‘Blue Economy’ Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification (MRV) System (Belize)

Building on the 3Ps Belize pilot project, the team is developing a cross-sectoral Monitoring, Reporting and Verification system to track progress toward both people- and nature-focused targets, supporting results-based financing of the country’s sustainable development. Collaborators: Belize Blue Bond and Finance Permanence Unit and the Inter-American Development Bank. Funding: Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability.

In this phase of work, NatCap is working with the team to develop three nature-positive and people-positive KPIs:

• Ecosystem health and extent – for corals, seagrass and mangroves
• Number of people protected from coastal hazards by green infrastructure (i.e., natural ecosystems can mitigate flooding, storm surge, sea level rise) 
• Blue economy jobs

NatCap is helping establish the baseline values for each of these, as well as the methodologies for the Belizean government to use in updating them over time. For the “ecosystem health and extent” and “people protected from coastal hazards” KPIs, NatCap is creating a new InVEST plugin that links the Habitat Risk Assessment model to the Coastal Vulnerability model (the team will validate the baseline modeling results with empirical data on coral and mangroves health conditions). For the “blue economy jobs” KPI, NatCap is collaborating with the Government of Belize to align the survey tool designed during the previous phase of work, with existing survey efforts carried by the government, to ensure this work can continue in the future.

Photo credit: DavePrimov, iStock.