PACT Grants Over $4 Million for Climate Change Resilience and Disaster Preparedness

The Protected Areas Conservation Trust (PACT) issued over four million dollars in grants this week to strengthen the national response to climate change at the local level. The Sarteneja Village Council was granted 464 thousand dollars to improve fire management and control, while the Belize Forest Department was granted over 676 thousand dollars to strengthen its countrywide wildfire management strategy. Over two million six hundred thousand dollars has been allocated to the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) in partnership with the Ministry of Agriculture and BELTRAIDE, to create alternative livelihood opportunities. The Belmopan City Council received over 684 thousand dollars for a flood mitigation and environmental restoration initiative. PACT Chairman Dr. Kenrick Williams, said that the grants are a reflection of how important climate change resilience is to the organization. 

Dr. Kenrick Williams, PACT Chairman: “We won’t address climate change tomorrow, we won’t address climate change in any short term project. This is a real long term targeted approach and focused approach in addressing climate change and particularly the vulnerabilities related to climate change. The government by itself won’t address it, academia by itself won’t address it, the quasi government agencies alone won’t address it. It has to be at all levels. So when we talk about climate change and the ministry and setting the policy we have to engage municipal and local governments, we have to engage communities. That is why this project is speaking to communities and community level organizations to be part of the process and to be part of the implementation and really that is what the adaptation fund really envisioned when it developed this locally led adaptation funding window. This is the enhanced direct access. We need to create a funding opportunity where we remove some of the middle men, where we can really get the impact on the local level that there has to be direct adaptation finance there’s system of decentralized decision making, that there is support for small scale community based project and of course there is increased participation of the stakeholders and building institutional capacity. So essentially that’s what this project aimed to do as it really reflected the frame of what the adaptation fund was thinking in developing this project.”

The grants fall under the project, named, “Building Community Resilience via Transformative Adaptation”, also known as the DA Project.  It is a 5-year project with a budget of some ten million dollars.  According to the Project Manager, Dr. Juanita Garcia Saquil, there are several important components including the support for managing wildfires. 

Dr. Juanita Garcia Saqul, Manage, EDA Project: “It has five components. Component one is looking at safeguarding forest and water resources through strategic protection and restoration solutions. That component is being implemented by the National Biodiversity Office and Forest Department. We’re still in the process of proposal development with them. The second component is combating wildfires through adaptive management. For this component, we’re looking at the Forest Department who is implementing the updating of the national policies, for example, the Wildfire Protection Act and developing a fire brigade, community fire brigade protocol among other activities. We also have within this component, Sarteneja Village Council or the Sarteneja Village, which will be benefiting from a grant also to improve wildfire management within their communities which includes training, includes equipment, and some water reservoir for them to have water available for the drought or during the dry season.”

Love News understands that four additional projects are currently in the pipeline and will be announced later this year. The projects are expected to have a direct impact on 150,000 Belizeans and indirectly benefit another 100,000.