Blue Economy CEO Postpones Marine Map Validation Amid Fisherfolk Concerns

We reached out to Chief Executive Officer in the Ministry of Blue Economy, Beverly Wade for comments. She told us in an interview that the Resilient Bold Belize initiative seeks to protect a total of twenty percent of Belize’s coral reef ecosystem as a part of the government’s Blue Bond conservation commitment. CEO Wade acknowledged that some of these spaces are important from a livelihood standpoint. She revealed that the validation session scheduled for tomorrow has been postponed to further ventilate the concerns raised by Garbutt and other stakeholders that stand to be impacted.

 

Beverly Wade, Chief Executive Officer, Ministry of Blue Economy

“What this project does, it builds on to the Blue Bond. It is not increasing the areas that the government has committed on for protection in our total ocean space. The second thing is that the project or the initiative is very much people centered. It has identified coral reef ecosystem as a key ecosystem in our blue space. So the government decided it wants to look at twenty percent of coral reef being protected. Now, twenty percent of coral reef equals to less than two percent of our total ocean space. So I think that is one of the misconceptions happening out there. Whatever areas that are now going to recommended for protection, we look at multiple criteria and factors. It is an exercise that you would have to make some concessions. So you might have an area that might be important from a resiliency stand point and coral stand point but it might be extremely important from a livelihood standpoint. I can tell you we were planning a validation workshop for this week, and we have postponed it, not to say we are halting to project, but out of respect to say now that we have bonified concerns, we want an opportunity to meet further with these various groups.”