The 13th National Climate Outlook Forum was held today by the National Meteorological service. The purpose of the forum is to join with other key stakeholders to enhance Belize's disaster risk reduction and sustainable development planning. The Minister of Disaster Risk Management and NEMO's Coordinator both presented at the forum. We spoke to them:
Henry Charles Usher, Minister of Public Service, Governance & Disaster Risk Management
"Certainly the objective of today's National Climate Outlook Forum is to bring together stakeholders from different organizations, different sectors to be able to utilize the data being prepared by the National Meteorological Service when it comes to forecasting, etc., to be able to use that data to make better decisions. And that's really what the objective of this, forum is all about is about sharing information, sharing local, decision making techniques so that we're better able to have the necessary data when it comes to climate, to be able to mitigate against the loss that certain extreme climate events can cause. The data shows that if you have one day's notice, 24 hours notice, you can reduce the damage done by climate disasters by 30%. So objective is to increase the. Let us look at maybe having a week's notice, a month's notice, with better data, with better decision making, we're able to secure livelihoods, protect property, and certainly save lives."
Daniel Mendez, NEMO Coordinator
"So we are participating in the national climate outlook forum because we are a close partner of the National Met service, we work closely together not just during the hurricane season but throughout the entire year for drought forecasting for sargassum forecasting for hurricane and tropical storm forecasting they remain an integral part of the national emergency system so us participating today is looking at how we can better coordinate with them and particularly looking at the issue of national resilience how we as a system can really build national resilience to disasters."
