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Belize will host the Third High-Level Dialogue of the Regional Climate Change Platform of the Ministry of Economy and Finance of Latin America and the Caribbean in San Pedro. The two-day event kicked off today with the Belize delegation led by Prime Minister John Briceno. The dialogue brings together ministers and high-level representatives from eighteen countries, regional institutions, IDB executives and bilateral partners. In his speech, Prime Minister Briceno spoke about Belize’s efforts to increase climate resilience and the importance of preparing for the future.
Prime Minister of Belize Jon Briceño: “Over the past two years, my country has not only embraced the Platform’s objectives, but has also mobilized human and financial resources to achieve them. We commend the Secretariat and the IDB Group for their valuable technical and financial support. Their work in knowledge generation, resource mobilization, peer exchange, and cross-sectoral coordination has achieved several important milestones, such as the first comprehensive technical training on climate action and engagement in fiscal policy for member countries by the Latin American and Caribbean Ministry of Finances. Together, the region’s Ministry of Finances developed a common vision for sustainable finance, established the Platform as a globally recognized knowledge hub, and the LAC Ministry of Finances established accountability mechanisms to monitor policy implementation. I believe it is safe to say that the work done at the regional level has certainly had a positive impact on the national efforts of our respective countries. In the case of Belize, we have also made a significant contribution to the international climate change response through innovative measures. We successfully implemented a local investment-grade blue bond transaction to mobilize private capital to restructure and reduce our national debt, while providing funding for marine conservation.”
An important outcome of the meeting was the formal adoption of a unified regional vision on sustainable finance. Jordan Schwartz, Executive Vice President of the Inter-American Development Bank, stressed the need for a regional approach to address the growing impacts of climate change.
Jordan Schwartz, Executive Vice President of the Inter-American Development Bank: “The framework we have traditionally used to deploy resources and respond to weather and climate events has traditionally tried to separate random events from predictable ones. It has typically compared the severity of a disaster to the frequency of more common weather events. The insurance industry relies on this separation to price its premiums, but as Frank said, climate events that were once rare are now occurring more frequently. And those that are frequent and controllable are becoming more intense. So that makes the severity vs. frequency paradigm less stable, both axes are dynamic and moving. The data is very clear on this. Hurricanes are now three times more frequent than they were 100 years ago. In the Atlantic, from what I can tell, the share of major hurricanes that are Category 3 or above has doubled in the Atlantic since 1980. When frequency and intensity increase, probability comes into play, and overlapping crises become more common, which creates another form of financial and economic stress. So in our region over the past few years, extremely destructive hurricanes have occurred on top of COVID. “We are facing a global pandemic that has hit us during a devastating global pandemic, with droughts, floods, and wildfires all occurring simultaneously in the same regions. This means we have to figure out how to deal with hurricanes that no longer respect the seasons, like Beryl, and large-scale events that overlap with the ongoing impacts of sea level rise, coral bleaching, the spread of sargassum, storm surges, droughts, and wildfires, not to mention pandemics, mosquito-borne illnesses, heat-related deaths, and other health scares. It’s a scary list.”
After this high-level meeting, the interim presidency will be handed over from Chile to Colombia.
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