Climate Change and its Effects!

Over the weekend, representatives from various media houses learned more about the mitigation and adaptation efforts of climate change in Belize. The National Climate Change Office in collaboration with the REDD+ and the Forest Department wants to bring awareness about the country’s strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the impacts of deforestation and forest degradation. But it is much more than that. According to Chief Climate Change Officer, Doctor Lennox Gladden, there are social and cultural impacts of climate change and those who are marginalised, including indigenous people, are most affected.

Lennox Gladden

Dr. Lennox Gladden, Chief Climate Change Officer, Ministry of Sustainable Development Climate Change & Disaster Risk Management

“As an office, as a ministry, we look at climate change not only through the environmental lens; we also must factor the social and economical. Some of our counterparts within the region focus on climate change only from that environmental lens and that tends to marginalise some of the work that they do. Through our approach, through our methodology, we also need to look at some of the social implications when it comes to climate change. Take for example, you mentioned earlier of the impacts of sea level rise, coastal erosion, but when these things get to an extreme stage. If a community is located within some of these areas, you are looking at the loss of a culture. It is no longer the beach has gone back by one meter. You are looking at the loss of culture, the loss of livelihood. And so these are some of the social impacts that you also need to factor when we try to combat some of the effects of climate change.”