And in other news, the Ministry of The Blue Economy is opening the discussion of climate resiliency to the public. They've organized a two-day forum and fair, which kicked off today at the Civic Center. The panel discussions for the forums included marine spatial plan and the blue economy, and the role of the vulnerable groups in the blue economy.
The CEO's in the Ministry of the Blue Economy and the Ministry of Economic Development - which is in charge of the Green Climate Fund - explained that this forum will also see the launch of an adaptation plan to help protect Belize's waters and coastal communities from climate change. We spoke with them today.
Kennedy Carillo, CEO, Ministry of the Blue Economy
"We are here opening the floor to the general public to discuss blue economy and to discuss climate change resilience. It's a two day activity, today as you can see is mostly panel discussions, a lot of information sharing, and tomorrow is going to be more of what we call the edutainment, where we're going to have information booths, we're going to have music from a band from Orange Walk, TLC, and we will also have a wide range of seafood, we have different vendors that will be out here with their ceviche, their fry fish, if you love seafood then definitely tomorrow you don't want to miss out. Climate change is one of the greatest challenges and threats to our blue economy, we are working so hard to build a blue economy but we know that we have to contend with the challenges of natural disasters, the challenges of coral disease, how its impacting our barrier reef, and we have to also deal with erosion, we see it almost everyday on the TV, people talking about the threats of erosion but not only that, the impact, having people now that we're calling climate change refugees who have to move out of their own home and have to seek refuge somewhere else because they're being victims of climate change. Definitely, we have to ensure that every single person, especially the vulnerable communities are empowered, we know that we need to seek other areas for livelihoods are it relates to the blue space, looking at empowering the fishers, to not only be fishing in the coastal areas that they traditionally are doing but start going out into our territorial waters, going out into the economic zone whereby we know that it has never been tapped, we don't know what is out there, but it belongs to us."
Osmond Martinez, CEO, Ministry of Economic Development
"The importance is that we are enhancing the adaptation plan. Belize did not have a plan for adaptation and this adaptation is focused more within the Blue Economy, however, we need to expand into the green economy, the orange economy as time goes by, but this is a start. The World Bank is the one who have ranked Belize 8th out of 167 countries in the world and while we have to protect our coral reefs, fisheries, because of the high impacts and the high vulnerabilities of Belize to climate change, we also have the most important factor which is humanity, and humans are being affected, especially the vulnerable populations, those who live below the poverty line and as such, as need climate justice, we need to go after climate justice, because it is finance that belongs to Belizeans."
Day two of this event is an education fair that starts at 9:00 at the Civic Center.
