Belize, Mexico and Guatemala Sign Maya Forest Biosphere Park Pact

While discussions had in today’s meeting may be a while from bearing fruit, the one definite output from today’s tripartite meeting was the signing of a Biosphere Park agreement with Belize, Mexico and Guatemala.  The agreement on the Biosphere Tri-National Park that the three leaders signed today refers to the Maya Forest.  This forest is a vast area that extends across Belize, Mexico, and Guatemala, and is one of the largest continuous tropical forests north of the Amazon and is a critical area for conservation. According to Prime Minister John Briceno, this was high on the President Sheinbaum’s agenda due to her dedication to climate change.

John Briceño, Prime Minister of Belize: “This biosphere park between Belize, Mexico and Guatemala I think that is probably one of the most important things that we can accomplish today. It is considered probably the second largest reserve after the Amazon coming this way and this area is an area where we have several million in Belizeans, Guatemalans and Mexicans living and the importance of this sphere here we refer it to almost the Pulmon Milaria so it’s very important for us to be able to protect it considering the challenge of climate change. As to the agreement that didn’t take long. It is something from when I was the Minister of the Environment we were talking about it way back then but now with President Sheinbaum she is a climate change specialist, a group of them won a Nobel prize for their work and she along with the Minister of Environment quickly saw the importance and put it together. So we were ready, we were working on that very a very long time.”

The Biosphere Park comprises of several interconnected protected areas, each with its own management strategy.  For Guatemala, there is the Maya Biosphere Reserve (MBR), which covers a significant portion of the country’s territory in the northern Petén region. It’s a UNESCO-recognized biosphere reserve.  For Mexico, there is the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve and Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve, which are contiguous with Guatemala’s MBR.  For Belize, there are the areas like the Rio Bravo Conservation Management Area and the Chiquibul National Park. Perhaps the most key component is the Belize Maya Forest Corridor, which aims to maintain connectivity between the northern and southern forests in the country, thereby linking the larger trinational forest.