Minister Habet Pushes for Global Cooperation at Biodiversity Summit

Minister of Sustainable Development and Climate Change, Orlando Habet, is in Guyana attending the Global Biodiversity Alliance Summit.  Minister Habet participated in a roundtable discussion this morning where the issue of environmental protection was the focal point.  During this morning’s session, Minister Habet spoke on the need to for collaborative efforts when it comes to environmental protection.

Orlando Habet, Minister of Sustainable Development and Climate Change: “Our barrier reef is also a world heritage site, a UNESCO World Heritage Site so while it is within Belizean territorial or Belizean maritime waters I like to say it belongs to the region, it belongs to humanity, it belongs to the world so we all have to take care of it. We for example were I think in the region were the first to sign on to the BBNJ but how can a small country like Belize really see an monitor what is going on beyond our territorial waters ? So it can’t be something that we will do alone it has to be something done regionally, globally. We don’t have the resources to see what is going on beyond if it’s a deep sea mining or whatever it is but we know that whatever happens out there will affect our barrier reef and closer beyond the barrier reef is our coast where we have our tourism, where we have our fisherfolk, where tourism occupies currently 50% of our GDP. So when we had to do the debt swap because we entered a government where we found ourselves at 134% of debt over GDP so we had to act quickly. So Prime Minister Briceño and our government had to do that work through TNC, the collaboration with TNC, Swiss Bank and I think we had assistance from various banks, World Bank and IDB. But it put us back on our feet so that was one way of getting some financing to move out from there but it also committed us to reaching our 30% goal for marine conservation which we hope to achieve by 2026.”

The inaugural Global Biodiversity Alliance Summit is being held in Georgetown, Guyana, from July 23-25, 2025. Guyana, a biodiversity-rich nation, is championing this initiative and expanding on its comprehensive Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS) 2030.