It was a conclusion foretold – but it’s still news tonight that UNESCO has officially inscribed the Belize Barrier Reef System unto the list of World Heritage sites in danger. The decision was made this afternoon at UNESCO meetings in Spain. What does it mean? Not a whole lot. It’s still a world heritage site but one that’s now considered officially threatened. It’s an embarrassment and a costly black eye for a country that prides itself on conservation, but – things being what they are – it was also an inevitability.
The Government of Belize and its conservation partners will now have to do some work to get the Barrier Reef system off that list, but for what we’ve been told no natural site has ever been stripped of its status. Counter-intuitively – it now gives Belize a chance to tap into some UNESCO funding to develop programmes to bring the site back to its full former glory. Whether government has the will to do that is what’s now left to be seen.
