Costa Rica won an Earthshot 2021 prize for protecting and restoring nature – one of the five prizes awarded in the first year of a program ”designed to incentivise change and help repair our planet over the next ten years.” By highlighting the ability of human ingenuity to bring about change and thus inspiring collective action, the prize “aims to turn the current pessimism surrounding environmental issues into optimism.”

The five ‘Earthshots’ are “simple but ambitious goals for our planet which if achieved by 2030 will improve life for us all, for generations to come”, and form “a unique set of challenges rooted in science, which aim to generate new ways of thinking, as well as new technologies, systems, policies and solutions”. And it recognizes that these environmental challenges are interconnected and must be tackled together.