COP26 in Glasgow – the Effects of Climate Change in Belize

This year’s United Nation’s Conference of Parties, better known as COP26, takes place in Glasgow, Scotland in the United Kingdom. Over the next two weeks, world leaders will converge to see where countries are in meeting the commitments made in the Paris Agreement signed back in 2015. One of the goals was to limit global warming to well below two, preferably to one point five degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels. Science has shown that the earth has gotten warmer by one point two degrees so far. So to keep the temperature down, greenhouse gas emissions need to be reduced. Minister of Sustainable Development and Climate Change, Orlando Habet, spoke about this on Channel Five’s Open Your Eyes this morning.

Orlando Habet

Orlando Habet, Minister of Sustainable Development, Climate Change

“We know that the effects of climate change are disastrous especially for small states like ours. We are geographically in an area where we get affected by hurricanes, storm surges, floods, globally because of the glacial melting of the ice gaps. There is sea level rise. Because of the high temperatures, there is an increase in the temperature of the ocean because of that we get higher waves and then you have coastal erosion and all those effects. On the flipside you have events of flooding which many times are unprecedented like what we had last year with IOTA and ETA where we had flood waters coming down the Belize river and into the sea staying for six, seven, eight weeks at a time which was really unprecedented. And then in 2019, we saw the effect of the drought which went on for five to six months which is also unprecedented. So we have extreme temperatures that are really intensive which makes it different from what we are normally accustomed to.”