Belize Delegation Prepared for COP27

Lennox Gladden

This year’s United Nation’s Climate Change Conference, better known as COP27, is taking place in Egypt from November eighth to the eighteenth. A delegation from Belize will be heading for the conference, which will focus primarily on climate finance and, more specifically, loss and damage. Chief Climate Change Officer Doctor Lennox Gladden told News Five today that the team is preparing for the negotiations and making sure that the national perspective is aligned with regional SICA and CARICOM thematic areas.

Dr. Lennox Gladden, Chief Climate Change Officer, N.C.C.O.

“We are prepared. We want to focus on climate finance, looking beyond the hundred million goal cause now it has already been predicted that it is in the trillions that we have to look at to support resiliency building. Loss and damage is how to then get the countries to develop that facility. We want for a facility to be put in place that then we could access the resources to deal with loss and damage in some of these developing countries. And of course technology transfer; that is something that we will be key on going into COP27. From a national perspective, we have been having weekly sessions just in preparation. There is a core team that is preparing, looking at different thematic areas. We also have a session coming up with CARICOM and with SICA. So the Central American arm to say how are we going to coordinate, what positions are we going to put forth. I know they are looking at the special circumstance for Central American countries because they are vulnerable, just as we are vulnerable, they are as well to the impacts of climate change. The CARICOM session, of course, heavy on loss and damage and climate finance. So we are prepared looking at from a national perspective, feeding into what the regional position is as it relates to the different thematic areas of COP27.”