Belize City now joins Belmopan as part of the Global Covenant of Mayors. The agreement was signed today at City Hall and now GCOM will lead a technical mission to help development the City Council's Climate Action Plan. At the Welcome Meeting today the Mayor told us more about what that plan will look like.
Bernard Wagner, Mayor of Belize City
"We are very ecstatic at the Belize City Council to be able to put into place the motion to have us be a member of the global covenant of mayors. This is really a global alliance which really speaks to city climate action and really focusing on three core pillars which are mitigation, adaptation and energy so we're very excited at the Belize City Council to join this global alliance which really spans over 6 continents, over 144 countries and close to 13,500 cities so it's a large alliance which really brings together cities with a clear, common agenda, shared goals of reducing climate change and in respect to ensuring that you have the policy in place to speak to mitigation adaptation and energy."
"For many cities if you don't have a climate action plan there is no clear direction on how you want to go and you speak about the flooding of streets, all the coastal erosion that is occurring but all of these are as a result of the impact of climate change and what this climate action plan does, it's focusing on you mitigation strategy and your mitigation strategy in clear goals, clear objectives that will contribute to the reduction of those same things that you spoke about in respect to flooding, in respect to coastal erosion, and that is the essence to developing this climate action plan."
"It will be how do we mitigate, how do we adapt, what sort of structures we build in respect to streets, will it be concrete, will it be hot mix, will it be chip and seal? So all of this will be captured in our climate action plan, these are our priorities, this will happen when we build streets with chip and seal, this may occur. This is the sort of forward thinking and foresight that will come out of the climate action plan."
Daniela Moneiro, International Relations Assistant, GCOM, Americas
"Here in Caribbean we are doing this technical mission, so we want to do the climate action plan and three days of technical support to the city staff. We will be working on how to get a successful climate action plan and doing a GCOM methodology each of those days. Also presenting the CDP tracking platform so that you can report and get able to see the platform beforehand so we'll do all of the necessary instructions and do the technical support we're here to do."
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