Today, the DFC signed an MOU with the Belize Fund For A Sustainable Future, combining the fund's mission to protect nature with the corporation's responsibility to national development. The fund will be able to access much needed financing to benefit coastal communities for climate adaptation and blue economy development. Courtney Menzies was at the signing in Belmopan and she has this story.
The Development Finance Corporation and the Belize Fund for a Sustainable Future are joining forces to further protect Belize's marine space. Today, they signed an MOU to strengthen climate adaptation and blue economy financing in Belize.
DFC's CEO & BFSF's executive director told us why this partnership is significant.
Henry Anderson, CEO, DFC:
"It's a general MOU and it captures the area which we are going to cooperate. We can put together co-financing projects, we can share information, we can do stakeholder engagements as part of the way DFC works now, we don't just sit and think of something, we sit and listen to the potential beneficiaries. That is the same way the fund works. Both of the institutions have in place an active environmental and social safeguard policy and also we can work to do campaigns, educational campaigns to get information out so those are the four areas that governs the relationship."
Leandra Cho-Ricketts, Executive Director, Belize Fund For A Sustainable Future:
"It's an opportunity for us to be able to scale up and leverage the monies we have which as you all are aware, is a sustained source of income coming from through the proceeds of the Blue Bond so that's with us for the next 20 years and even beyond and it's certainly not enough to provide all the impacts, positive impacts we would want but this opportunity allows us to take that, leverage it with the resources from DFC to be able to also create new and innovative ways of supporting especially the Blue Economy and helping those stakeholders to be more resilient, particularly to climate change."
Anderson further explained what the results of the MOU will look like.
Henry Anderson, CEO, DFC:
"With the collaboration that we are trying to do or what we are doing is to improve resiliency, improve sustainability, improve the equitable developments of Belizean life. When you look at this and let's take the artist now fishing product that DFC rolled out last year, we did over 300 loans, over 3 million dollars, that may sound like small numbers but it's about 13% of our productive portfolio. You had the fisherfolk who were going to money lenders paying 40% interest rates and now they're in single digits. Now when we partner with the fund, let's say for example if you fish lobster, there's a certain type of trap you need to have. Well the fund can come in and say if you use the technology we will pay x% towards your loan and what that does, that provides help to the fisher, it de-risks DFC and you get the impact of ensuring that in terms of protecting the natural capital, it's there and it's reusable so that's just one example."
And Ricketts explained that while their resources are limited, they're looking at accessing more funding through similar partnerships.
Leandra Cho-Ricketts, Executive Director, Belize Fund For A Sustainable Future:
"At the moment, we're considering starting with a pilot so it's not a huge quantity of money because we ourselves don't have a huge quantity of money. Again through the partnership with DFC we can access larger quantities of funds so for this year we're looking at seeing how we can weave in a portion of our 3 and a half million that we have of that realistically for the pilot, what we're trying to pilot, we're looking at maybe $150,000. So it's not large quantities but it can begin to create an impact and supporting people more on the ground."
"We recently signed an MOU with PACT also, chairman Guerrero mentioned that, and through that we're already actively engaging opportunities for us to apply to the adaptation fund to access funding that will move through the Belize Fund to communities on the ground and to accommodate that, we're also working to see how we can adjust our windows that support community grants, how we can help make it easier to get monies to them."
The MOU is for 5 years in the first instance, with the possibility of renewal following review.
The MOU is for five years.
