UNESCO Director General makes first visit to Belize

One of UNESCO’s main goals is to identify and promote the preservation of World Heritage Sites, such as the Belize Barrier Reef. While UNESCO does not provide funding for the protection of these sites, Matsuura said his organization is looking at ways it can help Belize preserve the reef in the face of direct threats posed by climate change.

Koichiro Matsuura, Director General, UNESCO
“UNESCO is very concerned about possible negative impacts of climate change in terms of sea level rise and also in terms of rise in sea water temperature. Therefore we are analysing how these developments possibly caused by climate change would affect your sites, how we could mitigate that kind of impact. We don’t have an answer yet. I was very impressed when I visited the Climate Change Centre established by CARICOM countries, located here and we would like to now develop a cooperation with that centre in many areas. This could be one of the areas of cooperation.”