CartoDB Climate Grant support of the WWF

We are happy to announce the CartoDB Climate Grant support of a WWF Belize project, Opportunities for Climate-compatible Tourism Development in Belize.

WWF-Guatemala/Mesoamerican Reef (@WWF_Belize) faces an important challenge: How can they achieve sustainable growth of Belize’s coastal tourism market while maintaining healthy resilient coastal-marine ecosystems? On top of that, how can they maintain sustainable tourism in the face of impacts due to climate change. From these questions comes their project, which will tackle several issues related with tourism (one of the main income sources for the country) and the conservation of natural resources:

• In Belize, coral reefs, mangroves and beaches are the cornerstone of the tourism industry.
• The challenge faced by decision-makers is how best to move forward with tourism development while maintaining healthy, functioning ecosystems that support further tourism, sustain livelihoods and provide resilience to climate change.
• Understanding and communicating the ideas depends on mapping

At CartoDB, we are proud to know that such a great organization chooses to use our technology to develop projects of such importance.

What will the WWF build

The project will generate visualizations to show the areas of the Belize coastline most vulnerable to impacts due to climate change, and the role of tourism in those areas. They will be using CartoDB as a tool to deliver dynamic data and maps. They will take advantage of the analytical capabilities of the platform to power features of web based tool to explore the data. In the end, the goal is to reduce the negative impact of tourism on Belize’s environment by promoting practices improve both the environment and the tourism sector.

About WWF

The mission of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) is to stop the degradation of the planet’s natural environment and build a future in which humans live in harmony with nature by conserving the world biological diversity, ensuring that the use of renewable natural resources is sustainable, and promoting the reduction of pollution and wasteful consumption.

About CartoDB Climate Grants

CartoDB Climate Grants were developed as part of the White House’s Climate Data Initiative. Through the Climate Grants, CartoDB aims to support a number of nonprofit projects that tackle issues related to climate change. Head over to cartodb.com/climate to learn more.

You can check examples of how other organizations are using CartoDB to visualize their data on maps in our brand new gallery.

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