Outgoing Director of the Blue Bond and Finance Permanence Unit, who is now the incoming CEO for Blue Economy and Marine Conservation, Beverly Wade discussed the competing interests of conservation and capitalism that try to find balance in the blue economy:
Beverly Wade, CEO, Blue Economy & Marine Conservation
"So, as Prime Minister mentioned in his keynote address, this forum is really to bring together varied actors within the blue space. We have done a lot in Belize, we have done a lot from a development perspective, from a conservation perspective and also to see how we can find that balance between conservation and economic growth, responsible economic growth. And what we wanted to do is to have a forum where we have all our actors here, we have stakeholders, resource users, we have the press here so that we can have the kind of frank engagements and we can account for what we have succeeded with so far. And we want to talk about some of the directions that we need to go, and we want to talk about some of the challenges. It's really a call to action, it is a call to action for us to collectively put our efforts together to help us to continue to chart a way for a successful blue economy in Belize that is really based on science, informed decision making and that we have people central to the discussions."
"I think Belize is one of the countries as mentioned earlier that have a pretty good basket of policies and frameworks. The key in my view is that we remain versatile, we remain dynamic, we have to recognise that there are more things that we need to look at. For instance, I saw on the news a few weeks ago the issue that the people in the south continue to grapple with, with regards to seashore, erosion it is time for us to look at a shoreline policy and to see now how do we now collectively and inclusively bring the science and the expertise together, bring the communities together and develop such a policy so that we can have a hymn sheet that we can all sing from. What is happening is that people are individually and properties are individually trying to find their own solutions to what is happening and so we need now a more comprehensive framework to address that."
Jade Delevaux, Senior Fellow, Natural Capital Project, Stanford
"I work as part of the people, planet, prosperity project in partnership with IDB and the Blue bond unit. We are looking at mainstreaming natural capital approaches which help us elevate nature and support people in ecosystem based development."
"So we are working on developing key performance indicators which are metrics that allow us to track how Belize is."
"So Belize has been positioning itself in innovative resolve based clients such as the Blue Bonds and the project finance for permanence and as part of those innovative finance mechanisms it needs to set up key performance indicators and targets to demonstrate that it is meeting its goals. And so we are helping to develop those metrics that not only track nature positive impacts but also people positive impacts because those nature positive financing instruments should support people."
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