Most of you probably don't know much about the Cartagena Protocol but 150 countries have signed it, agreeing to work jointly to protect global biodiversity. But the Cartagena drafter insist that biodiversity is about more than plants, animals and their ecosystems - they say it's about people and the need for food security, medicines, fresh air and water, shelter, and a clean and healthy environment in which to live. That's a huge undertaking and for the next two days Belize's best minds in conservation and natural resource management will sit together to try and make that global objective a local reality. Valdemar Andrade is in charge of planning at the Ministry of Natural Resources and he told us that the priority is Belize first and the world second.
Valdemar Andrade,
"Its an awareness seminar to be able to bring to the people what biodiversity is and how do we make those connections, what are our obligations from having signed the Convention on Biological Diversity, and of course the Cartagena Protocol is a subsection of it that deals with GMOs, genetic modified organisms. It also deals with basically how are we going to protect ourselves, respect the bio-safety and the foods that we eat to make sure that they are not affecting our health and they won't affect us in the future. So its not about the special name of a fungus or the special name of a tree but we are connected everyday and we need to realize that for us to be healthy, for us to have a more productive life, and for us to make money and put food on the table we depend on the biodiversity.
The most important thing is how may we insure that people are benefiting from this biodiversity. We don't want that we are managing biodiversity for the benefit of others but I think we have to think about ourselves nationally first before we think of others."
