Belize: Environmental Challenges

Belize is home to the second-longest barrier reef system in the world, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1996 that runs along most of the country's 386-kilometer coastline. The reef supports roughly 70 hard coral species, 36 soft coral species, and some 500 fish species, though scientists estimate that more than 40 percent of Belize's coral cover has been damaged since 1998 because of hurricanes, warming ocean temperatures, and the coral bleaching that follows.

Inland, deforestation has reduced forest cover from roughly 76 percent of national territory in 1980 to about 56 percent by 2020, with satellite studies estimating annual forest loss near 10,000 hectares at its peak. Clearing has been far more limited inside Belize's protected areas than outside them. Mangrove ecosystems along the coast, which buffer storms and nurture marine life, remain extensive but face pressure from coastal development.

Hurricanes are a recurring hazard: a 1931 storm killed more than 1,000 people, and Hurricane Hattie's destruction of Belize City in 1961 led the government to relocate the capital to Belmopan. In response to mounting environmental pressures, Belize has pursued relatively assertive conservation policy, becoming the first country to ban bottom trawling in 2010 and later prohibiting offshore oil drilling near the reef, moves that have helped keep more than a third of its land and roughly a fifth of its marine and coastal areas under some form of protection.