Earth Day exhibition at Bliss
Belize’s many environmental organizations work hard all year round to help people understand the issues that affect us. But a special joint effort is underway at the Bliss Institute as part of Earth Day, which is tomorrow April twenty second.
The exhibition, sponsored by the Belize Audubon Society, seeks to create an awareness of the importance of the environment in our lives and the role it plays in our survival.
Since 1990, there have been many activities commemorating Earth Day
in Belize but it has been the exhibitions which have been most effective in getting the message across, a message the Belize Audubon Society says must be understood now.
Valdemar Andrade, Advocacy Coordinator, B.A.S.
“So that people understand that the earth is what really sustains us and sustains life. And so we must respect it and we must know that there are certain things that we have to preserve so that we can have things for the future and for our future generations.”
Programme For Belize, showed why and how our forests can be conserved through wise management and community development. Laetitia Solis, is P.F.B.’s Project Coordinator.
Laetitia Solis, Project Coordinator, Programme For Belize
“On the floor we have ornamental plants which can be used for generating income. And we have medicinal plants which many of them, we are still not sure exactly how important they are for medicinal purposes but a number of them are already being used in medicines.
We realize that our forests are very important for human livelihood so we are focusing on the many uses that the forest provides for us.”
Although the chicle market is beginning to taper off, the center piece displays how the forest has been providing us with the sapadillo tree, the sap of which is used to make chewing gum. The display also highlights the many fruits we get from the forest that provides us with food and that are also used in cosmetics. The jungle also supplies materials like patches, sticks and strings that have been used in construction. The canopy of trees ensures global climate control. But despite the many benefits of the forests, still people cut down large areas for farmland. This not only removes trees but aggravates soil erosion allowing contamination of the rivers and waterways. This problem was the focus of the Ministry of Agriculture’s display. Orlando Jimenez, the ministry’s extension officer shows us a new program which uses a simplified method to produce plants. The plants are not grown in soul but rather in chippings and rice hulls.
Orlando Jimenez, Extension Officer, Min. of Agriculture
“In growing plants the use of soil has a lot of limitations because to begin with they have a lot of disease organisms that would harm humans. Also the plant in this system of simplified hydroponics, as the material is in earth there is no soil and there is no problem with diseases and therefore we use a little bit of pesticides if any at all.”
The Belize Zoo and Tropical Research Centre invites you to give the earth a chance to support us. It asks everyone to become garbage detectives.
Luis Eck, Senior Environmental Educator, Belize Zoo
“Garbage dumping actually pollutes the air and we have a lot of diseases both inland and in the marine life. A lot of people think that when it comes to garbage and waste it is only the City Council or the town board. It is not; it is everybody’s business. We all need to have an input in it.
So what the zoo decided to do is look more into this topic garbage dumping, so we made a display of a planned city and an unplanned city, where in the planned city we have trash cans all over the place and in an unplanned city we don’t.”
The model also displays the importance of recycling and reusing materials.
If you would like to learn more about ecology, the Earth Day Eco-Festival runs through Saturday at the Bliss Institute. Schools are particularly invited to stop in. Earth Day will also be observed with activities in Crooked Tree Village on Thursday.
