Costa Rica was today named as the winner of the 2010 Future Policy award at a global summit on biodiversity in Nagoya, Japan.

The Central American country aims to be the first developing nation to meet UN biodiversity commitments. The prize, issued by the World Future Council, was given in recognition of the country's 1998 biodiversity law, which was held up as a model for other nations to follow.

Costa Rica channels funds from a fuel tax, car stamp duty and energy fees to pay for nature reserve management and environmental services like clean air, fresh water and biodiversity protection.

Landowners are paid to preserve old-growth forests and to plant new trees. As a result, forest cover has risen from 24% in 1985 to close to 46% today.

It has also established a national commission on biodiversity, comprising scientists, civil servants and indigenous representatives, which proposes policies to the government and promotes green education among the public.

Partly as a result, Costa Rica ranks third in the global Environmental Performance index and first in the Happy Planet index.

"We are declaring peace with nature," said Mario Fernández Silva, the ambassador of Costa Rica, referring also to his country's abolition of its army in 1958. "We feel a strong sense of responsibility about looking after our wealth of biodiversity. Our attitude is not progressive, it is conservative. Our view is that until we know what we have, it is our duty to protect it."

The country has also received nearly $56m (£36m) in donation and debt write-offs – much of its from the US – to expands in forest and marine conservation programmes.

The government also says it has expanded eco-tourism and tightly regulated bioprospecting (the commercialisation of traditional medicine) and initiated measures to share the benefits.

According to the ambassador, his small country has more varieties of butterfly than Africa, and more bird species than all of North America, as well as many flora and fauna that have yet to be identified, but are threatened by multinational corporations which seek to access natural resources by manipulating free trade agreements.

"Our biodiversity law has got us in trouble because it has run up against the free-trade agreement we signed, which has encouraged many transnational pharmaceutical companies to try to get access to our natural resources. We have stuck to our policies."

The jury for the prize – made up of experts from across the planet – also commended Australia's efforts to protect the Great Barrier Reef and the biodiversity laws of Japan and Norway.

"This is stimulating best practice and encouraging others to follow," said Ahmed Djoghlaf, executive secretary of the UN Convention on Biodiversity. "Business as usual is not an option."

After celebrating their award, Costa Rican officials were considerably less ebullient about the prospects for a deal at this week's biodiversity conference in Nagoya.

"The sense of urgency is not here, just as it was not evident in climate talks. We remain optimistic, but we are already thinking of the next conference in India," said Fernandez Silva. "Costa Rica is so tiny. We need a planetary answer, but there are many things that won't get fixed here."

Elsewhere at the conference today, in an alternative prize-giving ceremony, civil society groups presented the Dodo Award for failure to evolve to Canada and the European Union for "their obstructive behaviour" in the talks so far.

"The EU and Canada lead the way to extinction, with China and Brazil close behind," noted the CBD Alliance.