Department of Environment Leads Belize’s GEO Report

This morning, stakeholders in conservation, led by the Department of Environment and the United Nations Environment Programme, UNEP, held an inception meeting for the Global Environment Outlook Report.  It is a two-year process that is set to conclude in 2025.  But what does it mean for Belize and its future in environmental awareness and protection?  That’s what we found when we spoke with key partners in this undertaking.

Anthony Mai

Anthony Mai, Chief Environmental Officer

“So today we are here to meet with key partners in environmental management.  We are here to discuss information in terms of environmental data, [and] the purpose of us meeting today is actually to sit discuss and come up with a plan to basically guide the development of the GEO report.  The GEO report is essential to the country because it basically gives the government and in fact the general population a sense of the environmental health of where we are.  So in my earlier intervention, I mentioned that it’s like a scorecard for natural resources management organizations such as the Department of the Environment.  It basically tells us where we are with the implementation of our policies, et cetera.

Javier Neme

Javier Neme, United Nations Environment Programme

“Our organization is the leading world environment agency and we are supporting since the 1990s the elaboration of these reports, both at global, regional and national levels.  In this case, we are assisting technically and financially the country of Belize in the updating of their report which a previous version was done thirteen years ago.  We are assisting them with the update and re-elaboration, reshaping of that national integrated environmental report.”

Apolonio Aguilar

Dr. Apolonio Aguilar, University of Belize

“We have at the Faculty of Science and Technology, we have people who are experts in environmental research.  So we have our natural resource management program, biology, chemistry and marine biology programs.  All of the experts in here can contribute to producing this report.  We have our head who is coordinating all of this effort.  So we are excited that we can take part in this, not only are we going to be producing this, but we’re going to help to see what the gaps are.  We are excited in the sense that we are going to, knowing these gaps, we are preparing ourselves in terms of research to be able to fill these gaps so that we can help to see what the bigger picture is.”