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The idea behind it all is figuring out how to manage the 26% of Belize's land and sea that is under protected status while also meeting the demands for land by developers, farmers and folks who just want a plot to call their own. Natural resource minister Gaspar Vega addressed those ocmeting concerns in his opening address:…

Hon. Gaspar Vega, Minister of Narural Resources
"There is an unquestionable need for greater access to land and other natural resources. This includes increase access to lands for agriculture, aquaculture, housing, tourism and conservation."

"There is always pressures of people who need land for housing, for agriculture, for different purposes but yet we still have to ensure that our protected areas are conserved."

Dr. Colin Young, Natural Protected Areas Secretariat
"We have about 36% of our national territory under some kind of protected areas designation and national including land and sea over 26% that itself is a remarkable feet for any country. Now in terms of what that means in terms of the preservation of bio-diversity of course there is stuff that can be done to improve the system and part of that is looking at the national protected areas policy and system plan. Can government do more? Yes. Can the non-government numbers do more? Yes. Can communities do more? Yes. So I think what the coordination responsibility of the secretariat is to pull the energy for all of these different numbers in one area that now moves us ahead."

Judene Tingiling, Sustainabkle Land Management Project Manager
"What we want to do rather than continue to operate in silence is to look at all these different land uses and look at them how they contribute to the whole as a oppose to what we are currently doing in an ad hoc manner. The development of this national land uses policy will look at managing and making plans for Belize as a entire landscape. What is the current capacity? We are going to look at zone-ation, so it's not necessarily to say we are going to concentrate heavily on tourism development or agricultural development. We will look at all of those, we will examine all of those and see g how best we can compile and put together something for the nation of Belize. We don't want that at the end of this 8 month period that we had a policy to the people of Belize and say here, this is what we are going to do from here on now. So we want this to be an all inclusive plan."

Hon. Gaspar Vega, Minister of Narural Resources
"Again Jules I think that the secretariat' challenge will be to ensure that we inform the people again, teach them that we don't have to destroy to be able to use the land."

The global environmental facility has approved a grant to finance plan supplemented with a commitment from the protected areas conservation trust for over two million over the next three years.