Creating Opportunities to Support Alternative Livelihoods

The Protected Areas Conservation Trust, Ministry of Agriculture, Food Security and Enterprise, BELTRAIDE, the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), and the Department of Cooperatives have teamed up to launch an important initiative to empower Belizean communities. The third part of the Sustainable Livelihood Project offers tools, training, and support to help create nature-based businesses and build resilience against climate threats like droughts, floods, and wildfires.

 

Abil Castaneda, Executive Director, PACT

“Addressing climate change is not just now building infrastructure.  Addressing climate change is not just about building awareness.  It really has to do with changing behavior, it has to do now in how do we seek ways in which we can build economic resilience for the people that are mostly impacted by climate change.  And so, yesterday, PM Briceno made a call and a call for urgency because we are seeing it more and more today that our lives are changing. What the new norm is becoming, we have to acknowledge it, we have to appreciate it, but we also have to act urgently to address it because it will impact us.  We are having longer droughts, we are having heavier flood events.  We are now having more instances of forest fires and all of these things can impact us, but for the cause of today, they impact, in reality, our food security and I think we, many times, outside of the realm of the agricultural sector, don’t realize how critical and vulnerable that is to ensure that our country and our people have food for the future.”