Belize Surpasses Blue Bond Goal Ahead of Schedule

Belize has just hit a major milestone in its Blue Bond commitments, and the world is taking notice. Under the Conservation Funding Agreement, the country was tasked with protecting twenty-five percent of its ocean territory by year three. And guess what? We’ve done it. The government recently proposed one thousand, six hundred square kilometers of ocean space as Medium Protection Zones, that’s five percent added to the twenty percent already designated. It’s a big win for marine conservation. We spoke with the Process Lead at the Coastal Zone Management Authority and Institute about why this achievement matters so much.

 

Samir Rosado, MSP Process Lead, Coastal Zone Management

“On November fourth of 2021 the government entered into that Blue Bond agreement and central to that agreement is a set of conservation commitments we made that takes the form of milestones, there are eight in total. To date Belize has achieved four, so we are fifty percent there. Our latest milestone we achieved, Milestone four, has to do with the designation of what we call biodiversity protection zones to cover a percentage of Belizean waters. Now the overall goal is up to thirty percent of our entire ocean space. Ocean space is always a cagey term because people say we have sea. But we wanted to give the term to the collective of all the waters that Belize is the custodian of, that we own. That includes our internal sea, territorial sea and our EPZ, so we refer to the collective as our ocean space. This comprises of over thirty-three thousand kilometers. So, the goal is to have up to thirty percent of that designated as a biodiversity protection zone, so some kind of protection. It can be medium protection, or general use zones, or high protection, the no take zones. So, for milestone four we were able to increase our percentage from 20.05% to 25%. So, it is more of an incremental step to reach thirty. So, with the achievement of four, and we are now working towards milestone six, which is up to thirty percent.”