It’s called the environmental agenda for 2008 to 2013 – and this major document that sets out a blueprint for sustainable development is not final yet. That’s why the Belize Audubon Society today held a review to see if they had omitted anything. But it’s bigger than a review, it’s called a validation and according to bas Executive Director Anna Dominguez Hoare – they have to get it right because a wide variety of issues are outlined in the fifteen page agenda.
Anna Hoare, Executive Director - Belize Audubon Society
“Well the critical issues of concern is looked at in the document through sector so we have an analyses of the tourism sector, our water resources, land use, we have environmental education. But really the environmental agenda is not only the Belize Audubon Society work. We keep saying that the environment is everybody’s concern. It’s yours and mine you know, it is the government’s. Everybody really needs to think about the environment as being important not only for environmentalists but it is really important because a healthy environment means a healthy lifestyle, it means a healthy economy.”
Jacqueline Godwin,
I know the validation only just started but one comment I overheard a participant saying is that it is incomplete, the agenda is incomplete. What are the other sentiments being shared?
Anna Hoare,
“Well I would say that any document would never be complete because you know there is a process and in our case, this process of creating a document came about last year. So this document has been in production for over 8 months now. So as more people see it, they will want more things incorporated. So we do need to put an end though so that we produce a document and so it will always be a working progress.”
In water resources one of the recommendations is that no development activity that compromises the water quality or quantity for human consumption shall be allowed upstream from a water intake. In tourism, it proposes that the government should establish a visitor capacity for all tourism sites and enforce these limits.
