Monitoring Progress Toward a Prosperous, Sustainable Future: Belize Case Study

This document outlines the activities and results of the Belize pilot project under the Regional Technical Cooperation (TC), “Transforming Policy and Investment through Mainstreaming Rapid Approaches for Natural Capital Assessment and Accounting.” This TC was funded by the Global Environmental Facility (GEF), implemented by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), and executed by Stanford University. The main beneficiaries and co-designers of this TC are Belize's Ministry of Blue Economy and Marine Conservation, the Belize Blue Bond Finance Permanence Unit, and the Ministry of Economic Transformation, and the technical work was led by the Natural Capital Project team (Stanford University), with WWF-Belize as a key collaborator. This work also received funding from the Gordon and Betty Moore and a National Science Foundation grant.

This pilot project in Belize conducted cross-sectoral engagement to co-develop a key performance indicator framework linking nature finance with socio-economic outcomes. The team also designed a Blue Economy Jobs monitoring survey tool and laid out plans for a centralized dashboard to track progress of those KPIs while strengthening capacity to use these tools and approaches through workshops and virtual meetings. This work is informing a number of results-based finance mechanisms that support both nature and people in Belize.