Swadeshi science rooted in both modern rationality and Indian spirituality.
○ Ramanujan was a devout Hindu. He even attributed his mathematical insights to the Hindu goddess Namagiri. For him an equation "had no meaning unless it revealed the mind of god".
○ Dr. Kalam too believed in God. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam viewed religion as a path to spiritualism and unity, emphasizing that great individuals use religion to foster connections while smaller minds use it for division.
○ Isro Chief S Somanath recently stated - "Process of science and spirituality are the same. They both start at 'I do not know(something)'. The difference is that the former is external and the latter is internal."
II. Western
• Traditional
○ Mendel was a monk & his famous pea plant experiments were conducted in a monastery garden.
○ Galileo was in fact a devout catholic.
○ Kepler was a devout Christian and once said on his discoveries - "I was thinking God's thoughts after him."
○ Michael Faraday is a pioneer in Electromagnetism. Refused to work on weapons research due to Christian beliefs.
• Modern
○ Einstein believed in a cosmic religion and was awe inspired by the universe’s harmony.
○ Max Planck, the father of Quantum Physics - “Both religion and science require a belief in God.”
Francis Collins, the former director of the Human Genome Project, is a devout Christian and author of The Language of God.

E.O. Wilson's "Half Earth" concept, popularized in his 2016 book Half-Earth: Our Planet's Fight for Life, is a conservation proposal that advocates for dedicating at least half of the Earth's surface as a human-free natural reserve to preserve biodiversity and avoid mass extinction.
This plan aims to set aside enough land and sea to save the living environment and allow the biosphere to stabilize for human survival, with the concept being promoted by the Half-Earth Project.
By doing so, he believed that 80% of the Earth's species could be saved and the planet could be placed in a "safe zone".
The Half-Earth Project - This initiative, founded by the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation, works to bring this concept to reality.

Useful for essays on climate and environment.
https://t.me/CivilsCatalyst

The biophilia hypothesis is the theory, popularized by E. O. Wilson in his book Biophilia, that humans have an innate, biologically-based tendency to seek connections with nature and other forms of life. This concept suggests an evolutionary basis for humans' attraction to the natural world, including an innate desire to interact with living organisms and a greater positive response to natural environments, which can influence well-being.

Timnit Gebru
Timnit Gebru is a computer scientist and one of the leading voices in AI ethics. She’s known for her work on algorithmic bias, especially in facial recognition and language models. After being fired from Google for speaking out about ethical concerns, she founded the Distributed AI Research Institute (DARE).

Rethinking AI
Gebru challenges the idea that all AI is necessary. She believes we should question whether certain technologies should exist at all, not just how to make them better.

Fired from Google
Gebru co-wrote a paper called “Stochastic Parrots” with Emily Bender. It warned about the dangers of large language models like GPT-3, including:

Bias and harmful content
Environmental impact
Too much control by big tech companies
Lack of transparency in how these systems are developed

Google asked her to retract the paper or remove Google authors. When she refused, she was fired. This case highlighted how ethics often clash with profit in tech.

Bias in Facial Recognition
Earlier, Gebru worked with Joy Buolamwini to show that facial recognition tools are less accurate for darker-skinned women. Their findings predicted real-world problems, like wrongful arrests. Gebru argues that such technologies often worsen inequality.

Issues in Tech and Academia
She points out that both tech companies and universities reward fast progress and profits, not caution or ethical reflection. People who question the core goals of AI often get pushed out.

Founding of DARE
Gebru started DARE to create a space free from the pressures of big tech or academic politics. The institute focuses on real-world impact and works with people from marginalized communities. Its approach asks what we actually need to build, rather than assuming AI is always the answer.

Latest data points that can come in handy for env related essays and answers. To bring sharpness and authenticity, a citing some data, facts, figures, reports is crucial.

Often students write essays without sharp recent examples. It is my endeavour to share some good curated examples, case studies, data, reports etc that can be thematically relevant in essays and across other papers too.

2 Companies with business models that are environment friendly -
1. Patagonia addresses climate change by eliminating virgin petroleum-based materials in its products by 2025, increasing the use of recycled and regenerative organic materials, and aiming for net-zero emissions by 2040. They also operate the Worn Wear program to extend product lifespans, fund environmental work through 1% for the Planet, and committed all company ownership to a trust for climate action.

2. IKEA's circular economy steps include designing for circularity from the outset, using renewable and recycled materials, offering recommerce services like furniture buy-back and resale marketplaces, expanding spare parts and repair services, and investing in sustainable forestry and renewable energy. The goal is to shift from a linear "take, make, waste" model to one where products are built to last longer and can be reused, refurbished, remanufactured, or recycled, ultimately aiming to be a fully circular business by 2030.

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