Belize Praised as Pioneer in Protected Areas Management

Belize is known worldwide for its unique conservation model, government and NGOs working hand in hand to protect vital ecosystems. That partnership has built a network of protected areas across land and sea, safeguarding biodiversity and clean water for communities. Today, as the International Court of Justice wraps up hearings on Guatemala’s bid to intervene in the Belize-Honduras dispute over the Sapodilla Cayes, we spoke with Jose Perez from the Association of Protected Areas Management Organizations, APAMO, about why these efforts matter and what’s next for Belize’s conservation push.

 

Jose Perez, Executive Director, APAMO

“You have to balance development like any nation and any progressive nation, you have development, which of course we cannot stop. But we also have to bear in mind that there’s a role for example, and I can only speak for protected areas, there’s a role that these protected areas play. We look at the whole threat of climate change. And you may have heard just recently that the project operation grant has been approved by the Green Climate Fund. That is something that we started from 2019 and fortunately, we are at that point now where we would start to repair a full-fledged proposal, a five year proposal. With more medium to long-term impacts, but basically to ensure that we assess the vulnerability of these protected areas. So they could be here, that will be for tomorrow, but long into the future. Climate change is something that I think everybody in the world now recognizes. We see severe, the severe extreme weather. We see hot and then we see rain. We see fires. And all these actions towards climate understanding climate change and putting in place necessary strategies and actions. APAMAO is quite intimately involved with the network itself is an ongoing governance reform because we recognize the importance of preserving what we have. As much as Belize is small, as I keep repeating it’s recognized globally as a front runner. We look at Google Maps and we see their own neighbors in our region, where you see green on the other side, brown. And we want to maintain that. We want to maintain that. And so the work continues by our comanagers.”