Today at the Fisheries Department in Belize City, representatives from the UNESCO World Heritage Center met with government agencies and NGO's such as OCEANA and The Belize Coalition to Save our Natural Heritage.
The meeting is the background to what we have been reporting all this week: on the NGO's discontent about the Draft Petroleum Exploration and Exploration Guidelines and the possible threats it poses to the Barrier Reef System - which has already been inscribed on a World Heritage Endangered Site List.
Well, the delegates from the World Heritage Center are here to try and remove Belize from that list. Head of the Marine Program from the World Heritage Center Dr. Fanny Douvere discussed how they along with the government and stakeholders can accomplish this goal.
Dr. Fanny Douvere, Head of Marine Program, UNESCO WHC
"Our primary purpose is to work together with the government and set a number of clear targets that would need to be achieved in order to get the Belize Barrier Reef Reserve System back off the danger list. So there are a couple of critical issues. One is also related to the sales and the leases of the lands within the property and especially the cutting of the mangroves. Mangroves are critically important for the eco-system, so it's important that those are protected, so that the integrity of the property can be maintained across all the seven components basically that make up the world heritage status. We are working very constructively with the various departments within the government. We are working together in order to try to understand the bottlenecks, but also to have a roadmap to move forward."
Beverly Wade, Fisheries Administrator
"I think that we should consider what their concerns are and the idea is at the end of the day, is to have something that is balance, something that has taken into consideration, the concerns from the world heritage mission with regards to world heritage site, but to also look at government's prioritization in terms of potential for national development, which is not something that we can ignore. I think that the debate will only enrich that process. From the commencement of this mission, we have stated very clearly that the mission is really meant to be a constructive mission, so that we could have a roadmap at the end of this mission, that we could safely say, we have consulted stakeholders from the people who are using the resources, all the way to the top in terms of the policy makers and the decision makers to come together to have an understanding of where they are going and what their issues are, because remember, one of the primary objectives of this mission also, is to look at the long term sustainable development of the property, which is the world heritage site."
The WHC team along with their Belizean partners are working on a Desired State of Conservation Report which will have to be endorsed by the government and then submitted to the World Heritage Center committee for review in June. Based on the report and an assessment of Belize's attempts at preserving it's critical ecosystems - the committee will then consider removing Belize's Barrier Reef System from the sites endangered list.
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