ESCI-375

Belize and its Economy—a Brief Overview from A Sustainability Standpoint

What do we produce in Belize?

  • Bananas
  • Textiles
  • Citrus
  • Sugar
  • Papayas
  • TOURISM

GDP: define: Gross domestic product—market value of all goods and services produced in a country

Commonly used as a measure of economic development—why? Easily measured, easy to compare across countries.

What does GDP fail to account for?

  • Informal economic activity—drugs! Hand-me downs, etc.
  • Distribution of income
  • Quality of life—social benefits, employment, etc
  • Environmental damage and SUSTAINABILITY!
  • For example, GDP does not include the value of non-market resources and benefits of preservation

GDP per capita: GDP/# of people

GDP per capita Belize in 2003 is 6,950

Why is GDP per capita not a good measure of economic well being?

It doesn’t account for income distribution—Gini index works on this

Social Measure: Human Development Index: combines

  • Life expectancy
  • Literacy rate
  • School enrollment ratio
  • GDP per capita

Belize is 91 out of 177 countries in 2003 for the HDI ranking

Opportunities and Threats

  1. Access to capital

What do economists mean by access to capital?

What is financial capital?

Why is debt such a huge problem in Belize?

2003: Total debt service is 13.6% of GDP.

This means that 13.6% of GDP is going to pay interest on debt!

If GDP is 1 Billion, this means that 136 Million dollars are just being spent on interest payments.

This leaves less money for things such as

  • Social services
  • Schools
  • Infrastructure
  1. Global environmental change

Belize is considered a Small Island Developing State because of its low-lying coast, coastal communities, and open economy

SIDS are considered extremely vulnerable to climate change!

Coral reefs are extremely vulnerable to climate change

Most of the tourists in Belize come visit to see the coral reefs, as they get damaged from climate change, so will the tourism economy

  1. Trade liberalization

Comparative advantage: specialization in the production of goods in which a nation is most efficient

Theoretically, if there are 2 countries producing the same 2 goods, and one is more efficient than the other, they can produce the thing they are best at producing, and swap

Talk about a simplifying example, such as cars and bananas and the US and Belize!

Friedman’s 2 Stages to increase standard of living:

  1. Open the economy to free market, export-led growth, privatization, and labor reforms
  2. Deepen process to improve infrastructure, education, services, institutions, and culture

What are some ways you think that Belize can keep working toward stage 1, so that they can get to stage 2 in a sustainable way?

  • Niche in sustainable agriculture
  • Niche in eco-tourism…

What else?

Belize has a tremendous amount of natural resources.

One way to measure the value of these resources is through non-market valuation:

An economic method for valuing goods and services not commonly bought and sold in a market

Revealed Preference

Stated Preference

These non-market benefits are NOT included in GDP

Neither are the non-market costs of extraction and the pollution that can be caused by oil extraction

One final way is with creative environmental policies that address the resources that Belize has, while recognizing the economic constraints that it faces:

Taxes on pollution

Subsidies for environmentally friendly operations

Environmental education

Sustainability training for business owners and tour guides

Lecture NotesPage 1 of 3