Improving Belize’s MRV System in Fight Against Climate Change

Today at Dream Valley Resort in Teakettle Village, stakeholders from across various line ministries, as well as the private sector gathered as Belize commence an Initiative for Climate Action Transparency in the country. ICAT, for short, is a mechanism that came out of the Paris Agreement back in 2015 and seeks to hold countries accountable when it comes to their commitments to address the impacts of climate change. Today, the National Climate Change Office in Belize hosted the inception workshop that kick-starts two projects. News Five’s Duane Moody reports.

Duane Moody, Reporting

The National Climate Change Office recently signed off on two projects through the Initiative for Climate Action Transparency. One: to enhance Belize’s national monitoring, reporting and verification system and two: to incorporate climate finance tracking. But there are various stakeholders – from the public and private sectors – whose processes of collecting data and establishing reports must be standardized for national, regional and international use.

Kenrick Williams

Dr. Kenrick Williams, C.E.O., Ministry of Sustainable Development, Climate Change

“What we are trying to do here is to build out the broader monitoring reporting and verification processes to ensure that we collect the data that we process that data and we report and verify that information according to the Paris Agreement. So within for example our NDCs we made certain commitments for reducing our emissions, we made certain commitments under the Paris Agreement to increase our broader ambition by five percent in this new updated NDCs. And so, we have to go back and report that information biannually in what is called the enhanced transparency framework and the associated reports that go along with that.”

This phase is simply just setting up the framework to effectively report on the country’s progress. But why is this important?

Dr. Kenrick Williams

“Anecdotally, I think we have made significant progress in terms of the forest sector, we’ve increased our restoration efforts to reduce our emissions within that sector. Within transport, we sought to move towards greening, establishing of a broader e-mobility system and within the other sectors, water and others, we have certainly improved. But again, this is why we need clear data information to adequately track and report on the progress of this.”

…and so today, as a first step, stakeholders are being engaged to determine where they are and where improvements can be made. Among the priority sectors are energy, transportation, waste management and the agriculture sectors are key areas of concern. But to complete the task, financing is needed. Chief Agriculture Officer Doctor Victoriano Pascual confirms that capacity building and financing is key.

Victoriano Pascual

Dr. Victoriano Pascual, Chief Agriculture Officer, Ministry of Agriculture, Food Security & Enterprise

“This session is very important because we play and when I say we, I mean the country of Belize, we play a critical role in how we report to the UNFCCC and the information gathered is what is usually used to develop whatsoever is required by the various country institutions. Even though we know this is very important, we know there are several limitations as well when it comes to human resources, finances and things like that. So this forum is very important for us to try to see how we can try to harmonise all of that.”

The National Met Service plays a critical role in collecting scientific data across the country and the dissemination of information to the various sectors.  Senior Climatologist at the National Meteorological Service spoke on how they validate data.

Shanea Young

Shanea Young, Senior Climatologist, National Met Service

“At the office, we are guided by the World Meteorological Organization, which is the UN organization that is responsible for all weather, climate and water resources in the world. So all our data collection procedures including how, when where we set up an automatic or manual weather station and how we retrieve and process those data, there is a very strict standard that we go through to analyse that and then we have certain format that we need to communicate and disseminate that information both regionally and internationally to WMO and other stakeholders.”

Six hundred thousand dollars is the price tag for the implementation of the MRV system project across the sectors. Duane Moody for News Five.