National Climate Resilience Investment Plan.

The National Climate Resilience Investment Plan is a national policy with a cross-sectoral approach. The purpose of the policy is to achieve: (I) capacity building for data and information for resilience activities, (II) resilient economy and livelihoods, (III) resilient critical infrastructure, (IV) enabling policy and regulation in place, and (V) coordination, management and monitoring and evaluation of resilience investments.
Adaptation to climate change, and climate variability, and comprehensive disaster risk management will be integrated into development planning. To this end, national spatial data infrastructure will be developed to support the assessment of climate change impacts and integration of disaster risk reduction into national development planning processes. In addition, the network of observation stations will be improved to assist with collection and analysis of hydro-meteorological data. The resilience of the women and men and economy of Belize to the impacts of climate change, climate variability and weather-related hazards will be increased through information dissemination to support smart decisions. Feasibility studies will be carried out for the most critical of the infrastructure resulting in measures to improve their performance and reliability during and after a major hazard. Such measures will be implemented in a comprehensive manner to manage and maintain these critical assets and their functionality in order to improve the resilience of the most vulnerable communities and reduce the disruption by improving access and quality of physical determinants to health and well-being. Moreover, climate change risk considerations will be mainstreamed into the water, energy and wastewater infrastructure to maintain the availability of their services to an acceptable level during hazards. Health infrastructure will also be improved to provide accessible and affordable treatment for all, with a special emphasis on the children and elderly. Coastal zone management will be strengthened by identifying locations under high-risk and proposing structural, land-use and bioecological measures to prevent coastal erosion and to protect coastal habitats. The resilience of coastal and marine communities and their livelihoods to climate change will be increased by implementing policy and regulatory measures. Awareness and preparedness to climate change will be increased amongst population and economic sectors. Adaptation measures will be taken to build the resilience of farmers and farming communities against increased temperatures, extended dry periods, more intense rainfall and hurricanes. In addition, the productivity of small farmers will be increased by helping them through identification of suitable varieties, promotion of good agricultural practices, identification of viable markets, promoting soil conservation practices, and increasing public awareness. Moreover, poor farmers will get access to agricultural land and the agricultural extension services will be provided to all farmers with a gender equality principle to build their farming capacity. The resilience of fishing communities will be increased to enable them to generate an acceptable income and to cope with economic losses due to natural disasters. Furthermore, the institutional capacity and the legal and regulatory framework will be strengthened for comprehensive disaster management, risk information and education will be improved to inform decision-makers for development, and a comprehensive sector-wide program will be developed and implemented for climate change adaptation and mitigation. The disaster risk management cycle of prevention, mitigation, preparedness and response will be implemented by urban and rural communities and their local governments. Needs assessment will be conducted to identify the most vulnerable and take their needs into consideration during planning in order to reduce vulnerability of poor and remote communities to the impacts of hazards.
The Ministry of Finance and Economic Development shall be responsible for overseeing the development and implementation of the National Climate Resilience Investment Plan as a National Focal Agency.