Back in January, the Briceno Government ratified the United Nations Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of the Foreign Arbitral Awards.
While the UDP said it was all about paying the Ashcroft Alliance for 3 pending arbitral awards, the government insisted that the real reason was that Belize could tap into debt relief under arrangements known as debt for climate swaps.
Well today, the Commonwealth Secretariat and the Ministry of Sustainable Development, Climate Change, and Disaster Risk Management are co-hosted a 2-hour webinar to explain just how these agreements work.
A Debt for Climate swap is an arrangement between a country and another party whether it is a donor agency or NGO, where the country's debt is restructured to alleviate the burden on the government. In exchange, the savings from that re-structuring exercise must be used for climate change activities such as the implementation of mitigation and adaptation measures.
The press was invited to listen in on the webinar, and we have a few excerpts to share with you:
