1 month ago
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As Belize continues to reel under unprecedented amounts of sargassum washing up on shorelines, the government says it is seeking international assistance to find a solution to the problem. Sargassum mats began affecting the country in small quantities in early January but increased considerably in the hotter months. Minister of Sustainable Development, Climate Change and Solid Waste Management, Orlando Habet, says that the government will be working with international partners as well as the affected coastal communities to pool funding, while technical expertise is being sought for a suitable intervention.
Orlando Habet, Minister of Sustainable Development: “So we have to find the assistance, financial assistance, some will have to come from government, some from the local communities, the local municipalities of San Pedro, Placencia and to see how we can get international funding and that is why I mentioned the issue of loss and damage, because that can be not only immediate damage but can be something that can be there for many years because it starts eroding the coastline and so that is very important. Sargassum nobody really has a real handle nor Mexico nor the Dominican Republic. Everybody is trying to do the best they can. We are trying to piggyback on some of the things that they are doing. I think there will be a meeting later this year in Europe to see how they can help. I think Finland developed a small machinery that can do some of the processing and they’re working together with the Dominican Republic but these are pilot projects. You see what happened last week? There’s humongous mats, unprecedented, very difficult.”
Habet says that more research needs to be done on the long-term effects of burying sargassum to identify any potential hazards in using it for landfill.
Orlando Habet, Minister of Sustainable Development: “The idea is to try to stop the sargassum from reaching the coast as much as possible. Once it reaches the coast it’s already done the damage. It affects your fisheries, it affects the boats, the propellers of these boats. And then you have the problem of these huge mats coming to shore which you have to pick up. Many times you pick it up, you pick it up with sand, so you have to let it dry a little and then try to see how you can sift it out to get back the sand and throw away only the bark. Remember also that sargassum has two heavy metals, arsenic and cadmium. Now we have to find out whether or not these are in large, such large amounts that will affect the groundwater if you just bury it. Or can it be dried and then maybe it dissipates? We don’t know, so a lot of research is going into it. They’re using it for landfill now because we don’t really have the all information. What we know or what we have been told and what we have researched is that the levels are not that high that will affect. It’s like when you put fluoride in water to prevent cavities and everything else, fluoride if you take a lot it will kill you but in very small amounts it has its own protection, way of doing some protection.”
In mid-July, Prime Minister John Briceno announced that the government was considering declaring sargassum a national emergency. Government also approved a comprehensive Sargassum Emergency Response Plan to tackle the increasing influx
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