PM Calls for More Sustainable Development in Light of Flooding
Hurricane Julia did not hit Belize directly, but the torrential rains that accompanied the category one hurricane caused severe flooding across Central America. Those flood waters are still affecting portions of Belize and during the house meeting, Prime Minister John Briceño shared his view that Belize can learn from the landslides that occurred in neighboring countries so that we can do things a bit differently by saving some of our forests and avoid the same fate.
Prime Minister John Briceño
“A lot of the rain that is now hitting the Peten area across the border, a lot of that water now is coming into Belize because they have cleaned out all of their forests. So the water just rushes through and adds to the flooding in Belize. I think this is an appropriate time for me to digress just for a second, Madam Speaker. We need to watch how we do the kind of agriculture that we’re doing – the large scale agriculture where we clean out all the trees – we need to stop. We need to see how we can ensure that we can keep some of the trees and some of the vegetation in place because by having those in place, it prevents the water from coming in as floods. Secondly, it also gives time for the water to be soaked into the Earth and be able to fill our aquifers that are under the ground.”