The National Capacity Self-Assessment Project report was released this morning. It sounds like a mouthful but it has to do with the environment and the 79 page document looks at how Belize is measuring up to the commitments made in the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, the Convention on Desertification and Land Degradation, and the Framework Convention on Climate Change. The assessment report and a 44 page National Capacity Action Plan were both released this morning at the Biltmore Hotel. The project's manager Anselmo Castaneda says there is room for improvement.
Anselmo Castaneda,
"The action plan is actually divided into three major objectives: first is that we need to have major overarching legislation; like we need our land use policy, we need to have our council of national sustainable development, we need to introduce new laws and we need to amend existing laws, and we need to have a mechanism whereby these two previous objectives are put into actual changes in our laws.
The level of degradation right now on planet earth, everybody knows it, its documented that we are getting worse so we need to put in preventative measures, mitigating measures for this not to go as fast as it would. We're no longer living as a separate country, we're living in a big big village. Everything is related. Whatever damage that has been done in the north, we are suffering for it now, the climate change is a good example."
Apart from laying siege to the environment, Castaneda says there is no penalty for non-compliance. The project is sponsored by the United Nation Development Program.
