Punta Gorda Hosts High-Level Climate Finance Forum

Belize knows what it needs to fight climate change, but paying for it is the real challenge. The country’s latest climate plan puts the financing gap at one point three billion dollars, money Belize cannot raise on its own. That is why the Ministry of Economic Transformation and the Ministry of Sustainable Development are joining forces for a Blue and Green Climate Finance Forum in Punta Gorda. The event kicks off Climate Week on Thursday, August twentieth, and aims to connect Belize with the development partners needed to help close that gap. We spoke with Carlos Pol, C.E.O. in the Ministry of Economic Transformation, about what is at stake.

 

Carlos Pol, CEO, Ministry of Economic Transformation

“In 2022 the Government of Belize created the Climate Finance Unit, with its mandate of accessing climate finance. You know how hard we have been hit as a country and World Bank has rated us as number six, number seven, with high risk of disaster impact. So, government believe we should create a unit that access that financing and we work very closely with the Ministry of Sustainable Development who recently passed the Climate Change Bill. The way how we have designed the approach to the forum is similar to last year in which we bring our climate finance stakeholders from the world and this year we have two high level representatives that will be our main speakers. We have the Vice President Ms. Gallina Vincelette. She is the Vice President of Policy from the World Bank Group and we have Mr. Gregory Watson the Division Chief from the Biodiversity and National Capital from the Inter-American Development Bank. We will have our prime minister who will be giving the key remarks. We believe this year we have designed this forum in a way that the discussion for climate finance and leveraging the green, blue and orange economy will merge and we will be able to present the world what Belize is doing with its climate agenda and how we expect to access those financing.”

 

The theme for this year’s event is “Leveraging Sustainable Finance to Strengthen Belize’s Orange Economy, Indigenous Heritage and Community Resilience”.

 

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.

 

Watch the full newscast here: