<
https://www.nature.org/en-us/magazine/magazine-articles/belize-blue-bonds/>
"Scuba-diving the kaleidoscopic reefs of the Hol Chan Marine Reserve, just a
15-minute plane hop from Belize City, is like swimming into an Oscar-worthy
underwater nature documentary. Sea turtles and spotted eagle rays soar past
silently, while rainbow parrotfish munch algae off branches of healthy coral. A
3-foot nurse shark circles close by, while at the bottom of a small canyon—Hol
Chan means “little channel” in Mayan—two male coral crabs face off like
gladiators.
Hol Chan is the shining star of Belize’s myriad marine wonders and one of its
busiest tourism destinations, but it’s just a small part of the longest barrier
reef in the Western Hemisphere. Studded with hundreds of offshore atolls and
cayes, Belize’s 240-mile coastline is home to more than 500 kinds of fish and
three species of threatened sea turtle. Along the shore, mangrove forests,
lagoons and estuaries shelter West Indian manatees and American crocodiles.
Although a portion of the barrier reef was designated a UNESCO World Heritage
Site in 1996, the entire reef is vulnerable to the effects of climate change,
and most of it is also under increased pressure from overfishing and nearby
development. By 2020, Belize’s public debt had reached $1.5 billion—larger than
the country’s GDP—making it difficult to set aside money for environmental
protection.
COVID-19 only made things worse. Visitation to Hol Chan has dropped drastically
since 2019. Since entry fees cover most of the parks’ operations, the ranger
staff is down from 15 to 11 (at one point last year there were only five).
Before the pandemic, the park’s marine treasures were guarded around the clock;
now, rangers are available only from 5 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Belize needed a solution that would preserve its natural capital and jump-start
the industries that depend on it. The government looked to a financial
transaction piloted by The Nature Conservancy in the Indian Ocean just a few
years before. If that revolutionary model of marine conservation could find
purchase on Belize’s Caribbean shores, it would restructure the country’s debt,
freeing up tens of millions of dollars to protect its coastal and offshore
resources—a transformative prospect for a country where nearly 50% of the
population relies on the ocean for food and jobs."
Via
Future Crunch issue 192:
https://futurecrunch.com/
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
