Ministry of Blue Economy explores waste-to-energy for sargassum

By Zoila Palma:  The Ministry of Blue Economy is exploring waste-to-energy to address incoming sargassum affecting the coastline.

“We are frustrated. Sargassum… the experience we are having with sargassum is the first of its kind, we have never been here before. Like the region, we are also finding solutions to how to address that.

I will say that we are now encouraged because we now have a project that is in place that we are looking at implementing that is now going to look at waste-to-energy for sargassum. It is a project that is being funded by SIDS DOCK-the UN SIDS DOCK-and it is going to first look at the sargassum problem in the northern part of our country, particularly San Pedro and Ambergris Caye,” CEO Beverly Wade explained to 7news Belize.

CEO Wade said that the Ministry has an action plan for Southern Belize to address post-sargassum and the erosion problems.

“It is like the perfect storm that is hitting us right now: we have all this climate variability because of climate change, we also now have sargassum. And sargassum has really made the erosion issue even worse in the south, and so we have to now address them together, parallel. So yes, we are hoping in this next quarter that is going up that we will be able to see now on-the-ground interventions with regards to the south, especially in the Placencia area as it relates to the erosion with the sargassum,” CEO Wade added.

Unprecedented amounts of sargassum have blanketed coastal communities across the Caribbean and Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula this year.

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