Assessment of environmental payments on indigenous territories: The case of Cabecar-Talamanca, Costa Rica

•First comprehensive assessment of the PPES on an indigenous territory in Costa Rica.•The indigenous territory allocates most of the payment money into capacity building.•Payment allocations have supported negotiation, management, and leadership skills.•Methodological contribution to enlighten future sustainability financing policies.

The Costa Rican Program of Payments for Environmental Services (PPES) is a global pioneering financing policy mechanism for the promotion of forest protection and expansion. This program currently transfers a significant amount of money to indigenous territories; however, its performance has not been comprehensively evaluated. In this study we assessed for the first time in a comprehensive manner the performance of this national program in an indigenous territory. We created and validated, with the aid of a panel of experts, an evaluation instrument that contains social, economic, and environmental criteria and indicators. After applying the instrument in the Talamanca-Cabecar indigenous territory (TCIT), the PPES obtained 48.7 percent, accomplishing significant results in aspects framed within the goals of sustainable development. We found that the TCIT allocates most of the payment money into capacity building, which has resulted in substantive improvements in their negotiation, management, and leadership skills; this in turn helps to attract investments from other public and private entities, protecting and promoting its natural capital. As similar programs are adopted in multiple countries based on the Costa Rican example, this study provides an important methodological contribution to enlighten future environmental and socioeconomic financing policies aiming to support indigenous territories.