Two weeks ago we told you about the smoke and ash that had diminished air quality in west after reports of industrial fires that exacerbated the smog or raging bushfires all throughout the area.
It's a situation that has worsened the quality of life for residents in the area and in some cases made them very sick, but is it a result of climate change?
We put that question to climate expert Colin Young last week and here's what he told us.
Colin Young, Executive Director, CCCCC
"Well absolutely I think the forest fire situation in Belize has been getting worse over the years and a few years ago I was writing quite a bit about how destructive it is to biodiversity and also to human health as you saw the particulate matter that is in that smoke is absolutely dangerous and it worsens respiratory issues, it worsens asthma and I think it is absolutely something that the officials need to do more about, um, what happens is because there is the increase in temperature there is less moisture in the soil and in the forest, we are talking about a year after Lis a in which Lisa destroyed quite a lot of forest and so there was a lot of dead fuel load sitting on the forest elsewhere and so when people light fires for agricultural uses those fires spread and when they spread there was a lot of fuel load on the forest floors which burned a significant amount of forest so this is one thing that is directly linked to climate change it is global warming that is causing increased droughts it is causing the soil to dry out it is causing the fuel load to build up in the forest and then when you have a match you get a huge fire so um this is not just a Belize problem if you were to look at the FERM's database for all of Central America it looks like one red blob where there is fires burning everywhere and this is only going to become worse and I hope that there would be some practical solutions that are developed between the entities like Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Sustainable Development and Climate Change, and Landowners so that such an issue can be decreased over time."
