The seaweed industry has grown rapidly over the last couple of years, yet people farming seaweed in Belize’s waters are technically doing so without legal authority.
Chief Executive Officer of the Ministry of Blue Economy and Marine Conservation, Beverly Wade, confirmed at today’s Fourth Blue Economy Climate Resilience Forum that a draft Mariculture Bill is now in its final stages.
“It was recently consulted on, and now it’s the Fisheries Department doing the finalisation of that,” Wade said. “We understand that that was one of the constraints for us to really move on with the development of the mariculture sector, not just from the people who are farming mariculture, but also, if you want to attract the kind of investment into that area, you require the requisite regulatory framework.”
The legislation, once passed, will create a permitting and application process, grant farmers a level of tenure over their designated areas, and establish oversight mechanisms for marine-based farming operations.
“What it means is that if you decide that you want to now go and farm seaweed… it lays out your permitting process, your application process… and creates the enabling environment for that,” Wade added.
The absence of regulation has not stopped the booming industry, although informally. Entrepreneurs are increasingly producing seaweed-based products.
Wade said the ministry is working in parallel on product development and market access to ensure that once the legal framework is in place, farmers have somewhere to sell what they grow. “We don’t want a situation where people are producing seaweed, but at the end of the day they just have their seaweed sitting there,” she said.
