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What COP 21 Means For Belize
posted (December 21, 2015)
The 21st Conference of the Parties, Cop21 for short, finished last week in Paris. While reviews are mixed, for the first time in the history of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change the parties were able to craft an agreement that all were able to adopt. Carlos Fuller, who represented Belize as a member of the Caribbean delegation, spoke to us about how we contributed to the discussions on climate change.

Carlos Fuller, International Liaison Officer - CCCCC
"The area we really have to address is our rates of deforestation. Because that is where most of our emissions are coming from and so we have the policies in place already. It's now a matter of putting the resources to police it, to ensure that there is not illegal logging that we don't have illegal farming and so on. That is the areas we need to address and fortunately the government of Belize has already gotten some resources. There are additional coming from the World Bank in what we called Red Plus. That is reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. Again, that's an area that we have to address and that is the big area now we are working towards."

But some would say that the damage has already been done. In light of this a great portion of the debate focused on adapting to the effects of climate change. This is also a major concern for Belize says Fuller.

Carlos Fuller, International Liaison Officer - CCCCC
"For Belize, the biggest challenge is adaptation. We are already suffering the impacts of climate change and we need to address to become more resilient to it, so we are seeing massive erosions from Belize City south all the way down to Barranco, on our offshore islands. We are seeing massive coral bleaching on our reefs that's we have to address and so those are really the areas that we have to address in the adaptation sector as opposed to the mitigation sector."

Reporter
"How do we adapt to these situations?"

Carlos Fuller, International Liaison Officer - CCCCC
"First of all we have to find out what is the cause of erosion and it might be very site specific. So what is affecting Monkey River, might not be what is happening in Barranco, that's affecting Belize City. So we have to find out what is the cause of it and then once we address the caused, then we put in the adaptation measure. It could be putting in sea walls, it could be putting in berms, it could be cutting the amount of extraction of sand in the rivers. So we have to see what is causing it and then do something to address the caused."

However knowing what to do is one thing, getting it done is quite another. For this reason, developed countries have pledged to continue their efforts to leverage US$100 billion per year to assist developing countries, like Belize, to fund their mitigation and adaptation efforts through to the year 2025.

Carlos Fuller, International Liason Officer - CCCCC
"Countries have committed that by the year 2020, they will be providing 100 billion dollars per year for this kind of assistance for reducing emissions and for adaptation. And that is going to continue through to 2025 and from that year onwards, they are going to up that floor from above a 100 billion dollars per year into the future. So in building up to the 100 billion dollars per year now and beyond 2025, going up from that. I think it is a milestone agreement, because prior to that we had agreements that only address develop countries. This new agreement recognizes that all countries have to do something to address climate change. Developed countries have actually started to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases, but it is the poorer developing countries whose emissions are going up to address poverty and so on. But this agreement now recognizes that they have to play a significant part and they don't have to do it on their own. That funding and technology are going to be provided to them to address this concern. So I think the agreement shows that in deed there is worldwide goodwill that we have to address climate change and the world's leaders are taking it seriously now."

According to the Caribbean Community climate change Center, whose offices are in Belize, they will now turn their 2016 efforts towards ensuring that member States formally adopt the agreement made at the Cop21 conference as soon as possible.

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