What Can Be Done About Belize’s Excessively Hot Classrooms?

2024 is officially one of the hottest years in Belizean history, with the sweltering heat becoming almost unbearable, especially for those stuck in poorly ventilated spaces like classrooms. As climate change continues to push temperatures higher, the need for cooler, safer learning environments is more urgent than ever. We chatted with Prime Minister John Briceño about what can be done to tackle this issue in schools across the country. Here’s what he had to say.

 

Prime Minister John Briceño

“That’s a massive problem. As I said earlier, many people don’t know, but I grew up in a, for a few years, in a touch house with my mother. And it was made of pimenta and also saskab.  We had a cement floor. It was always cool. The Mayans knew what materials to use to be able to keep us cool. Cement, cement hold to heat. Zinc translates heat. And so, we have to find a way we can try to start to move towards that. Probably putting more insulation into the into the roofs. But even the types of windows that we use. If you look in the rural areas in Mexico and in Guatemala, they don’t have louvers. They have this huge room, they opened up the entire side of the, so the air can flow in easier. That’s what we have to do. See these, how these are some things like this? What we have to do to the other side, so that the air can circulate. So, there’s certain things that we need to do. I wish I could tell you we have the money to do everything, but we have to start to, to think. We need to adapt. I, during between 1998 and 2007, was the Minister of Natural Resources and Environment and whenever I’d go abroad, I used to get very upset when they were telling us about adaptation. I’d say, why should we adapt? We did not create this problem. We need to build some sort of resiliency. But no, unfortunately, we’ve passed resiliency. We have to adapt. The heat that’s going, I mean, it was the heat that we had earlier this month, this year. It’s a heat that I’ve never experienced in Belize, so that’s the reality, and we need to try to see how best we can address these issues.”