Kemal Dervis, UNDP Administrator, and Rebeca Grynspan, Director for Latin America and the Caribbean, visited two GEF Small Grants Programme projects in Costa Rica on January 13, 2007.

Costa Rica was one of the first countries to participate in the Small Grants Programme which has now operated in the country for more than 15 years and, at the time of its last evaluation (2005), had distributed US$ 5.08 million – the equivalent of a full sized project - to 354 projects.

Although rules say that SGP grants can be made of up to $50,000 Costa Rica set a $25,000 limit so that more projects could be supported. Average grant per project was $14,350.

Small grants account for 13.2% of all GEF funding in Costa Rica, making it the second largest sector, after Biodiversity, at 68.6%. Within the Costa Rica SGP biodiversity takes the lion's share (76%) of funds followed by multifocal area projects (16.1%) in a distant second place.

Five focal areas have been identified for priority support by the SPG in Costa Rica. They are: biological corridors (the projects are often carried out in conjunction with the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor Project); ecotourism; support of volunteer environment work; organic agriculture and indigenous territories.

Around 13.8% of SPG funding goes to support civil society groups, mostly NGOs, and of this, 80% goes to community grassroots organizations – especially women's and indigenous populations groups.

Some of the most successful SGP projects in Costa Rica have been: support for solar cookers and their manufacture and marketing by women's groups - which won a government award in 2000; supporting a large number of ecotourism projects, and the foundation of a rural community tourism association (ACTUAR); support for sustainable agriculture and cleaner production; habitat restoration, natural resource conservation and alternative livelihoods projects involving more than 120 communities; the funding of environmental schools; supporting volunteer forest firemen; constructing more than 300 biodigestors; and conducting training and capacity building sessions, particularly in the fields of community tourism, solar cooking and organic farming.