For the past 4 years, we've shown you the Reef Report Card, which is known in the conservation community as the Meso-American Eco-Audit. It's a comprehensive assessment of all the different countries, Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and what they are doing to protect the barrier reef system that spans the Atlantic coastline. Well, the local conservation community decided to grade the Belize Government on what they're doing to protect the 7 World Heritage Sites which make up a part of Belize's portion of the Barrier Reef.
For 3 years now, Belize has been put on an endangered list of countries which may lose these important environmental treasures because not enough is being done to protect them. So, they launched the Reef Score Card. They've chosen the categories, of oil, mangroves, costal development, environmental regulations, fisheries, and the World Heritage Status Value.
7News was there to see what grade the Government got. Here are few excerpts of that report:
Janelle Chanona - VP. Oceana Belize
"The map on the right is the latest map in the Ministry of Petroleum showing the existing oil concessions for Belize. As you can see there is nothing off shore which is why we are comfortable asserting that there is an effective moratorium on leases off shore and a dwindling number of oil concessions are on shore. December of course, we saw the Government announce its policy in terms of banning the specific areas of the Belize Barrier Reef and World Heritage Site, this only covers between 13 to 15 percent of our marine area."
Roberto Pott - Country Mgr. Healthy Reefs Initiative
"We need a national mangrove regulation and this needs to be done in consultation with the Belize community and it needs to be implemented. As a part of that we would want to see no-go areas within Belize in terms of mangrove clearance. We have been working on what was originally Aquatics Bill which change to Fisheries Bill and I think it's now back to Aquatics Bill maybe. Fishing the trophic level, because when we can't get snapper and gruppers now, we were looking at Parrot Fish. Luckily WCS and others recognize that that was a concern and the Fisheries Department saw the wisdom in protecting herbivores, Parrot Fish and Sergeant Fish and others, but there are other species that were starting to move into. If you talk to the people out at San Pedro, Angel Fish is showing up as fillet on their plates. This cannot continue. We cannot continue to fish species without realizing the impact that we are having."
Valentino Shal - Representative - WWF
"We would also like to see that sufficient resources and we are talking having the right budget to carry out the implementation of the coastal zone management plan. The integrated coastal zone management plan, it makes a little sense if you have a plan but don't have the resources to get it implemented. We would also like to see the development of a comprehensive national sustainable tourism bill."
So, to clarify, score of 1 is pretty much like an F, a 2 is a passing grade, and 3 the best grade. As you saw, Belize did not get any 3's in any of the 5 categories. The conservationists did give the Belize Barrier Reef an "F" in the area of Environmental Regulations. That's that area where the Department of Environment and the National Environmental Appraisal Committee is being assessed, and the representative from BELPO said that those Government departments failed miserably:
Candy Gonzalez - Representative - BELPO
"Under the environmental impact assessment regulations there is supposed to be public participation in developments that require an environmental impact assessment. The EIA regulations don't define completely public participation. To this day I believe if you ask the chief environmental officer what the public consultation is and ask for the definition that's in the EIA regulations, he will give you the wrong definition. And public hearings are supposed to be held on the things that are of national importance and public hearings are supposed to be very 
formal. There's supposed to be a hearing with neutral parties listening to the public. Now, we have only had actually 2 public hearings in the history of the regulations and both of those had to do with the Chalillo Dam and the Vaca Dam and neither one of them had a neutral party in the front. There are a lot of problems with NEAK, because it's so much under the control of with every political party that is in power and very little control in terms of who the stakeholders actually are and the NGO's that are involved. With the decision of the Department of the Environment who gives no feedback as to how those decisions are made. So, unfortunately when you put all of this together we ended up having to give a score of 1, in terms of legislation. In some areas if I could have given a lower score I would have."
According to the presenters, a lack of political will, and a lack or resources are two of the major challenges facing the authorities responsible for environmental conservation.
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