Belize Leads Regional Environmental Talks Under CCAD Presidency

Belize hosted the first technical meeting yesterday of the Central American Commission for Environment and Development, or CCAD, under its Pro Tempore Presidency in Belize City.  The meeting brought together representatives of the CCAD Secretariat and liaison officers from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Panama and the Dominican Republic. Costa Rica participated virtually.  Carlos Moreno of the National Biodiversity Office, within the Ministry of Sustainable Development, Climate Change and Solid Waste Management, chaired the session. Appearing on The Morning Show on Love TV earlier today, Moreno discussed Belize’s role and the purpose of the meeting.

Carlos Moreno, Grans and External Relations Coordinator: “Belize holds the Pro Tempore Presidency now so we are chairing the Consul of Ministers meeting here in Belize. That is happening tomorrow. And we are chairing and we have the eight countries of the CCAD, Dominican Republic, Central America and Panama, participating. We have regular sessions. We are having an ordinary session this time, the 75th session of the Central American Commission on Development and Environment and today Belize will present the priorities that we have for our pro tempore presidency which deals from biodiversity, solid waste management, water resources, Sargassum is important. So we have today we have a bilateral meeting with all the different ministers that are coming today on Sargassum because we want to develop a regional project to be able to attack Sargassum and to manage it because we can’t stop it so we need to find a way how we can manage it and add this circular economy into it because we have all this material that we need to do something with and it’s not enough from picking it up from the beach and just dumping it somewhere. We have health problems. We have so many problems with it, yes. I mean the tourism industry is affected greatly. The Dominican Republic and Belize have been leaders in in terms of managing Sargassum. So we are having a bilateral with all the other countries to come together, tell them our experiences and try to get some kind of project in play so that we can we can do something better than what we are doing. Though we are doing a lot but we can do a lot better.”

For today, the discussions were focused on preparations for the seventy-fifth CCAD Council of Ministers Meeting, scheduled for tomorrow. At that meeting, environment ministers from across the SICA region are expected to consider several shared environmental priorities./