Costa Rica’s NDC states a target to keep emissions below 9.11 MtCO2e by 2030, including LULUCF. Costa Rica’s NDC target is expressed in SAR GWPs.
The CAT presents all targets excluding LULUCF and with global warming potentials (GWPs) from the IPCC’s fourth assessment report (AR4). We used a conversion factor based on the latest national inventory historical data available (Government of Costa Rica, 2021) to convert Costa Rica’s target to AR4. Taking the last available single year data (2017), we calculate a conversion factor by dividing Costa Rica’s 2017 emissions expressed in SAR by the emissions for the same year expressed in AR4 GWPs. We apply this conversion factor to Costa Rica’s emissions targets to convert them to AR4, assuming that the split of different GHGs remains unchanged between 2017 and 2030.
The CAT excludes LULUCF from the target quantification (see CAT methodology). To account for the uncertainty regarding LULUCF emissions, we assumed a LULUCF emissions range to calculate the value of the NDC target excluding LULUCF. The upper end of the range corresponds with LULUCF projections included in the BUR2 WAM scenario, and the lower end corresponds to LULUCF projections in the National Decarbonisation Plan, which is the base for the lower end of current policy projections. We assume these two different ends of the range as there is uncertainty about LULUCF emissions. Efforts—including a REDD+ strategy—exist to reduce emissions in the LULUCF sector. Nevertheless, a national study (Sancho, Rivera and Obando, 2015), which estimates emissions from LULUCF by examining the forest compositions and historical trends, projects that the LULUCF sinks will start to shrink after 2029 and emissions from this sector will become positive in 2050.
