As a decentralized institution of the Ministry of the Environment and Energy (MINAE), the National System of Conservation Areas (SINAC) is responsible for fully managing the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity and natural resources, through joint participatory management with different sectors and social actors. Therefore, one of SINAC's priorities is to promote both basic and applied research initiatives, since projects of this nature contribute to a greater or lesser extent to the protection, restoration and rational use of biodiversity and natural resources managed by the institution, both inside and outside the wild protected areas.
SINAC´s Technical Committee for Research is the institutional collegial body specialized in research. It was created by executive decree No. 32553-MINAE. This committee brings together all the Research Coordinators of each of the eleven Conservation Areas.
According to the
SINAC´s Research Strategy 2014-2024, the purpose of research within the System is to give support to decision-making for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity and ecosystem services, in order to contribute to human well-being.
Even more, SINAC's research vision for the next decade is that scientific and technical research be developed and its results be analyzed and outreached, in a relevant and timely manner, with the support of a technological platform, positively influencing the management of biodiversity and ecosystem services.
The values that have been defined as a guide for the development of all the research carried out or authorized by SINAC are: commitment, reciprocity, respect, objectivity and ethics. Likewise, the role that SINAC has established for its own participation in research includes: being part of it, facilitating it, promoting it, executing it, communicating its results and leading its use in knowledge management, all within the framework of a changing world that demands new adaptive approaches, to face the challenges that poses the management of the natural capital in the next decades.
Objective No. 18 of the Strategic Institutional Plan 2016-2026 reaffirms this strategic vision for SINAC's Research Program, indicating as the north for the next decade the urgent need to promote research and the use of its results to support the institutional processes of conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity and natural resources.
SINAC´s Research Program pursues the establishment of alliances with researchers, academia and other research centers as key partners for the generation of scientific, technical and technological knowledge that can support the biodiversity and ecosystem services management. It is also necessary the continuous development of institutional capacities in all scopes and scales, to be able to properly embrace and accompany the different fields of scientific work through which the national and international scientific community goes forward.
In Costa Rica, biodiversity research activities are governed mainly by two distinct laws. On the one hand, the Biodiversity Law regulates research projects in which "access" to genetic and biochemical elements or resources of biodiversity is carried out, in accordance with the provisions of Article 15 of the Convention on Biological Diversity. These kinds of projects require an "access permit" granted by the Technical Office of the National Commission for the Management of Biodiversity, CONAGEBIO. On the other hand, the Wildlife Conservation Act regulates research projects that do not involve "access". To develop this last type of project, it is necessary to have an authorization granted by SINAC.