UN helps Belize City become Resilient

_{Belize City Mayor, Bernard Wagner, with UNDRR – Nahuel Arenas}

by William Ysaguirre (Freelance Writer)

BELIZE CITY, Thurs. May 8, 2025

Belize City has joined 1,835 other cities in 92 nations around the world to become a part of the United Nations’ initiative, “Making Cities Resilient (MCR) by 2030”. Mayor Bernard Wagner signed an agreement to this effect with regional director Nahuel Arenas of the United Nations’ Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) agency’s regional office for the Americas and the Caribbean at the Best Western Biltmore Plaza Hotel in Belize City on Wednesday evening, May 7. Also present to witness the signing was UN resident coordinator Raul Salazar.

_{Belize City Mayor, Bernard Wagner, signs agreement with UNDRR; UN resident rep – Raul Salazar (L) and UNDRR regional director- Nahuel Arenas (R)}

According to Arenas, the MCR2030 initiative will, in its first phase, offer technical support through a $100,000 project to help develop early warning systems to alert our citizens about potential or impending disasters, whatever form they might take. The aim is to reduce loss of life by preparing Belizeans to escape the dangers of a tropical storm, flood, drought, earthquake, tsunami, or even epidemiological disasters. The goal is to protect 594.142 million people with early warning systems within the next 5 years. The UNDRR will help the Belize City authorities with the resources and shared know-how to plan how to reduce risks and make the city more resilient to all threats.

The agreement now includes Belize City in the UN’s joint programme to build safe and smart spaces, which will give women, young people and even children the skills to lobby for inclusion and gender equality, as they seek to localize the UN’s 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs), buffering their life situations against the impact of Climate Change, so that they can live in a safe, sustainable city.

The concord signing was the culmination of three days of consultations to help the National Emergency Management Organization (NEMO) improve its early warning systems to better serve the entire community, and protect all Belizeans against potential threats and multiple hazards as soon as they are detected. NEMO’s national emergency risk manager, Captain Daniel Mendez led the discussions, as Arenas introduced the Early Warnings for All (EW4All) strategy.

The consultation revealed that many different national agencies are collecting data on the weather, rainfall, temperatures, water levels in rivers and underground aquifers, but there exists no one common platform on which all these government services can share their data, which is often collected in incompatible formats. One objective is to gather the political support to link activities funded by the Climate Risk Early Warning Systems (CREWS) in Belize with the EW4ALL programme, explained UNDRR programme management officer Jair Torres. EW4ALL is helping to analyze NEMO’s efforts to eliminate redundancies and duplication of effort, and to target assistance to the ones in greatest need, in the event of any natural disaster. The consultation also helped to identify gaps where there is no monitoring in place, or no system in place to warn the local community when an imminent disaster threatens them.

Climatologist Shanea Young of the National Meteorological Service described the work being done via a pilot project for the establishment of an early warning system for the Belize River watershed, funded by a USD$1.2 million grant from the Caribbean Development Bank.

UNDRR technical consultant Major Lloyd Jones helped analyze the gaps in our knowledge; and FORTIS safety officer Albert Roches described the early warning systems in place for a technological hazard, such as the failure of a hydro-electric dam. As discussions wrapped up on the 3rd day, UNDRR associate officer Emma Hansen helped examine and establish a checklist of early warning systems to verify that vulnerable populations are included—the young, senior citizens, the blind, and others who are physically handicapped, among others.   

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