As the world observes Earth Day today, Costa Rica finds itself in familiar territory: held up once again as a global example of what environmental ambition can look like in practice, while dealing with the real-world pressures that test that reputation year after year.
The 2026 theme chosen by earthday.org — “Our Power, Our Planet” — emphasizes that environmental progress is sustained by the daily actions of communities, educators, workers, and families rather than by any single policy cycle. It is a message that lands naturally here.
Costa Rica abolished its army in 1948 and redirected public spending toward health, education, and the environment, a decision that has underpinned decades of conservation work and made the country roughly the size of West Virginia a reference point for sustainable development far larger than its footprint.
That reputation rests on hard numbers. The Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad reported earlier this year that Costa Rica closed 2025 generating 98.6 percent of its electricity from renewable sources, drawing on hydropower, geothermal energy from its volcanic chain, wind, biomass, and a growing share of solar.
The rebound followed a difficult 2024, when El Niño-driven drought pushed renewable generation down and forced greater reliance on thermal backup — a reminder that even a model grid is exposed to the climate shifts it is meant to help mitigate. More than a quarter of the national territory remains under some form of environmental protection, and the country continues to work toward carbon neutrality by 2050 under its National Decarbonization Plan.
A celebration and a conversation
Earth Day in Costa Rica tends to look less like a single marquee event and more like a patchwork of school activities, municipal cleanups, reforestation drives, and corporate sustainability announcements. The Ministerio de Educación Pública has once again encouraged schools nationwide to mark the Día Mundial de la Madre Tierra with classroom activities and outdoor programming, while cooperatives, businesses, and community groups from Guanacaste to Puntarenas are tying the date to their Bandera Azul Ecológica commitments and carbon-neutrality roadmaps.
The symbolism carries weight at a moment when the country’s environmental model is being openly debated. Legislators continue to push to enshrine the moratorium on oil and gas exploration into law, a proposal the Chaves administration has resisted, while questions over transition fuels, EV infrastructure, and how to diversify a hydropower-heavy grid against future droughts remain live in the Asamblea Legislativa. National Ecologism Day, observed in Costa Rica on April 24, will arrive just two days after Earth Day and tends to amplify those conversations.
For now, though, the tone today is largely celebratory. Costa Rica has spent more than half a century building an identity around its forests, its rivers, its biodiversity, and the idea that a small country can make outsized environmental choices. Earth Day 2026, in that sense, is less an imported observance than a mirror — one the country has grown accustomed to looking into, and one that continues to reflect both a remarkable track record and the unfinished work still ahead.
