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World Heritage Sites In Danger in Belize
posted (April 11, 2016)
The World Wildlife Fund has released a comprehensive report on the effects of development on World Heritage sites. The official launch of the report was made last week on the 6th of April and it encompasses 229 heritages and 96 countries- including Belize. Coming out of the report is that half of the World Heritage sites are threatened by development; and Belize is no exception. Efforts from Oceana and other conservation groups have managed to get Government to place ban on offshore oil drilling on portions of the World Heritage Sites in Belize- but not all of it. Today WWF'S local office launched the Belize portion of that report. The Global Campaign Manager for WWF International presented some of the findings on that report at a forum at Radisson this morning.

Valentina Montanaro, Global Campaign Manager - WWF International
"The report is being received very well across the world. I think because it has a clear direct message which is we must change the way we look at nature, because nature is not only something we need to protect. It's actually something that can protect us and it's an economic opportunity. So we are seeing a trend in which we are going to the end of the world to find more resources and as a consequence of these, some of the most precious are increasingly threaten by harmful industrial activities including extracted like oil, mining, gas and large scale infrastructure as well. We are finding that 90% of world heritage sites provide jobs and contribute to the economies through tourism, recreation and natural resources and also two third of these natural world heritage sites are important for provision of water, which is going to be a massive issue in the coming years."

Valentino Shal, Advocacy Lead, WWF Belize
"The purpose of our report of course is to call all of us to action; civil society, private sector, financial institutions, government and of course the citizens of Belize to recognize the high risk posed by oil exploration and in recognition of that WWF and other NGOs are calling on the Belizean government to adapt legislation banning offshore oil drilling from all of Belize's offshore waters."

Now this is an age old campaign, so what's new? Well according to WWF, they hope that the alarming numbers on the report might be cause enough to put a focus on conserving World Heritage sites. And if that is not enough, they are also talking the issue from an economic stand point. WWF is heading an online petition to call on the Prime Minister of Belize to take action. As part of their campaign they hope to see a ban on all world Heritage sites in Belize by the year 2017.

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