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The Mesoamerican Society for Biology and Conservation is meeting in Belize for its 13th Congress. The group’s membership is vast: it numbers all Mesoamerican countries and Cuba, which means Mexico, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Panama, El Salvador and Cuba. And the number of participants is huge: it includes researchers, students and policy makers who will be meeting all week at the biggest conference rooms at the Radisson and the Biltmore. UB is providing institutional support and Director General for this year’s event is Elma Kay. She told us more.

Elma Kay, Director General
“And basically what it is, it is a network of professionals and students working in the field of conservation. It is very important because it is a network, a platform for communications, for sharing information, and this event, the 13th Congress or the annual Congress of the Society is the hallmark event of the society. So this event is where all those people working, researchers, conservationists, students doing work in areas like bio-diversity conservation come together.

One benefit of hosting the congress for Belize is that at least we get to select some of the issues that are priority to us. In particular this year we want to highlight the issues with reef. You know that we have the Belize Barrier Reef which is the second longest barrier reef in the world and it forms part of the Meso-American reef. We have a lot of issues with the reef; as you know the World Heritage Site was placed on the danger list for UNESCO this year because of mangrove cutting and other manmade threats to it. Also climate change is a really important issue for us because climate change can impact us in terms of storms for example; the increased intensity of storms. So climate change is another big issue that is cross-cutting across all of the thematic areas of the congress because we have a lot to use by the impact of things like climate change.”

Leandra Cho-Ricbetts,
“Our job is trying to open the eyes of policymakers and decision makers and we have a hard job yes but we have to keep at it. Education is our biggest tool to use when it comes to policymakers; showing them the facts and linking the facts to at the end of the day money. If they don’t see a clear link between the facts we are presenting and some dollar value then it is going to be harder for them to make the decisions or recommendations we are going. So this is where science has to kind of be entrepreneurial or creative in bringing that information across, to get the decisions that are needed.”

The congress will produce recommendations for policy and decision makers.