GEF Grant Helps Costa Rica Take Stock of Plant and Animal Life

The grant will support the government's biodiversity strategy—an approach that is at the forefront of conservation efforts in the hemisphere—aided by the National Institute of Biodiversity (INBio). INBio is a non-governmental non-profit organization that has been keeping an inventory of Costa Rica's biodiversity since 1989, while developing innovative bio-prospecting projects with several pharmaceutical companies, pioneering bio-literacy projects with school children, and creating multimedia products to inform and educate the public.

"INBio is a unique national environmental NGO determined to demonstrate that conservation can be reconciled with national economic interests and values," said Project Task Manager Tom Wiens. "By focusing on the means of creating and capturing economic benefits from biodiversity and generating livelihoods for surrounding communities, the project addresses the issue of more equitable sharing of benefits of biodiversity between nations."

With the help of funds from other donors, INBio has trained staff to collect, prepare, and mount biological specimens under the supervision of curators. It has also trained technicians and curators. Within the scope of the program, two million specimens have been collected and entered into the database, and about ten new species have been discovered and identified every month.

About 25 percent of Costa Rica is designated national parks, national forests, and equivalent reserves. The government has not only established large areas for conservation, it has also worked to catalogue the living species within these areas, while finding innovative ways of integrating the sustainable use of biodiversity into the intellectual and economic fabric of society.

The total cost of the Costa Rica Biodiversity Resources Development Project is $11 million equivalent. For more information, call Monica Echeverria, (202) 473-1315, fax 522-3698 or e-mail mecheverria@worldbank.org.