No Country Can Face Climate Threats Alone

From sargassum choking coastlines to water shortages and the growing impacts of climate change, Central America is facing environmental challenges that no country can tackle alone. That is the message Belize is bringing to the table this week, as it hosts environment ministers and technical experts from across the region. The meeting also marks Belize’s assumption of the rotating presidency of the Central American Commission on Environment and Development. Minister Orlando Habet says the goal is to turn shared concerns into stronger regional action and new funding opportunities.

 

Orlando Habet, Minister of Sustainable Development

“Belize has always tried to see how we can focus on the issue of water. Water is essential, it’s a basic necessity, but we have seen that we have had a depletion in water, especially with the issues of El Nino and other climatic events. We also focus water with water because it’s one extreme or the other. On a regional scale, we are already seeing the effects of the El Nino on drought periods, especially along the dry corridor of Central America and the Dominican Republic. We have requested a support for a framework for sargassum at a regional level it had started with Dominican Republic and Belize and now yesterday we had a meeting with the ministers who are present and luckily they all have agreed that we will pass a resolution today and make a declaration formulate a framework and see how we can seek funding for projects on a larger scale to find a solution of course. We are looking at wildlife and how we can protect wildlife, having regional corridors. As you know, wildlife don’t have borders, they don’t need a passport to pass from one country to the next, especially those countries of us that have transboundary connectivity. We are looking at solid waste management. What it is that other countries are doing in the region that can help those that are not to move to that advanced level. One of those is the Dominican Republic who has a project in one of their cities which is working extremely well. We have done a visit and we are trying to see how they can send some of their technical expertise to help us see how we manage ours and hopefully can give us some insight on what we can do.”

 

Habet says the meeting will focus on ongoing environmental projects and a proposed fifteen-million-dollar push to keep the Mesoamerican Reef initiative moving forward.

 

Attention readers: This online newscast is a direct transcript of our evening television broadcast. When speakers use Kriol, we have carefully rendered their words using a standard spelling system.

 

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