Prime Minister Briceno Highlights Climate Change and Biodiversity at SICA Summit

As we noted earlier, the 57th Summit of the Heads of Government of SICA was hosted by Belize in Placencia today.  Amid the presentations on today’s agenda was that of Prime Minister, John Briceno.  In his address, Prime Minister Briceno, spoke on the importance of taking action to mitigate the effects of climate change, as well as the environment and biodiversity.

Hon. John Briceño, Prime Minister of Belize: “On the all-important topic of climate change, recently the experts have warned about the possibility of a super el Nino this year. This puts us on high alert of another round of drought all the way through the first quarter of 2024, yet another manifestation of the consequential effects of global warming in our region. During the EPPP, The Ministry of Sustainable Development labored extensively with the team at the Central American Commission for Environment and Development, the CCAD and I must pause to recognize the people in the CCED because in my previous life I was the Minister of Environment for nine years and I spent nine years working on these things in the region and whilst we have been moving forward, the same issues we were facing back there are still facing today. And more than ever we have to speak as a region along with our CARICOM partners to ensure that the developed countries who are the countries that created these problems, that they have a legal and a moral responsibility to assist us to build our resiliency against these changes that we are facing with climate change. But we need to keep the spotlight, as I said earlier, on climate change, environment, biodiversity conservation, along with institutional strengthening of CCAD. Mindful of the desire to promote deeper inter-regional cooperation between sub-regions of CARICOM and SICA, a focused and pragmatic agenda was pursued. This included exploring the possibility of enhancing our bargaining power at international forum on climate financing.”