Geography and Economics of Belize

Size  Belize is small -- about the size and shape of New Hampshire in the U.S.  It's 80 miles wide at the widest, and about 175 miles from the Rio Hondo, the northern border shared with Mexico, to the Sassoon River, the southern border shared with Guatemala.  It has about 23,000 square kilometers.

Population Density  The Belize population is officially somewhere around 250,000.  Unofficially, including illegal aliens (mostly from Guatemala) it may push 300,000.  This gives it a population density of about 13 people per square kilometer.  New Hampshire has over a million folks in the same area. (!)  (Click here to look at a table which makes some other comparisons. 

Landscape  The landscape of the northern half of the country resembles the scenery in The Dogs of War, filmed here in Belize in 1980.  Most of it is grassland or Savanah (a fancy word for marsh/swamp) with high grass (some times sugar cane, wild or cultivated) which grows up to ten or twelve feet.  It is "jungle" in the same sense that any heavily forested area, complete with underbrush, can be called "jungle. "  A brief but comprehensive description of the geography is located on the Belize Government website here.

Flora & FaunaThe flora are tropical.  In the north, trees don't exceed 50 ft in height, so the rain forest is called "sub-tropical", and only has two tiers.  (Three-tiered rainforests do exist down south, however.)  There are over 500 species of birds here, many of which do not exist in the US.   

Products.  The most significant product exported from Belize is Belizeans, who have migrated to the US by the thousands.  They are good workers, generally peaceful, and most importantly, they send money home to keep Belize green.  Other exported products include bananas, sugar, and farm-raised shrimp -- now the largest export.    

Politics  Belize is a member of the British Commonweath, and is a constitutional parliamentary democracy. You can get a briefing on politics from the current government (GOB)  here and here..  I will discuss the vagaries of local politics here.  For an ongoing presentation of the political association, read the Independent Reformer.

If you want a concise summary of geographic and economic facts on Belize, the best, most up-to-date  source is the CIA World Fact Book.  I use it constantly to compare Belize with other Caribbean neighbors. 

This page and all pages on this website are Copyright, CASELab, Inc. 1989-1999, 2000, Sr_Ric 2001-2008. See Copyright Details.  All rights reserved.