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Given the socioeconomic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, global leaders are seeking solutions to re-activate their economies while preserving the climate and mitigating the risk of future environmental crises. Costa Ricas National Decarbonization Plan sets the ambitious goal to become carbon neutral by 2050 and lays out a series of actions that government officials, sectoral stakeholders, and more generally Costa Rican citizens would need to implement throughout the economy to decarbonize. The extent to which the implementation of the decarbonization plan can be part of an effort to restart the economy post covid depends on the costs and socioeconomic benefits it entails. In this study, we developed an integrated model that estimates the benefits and costs of implementing the decarbonization plan in all major sectors, informed by consultations with numerous government agencies, industries and non-governmental organizations. In our central scenario, decarbonization brings $41 billion in net benefits to Costa Rica between 2020 and 2050, using a 5 percent discount rate. In the land use sector, reducing emissions would lead to increased agricultural and livestock productivity, and increasing carbon sequestration by forests would lead to greater ecosystem services, such as renewable forestry products, water and soil benefits, and support for tourism and cultural heritage. In the transportation sector, the economic benefits from energy savings, fewer accidents, time saved from reduced congestion, and the reduced negative impacts of air pollution on health more than compensate for the initially higher upfront costs of switching to electric vehicles and building infrastructure for zero-emissions public transport. Energy savings in buildings, efficiency gains in industry, and the economic value of recycled materials and treated water complete our estimates.

Reconociendo la incertidumbre sobre el futuro, evaluamos miles de futuros plausibles diferentes para comprender el rango de posibles vías de descarbonización y beneficios netos para la economía costarricense. En todos menos 22 de los más de 3.000 futuros posibles considerados, la implementación del plan de descarbonización conduciría a beneficios económicos que superarían los costos. Nuestros resultados destacan la importancia del cambio modal y las tecnologías de cero carbono en el sector del transporte, aumentando el secuestro de carbono en el sector forestal y la reducción de emisiones en los procesos industriales y ganaderos, para lograr emisiones netas cero. Este trabajo ha ayudado a construir herramientas y capacidad para evaluar las estrategias de descarbonización, que se utilizarán para apoyar la actualización de las Contribuciones Determinadas a Nivel Nacional de Costa Rica, su compromiso con la comunidad internacional en virtud del Acuerdo de París. Nuestro enfoque se puede reproducir en otros países interesados en analizar las implicaciones económicas de los caminos hacia la prosperidad libre de carbono.

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