Follow the green leader: why everyone from Prince William to Jeff Bezos is looking to Costa Rica

Billionaires, princes and prime ministers are among those keen to learn from the Central American country, which has long put nature at the heart of its policies

• It's in our DNA': tiny Costa Rica wants the world to take giant climate step
• Read more in our series Biodiversity: what happened next?

If there had been a popularity contest at Cop26, the Costa Rican president, Carlos Alvarado Quesada, would have been a clear winner. Leonardo DiCaprio, Jeff Bezos, Boris Johnson and Prince William all wanted to speak with the leader of the tiny Central American country, eager to bask in its green glow.

The climate summit in Glasgow was, in effect, Costa Rica's Super Bowl, another chance to show off its impressive environmental credentials. It is the only tropical country that has successfully halted and reversed deforestation, a commitment dozens of others made at Cop26 but are far from achieving.