 Hi everyone, my name is Irene Alvarado. I am the coordinator of the Environmental Statistics Unit of the Central Bank of Costa Rica and I am very pleased to be invited to this event even if I cannot assist personally. Today I will be talking about natural capital accounting for the case of Costa Rica. The wealth of country and consequently its growth are going to be highly dependent on the management of the different assets that this country has. Whether they are environmental assets, economic assets or social assets, these all together sum up to form the total capital of the country which is going to be equal to its wealth. Costa Rica is a very biodiverse country and very rich in natural resources that are used as inputs for our production. According to the World Bank, low income countries can sum up to 36% of their total wealth only in natural capital. We started the process of constructing environmental accounts in Costa Rica with the support of the World Bank. Together with ministries and other institutions, we published our first environmental accounts in 2016 and since then we have the mandate to update the information, strengthen it and create new accounts. So far we have published water, forest and energy accounts for the years that you can see in this slide. We are also working on other accounts such as ecosystem accounts, material flow accounts and we have worked on a couple of pilot projects with ECLAC and OECD to develop other accounts. Environmental accounts are satellite accounts. We use the methodology of the system of environmental economic accounting which is an internationally approved standard that allows us to measure natural assets in both physical and monetary terms. So first, we receive basic statistics from different sources of information. To construct the environmental accounts from these, indicators can be developed to assist in policymaking, in information sharing and also in data analysis. Here are some examples of the indicators that we can obtain from our environmental accounts. For instance, we can tell how much electricity generated comes from hydropower or how much has our forest cover changed over a specific period of time. Also, by the way the information is presented in the environmental accounts, we can develop combining indicators such as the one presented here where we can see physical, monetary and social information all together. We can also zoom in in different economic activities to see how they behave. In a way, environmental accounting works as a thermometer to assess the current state of the environment. At the same time, it fits adequately with other international requests that we as a country have to fulfill, for instance, OECD and FAO questionnaires. So what are some of the characteristics that are necessary for natural capital accounting to be useful for policymaking? The whole process of compiling accounts needs to be transparent, clear, continuous and also responsive to information that is demanded from policymakers. For example, currently in the central bank we are using a general equilibrium model to assess the country's vulnerability to climate change. In general, these kind of tools where we incorporate environmental accounting allow us to develop prospective analysis. So how has NTA been implemented in the country so far? We provided inputs for the national development plan that was launched last year. We also provided inputs for the decarbonization plan that was launched two days ago and it also assists us with international commitments such as the tracking of SDGs. In late 2017, the former minister of the environment and former chair of the National Council of Environmental Accounts requested for a diagnostic on the viability of constructing a blue account for our country. The reason why we would be interested in developing such an account is because Costa Rica has two coasts, the Pacific and the Atlantic Ocean and in total we have around 600,000 square kilometers of territory in the oceans which account for 92% of our total territory. One of the results of our diagnostic was to decide upon a methodology for our study. Should we focus on fisheries accounting, on aquatic accounting or should we move towards evaluation of ecosystem services derived from the ocean? Another outcome of our diagnostic concerns the poor quality of information. Either the information is missing, it's not well organized or it's difficult to access therefore it's not possible to develop statistics out of it. In particular, in coastal areas of our country there is much more to be studied regarding small scale fisheries. Their access to markets and to credits, the techniques that they are using, their livelihoods and all the risks that they are currently facing or will face with climate change. The only way to develop a comprehensive analysis is to first, gather the necessary data and second, understand and evaluate it considering economic prosperity, environmental context and social well-being. If you would like to have additional information about the environmental accounts of Costa Rica I invite you to visit our website and if you have any questions feel free to write me an email. Thank you very much.