And from forestry to the Sargassum swarm that's rolling into Belize's coastal areas and cayes at an unprecedented rate this year. Government is doing its best to respond with a Sargassum Task Force.
Habet - who is a part of the group - says that apart from new sargassum rolling in daily - they are also challenged with finding funding to tackle the sargassum issue.
Orlando Habet, Minister of Sustainable Development
"So we have to find assistance, the financial assistance, some will have to come in from government, some from the local communities, the local municipalities like in San Pedro, Placencia to see how we can get international funding. And that is why I mentioned the issue of loss and damage, because that can be not only immediate damage, but can be something that can be there for many years because it starts eroding the coastline and so that is very important. But sargassum, nobody really has a real hand on it, not Mexico nor the Dominican Republic. Everybody's trying to do the best they can. We are trying to piggyback on some of the things that they are doing. I think there will be a meeting later this year in Europe to see how they can help. I think Finland developed a small machinery that can do some of the processing and are working together with the Dominican Republic. But these are pilot projects. You see what happened last week? Yes. Humongous. Massive, unprecedented. Very difficult. But the work, the idea is to try to stop the sargassum from reaching the coast as much as possible once it reaches the coast, it's already done the damage. It affects your fisheries, it affects the boats, the propellers of these boats. And then you have the problem of these huge masses coming to shore which you have to pick up and many times you pick up you pick it up with sand so you have to let it dry a little and then try to see how you can shift that out to get back the sand and throw away the only the debris."
