A group of women works from early in the morning at a nursery in Hojancha, enduring the heat and humidity. One by one, they pick up thousands of small balsa, guarumo, cenízaro, and aceituno seedlings and place small balls of fertilizer in each one to help them survive the approaching summer.
The mission of these plants is to create new forests on cattle ranches throughout the province of Guanacaste. Where there are now pastures, in a few years there will be young trees.
All of this reforestation effort in the region is funded by an oil refining company in France. The two parties signed their first contract for carbon credits.
This means the company will invest part of its profits here in initiatives to combat climate change, as a way to offset its environmental impact.
Cattle Ranching and Forests
In Guanacaste, it’s common to see on the horizon the plains of dry pastureland with a solitary guanacaste tree and, in its shade, cattle trying to escape the sun.
This is what RePlanet—an England-based organization that owns and manages the Ganbos (Livestock and Forests) project—aims to change. RePlanet’s role is to act as an intermediary between private investors and international companies on one side and local farmers on the other, facilitating the generation and sale of carbon credits.
In short, when a farmer joins the project, they do not relinquish ownership of their land but rather transfer the rights to the carbon captured on their farm to be traded on the international market.
Ganbos signed 40-year contracts with 35 cattle ranches in Guanacaste to set aside a specific area for reforestation, ranging from 5% to 30% of the land.
A total of seven nurseries affiliated with the Community Water League are in operation, producing various species—such as Guanacaste—used to reforest the farms.Photo: César Arroyo
These areas suitable for reforestation are selected jointly by technical staff and farm owners, provided there is no pre-existing forest or flood-prone areas.
Payment for these credits will not be made immediately; landowners must wait nine years until the emerging forest captures a quantifiable amount of carbon, allowing investors to recoup their initial capital.
The Nine-Year Wait
From the nurseries of the Community Water League (LCA) in Hojancha, plants are shipped by truck in all directions across the province. The League provides support for reforestation, and the University for International Cooperation, through its Suelos Vivos program, advises farmers on regenerative livestock farming to improve the productivity of their businesses.
Upon joining the project, participants receive up to $120 per hectare to use for fences, watering troughs, and pipes. These incentives serve as in-kind compensation until the first payments arrive—which will take nearly a decade. Emel Rodríguez, a forestry engineer and founder of the LCA, explains it in simple terms: trees absorb carbon, release oxygen, and—using elements from the soil—create molecules and cells that turn into wood, where the carbon is stored.
Wilver Matarrita produces 45,000 trees a year in his backyard.Photo: César Arroyo
“The nine-year period is how we demonstrate the initial investment required to establish the forest. After nine years, you can say there’s enough carbon there to start earning payments,” says Rodríguez.
Farm owners do not receive a fixed amount but rather a percentage of these credits, as the value varies. As Javier Artiñano explains, forest carbon is currently priced at $70 per metric ton, with expectations of further increases.
“When it comes to selling, there is complete transparency with the ranchers regarding the price at which it was sold. And of the sale price, 60% stays on the farms. Of the remaining 40%, Replanet takes its share, the investor recoups their investment, and a percentage goes to pay the certifying body,” explains Javier Artiñano, agronomist and director of Ganbos.
As Javier Artiñano explains, for every percentage point increase in soil carbon, more than 14,000 liters of water per square meter can be stored in the top 30 centimeters of soil. This is vital for coping with the prolonged droughts of the Guanacaste summer.Photo: César Arroyo
The certifying body Javier mentions is an entity responsible not only for calculating how much carbon the planted trees have sequestered but also for verifying that each carbon credit sold to polluting companies is equivalent to one metric ton of carbon dioxide (CO2) that was removed from the atmosphere.
The global carbon credit market has also been marked by controversy around the world.
Rubén Chacón, a lawyer and law professor at the University of Costa Rica, explains in an analysis of carbon markets that some countries have implemented national strategies to access international financing and that, on numerous occasions, negotiations have taken place behind the backs of local communities and Indigenous peoples, imposing conditions on the use of their own land and livelihoods.
The most widely documented cases of abuse are in regions such as the Amazon and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, primarily in indigenous territories.
At the community nurseries, local women are hired for meticulous tasks such as planting, pruning, fertilizing, and selecting plants.Photo: César Arroyo
Javier Artiñano asserts that the model they are seeking to implement in Guanacaste is different. He explains that there is “cheap carbon” and “expensive carbon.” Cheap carbon is that which comes from protecting existing primary forests. In contrast, this model generates carbon based on “additionality”—that is, the farmer is paid to create new forest that would not exist without the project’s intervention.
From Pastures to Forests
Starting a new forest on degraded land is a difficult task, but Emel knows which species to use to prepare the ground. He calls them “4×4 plants.” Their main mission is to prepare the soil and create “enabling ecological conditions” so that the permanent forest can thrive.
“Balsa and capulín—the balsa produces large leaves rich in nutrients that build soil. What does the capulín do? It bears fruit starting at two years of age so that birds coming from the forest can eat it, and the seeds of other species are carried in the fruit. So, nature is so wise that it sends one species to build soil and another to provide food,” explains Emel.
The El Toledo Reserve in Hojancha is an example of reforestation that began 50 years ago and is what the Ganbos project aspires to achieve.Photo: César Arroyo
Starting in the third or fourth year, once the balsa has improved the soil and provides shade, the technicians plant permanent, evergreen species (such as espavel or ojoche) beneath it—species that would die if planted directly in the sun. As the balsa trees die, they make way for the new forest.
Emel knows better than anyone what it means to deforest an entire town and suffer the consequences. Turning the mountains into pastures led to a water crisis in Hojancha during the 1980s, which could only be reversed through reforestation.
That’s why he supports continuing livestock farming—but this time within a living ecosystem, mimicking natural processes to restore degraded soils, protect water sources, and create biological corridors.
“If the government doesn’t have enough resources to pay me for the water recharge area, let someone else pay for it. What does it matter if they’re in the United States or Germany? So it’s like exploring other, more global concepts—with a more planetary vision—not so much from a government perspective but rather one of private law and partnerships. And those will likely be the models of the future,” says Emel.
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