Dissecting Belize’s Environmental Commitments and its Territorial Integrity

Guatemala wants a seat at the table in Belize’s case against Honduras over the Sapodilla Cayes, arguing the islands overlap with its own claim. It’s a new chapter in a decades-old territorial dispute that has seen tensions flare despite promises of peace. But what does this mean beyond borders? Belizean law student Ethan Singh explored that question in a recent blog, linking sovereignty to environmental commitments. We spoke with him for more insight.

 

Ethan  Singh, Law Student, Washington College of Law

“I go back to 1992, I believe, with the sign of the United Nations framework on Convention on Climate Change which is the original treaty regarding climate change. Then I followed up with the Paris Agreement in 2015, which it’s been I think ten years now since Ithat was signed.I know we just had the conference of parties a couple weeks ago, not a couple days ago. And then the last major international treaty I mentioned is the recently enacted or gone to effect of biodiversity beyond National Jurisdiction Treaty, which Belize was, I believe, the third country to sign on to. So all these treaties in general, they’ve been built on top of each other. They all reference commitments that nations around the world have to make towards mitigating the effects of climate change, their emission of greenhouse gases and so on so forth. So I wanted to take that those concepts and apply them to the Belize situation. What are we doing and how does that affect our situation? I think one of the main things I like to talk about in the piece is this idea of, precaution, which is a principle of international environmental law that basically says that states should take all efforts to take all the necessary precautions to prevent like any form of like environmental degradation or environmental harm. And I think that by incorporating that into the analysis of the territorial dispute, we can see how, you look at a satellite image of Belize and Guatemala, that the border is clearly defined because there’s much more forested land on the Belize side and Guatemala side, that Belize is very committed to international climate treaties being like the third to sign on to the recent biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction treaty. And always going out and advocating on behalf of small Island Nation states as well.”