Green Climate Fund Approves $3 Million Grant for NAPS

Hunter Hales

The Ministry of Economic Development is announcing that the Green Climate Fund has approved a grant of almost three million Belize dollars for its readiness and preparatory support programme proposal for enabling activities for the formulation and implementation of a multisectoral national adaptation plan for Belize. It’s a mouthful, but what it means is that the G.C.F. is providing the finances so that government can determine what the country’s immediate needs to adapt to climate change are. News Five’s spoke today with Proposal Development Officer for the Climate Finance Unit within the ministry, Hunter Hales who says that the national adaptation plans will help to guide future developments in five key areas.

Hunter Hales, Proposal Development Officer, Climate Finance Unit, MED

“This is actually the third adaptation plan readiness grant here in the country. This is the larger one; it encompasses five sectors so it is called for short the multisectoral national adaptation plan. It is about three million Belize dollars and it covers the five sectors: land use, human settlement and infrastructure, tourism, human health, agriculture and forestry. And so this falls under the one time allocation of three million U.S. dollars in readiness support to develop national adaptation plans given to us by the Green Climate Fund. As a small island developing state, building our capacity to adapt and mitigate the impacts of climate change is incredibly important. But these five sectors and the two mentioned in the other national adaptation plan projects are critically important for not only our national economy, but our sustainable development goals, our growth, prosperity as a nation.”