7 News Belize

Make Land Use Practices Sound
posted (March 1, 2019)

Land : it's a precious and finite resource that's the subject of many disputes and squabbles, everyone is trying to get a piece of it - and, everyday, there’s less to get. 

Well, the Belize Climate Resilient Infrastructure Project team has revised the 2011 Belize National Land Use Policy and Implementation Action plan to better address matters like land distribution and taxation among others. The Project coordinator told us more at their stakeholder meeting. 

Wendel Parham - Project Coordinator, BCRIP
"BCRIP is a project that came out of the national climate resilience investment plan for the country which you may know of, so it's one of the first projects and basically it is looking at climate resilience as the name implies and it is focusing mainly on infrastructure. So the project has 4 components and the number one component is road infrastructure, highway, climate resilience infrastructure as we refer to it is a component and that involves the 16 miles of road from Vista Del Mar junction to Biscayne, Gardenia interface and we intend to do there is to improve that highway and rehabilitate it completely including resurfacing and drainage, so as to make the road more resilience in terms of when we had bad weather."

"The second component has to do with institutional strengthening and training, mainly to mainstream climate resilience activities in the ministry of natural resources and ministry of works the two major ministries that are involved in the project. In the ministry of natural resources, we have two sub components which has to do with the land use study which is the policy study which we are now delivering today. There was a land policy accepted by cabinet 2011 and what has happened is that because we want to prove the policy and to develop climate resilience capability in the policy, as you know land affects all sectors, housing, transport - land is a major element, so it's an integrated policy to try to be inclusive of all the other activities and sectors in the country and we're also trying to address any regulations or legislative needs that might come up to ensure that we can implement the policy. So basically today what we're doing is speaking to the policy to itself that has been updated from the 2011 one and to look at those areas that we can improve the implementation. For example we are talking about data implementation road map and action plan, so show how we can implement this policy once cabinet approved it."

"Policy and the guidelines that come along with it will really update the approach to land evaluation, land taxation, land allocation, it will allow very transparent way to other people can read and know how to approach the processes. Whether it is for housing, for agriculture, for infrastructure, it will tell you to a large extent how to approach it, what are the laws governing a particular area, like for example land taxation you know. If it is for urban areas, or for agricultural use, it will give you some guidelines how these things are valued and how the taxes are developed, so people can better appreciate some of the requirements - why the value of the taxes is developed."

This was the final consultation session with stakeholders. Parham says they hope to submit the finalized policy to cabinet in the next two to three months. 

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