Aiming for Net Zero

How Costa Rican leaders adopted policies to reduce planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions, and what other countries can learn from their actions.

As atmospheric greenhouse gases continue their steep ascent, the world has never been more in need of policies designed to reduce emissions. Among the few nations that has committed to ambitious emission reduction policies is the small Central American nation of Costa Rica. Costa Rica's pioneering policies include a Payments for Environmental Services program, a carbon neutrality pledge, and a goal of decarbonizing the economy. In this book Aiming for Net Zero, Julia Flagg explores why Costa Rican leaders have adopted more climate mitigation policies than leaders of other nations and how these leaders have introduced and developed these policies.

Drawing on archival evidence and interviews conducted between 2013 and 2021 with three dozen people who have contributed to climate policy in Costa Rica, Flagg tells the story of Costa Rica's climate mitigation policy development. Costa Rica's historically egalitarian class structure, she writes, enabled its elite to invest in public welfare and enhance the national level of development. Within this relatively egalitarian class structure, the members of a small, interconnected, and urban green elite developed climate mitigation policies during four historical moments: the late 1980s, the mid-1990s, the mid-2000s, and the late 2010s.

Offering many lessons for other nations aiming to curtail planet-warming emissions, Aiming for Net Zero shows how investments in the public good enhance social development—which, ultimately, allows state planners to pursue ambitious climate mitigation policies.