The Bolivian Amazon burns in the Shadow of COVID-19
In the mist of the global depression consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic social media has been overrun with news stories reporting the positive upshot that “Nature is Healing” while the human race cowers indoors under quarantine. However, anecdotal evidence of wildlife wondering carefree in cities, such as dolphins in the clear waters of the Venice canals, hides a darker reality.
With governments and communities occupied with controlling the the COVID-19 pandemic, the Amazon rainforest is open to renewed assault and deforestation by commercial interests. In Bolivia, the past months of national quarantine, locking down daily movement and transportation in the entire country, has coincided with a dramatic increase in forest fires used to clear tropical forests for agribusiness expansion.
In May, the Bolivian government’s Authority of Forests and Lands admitted that fires have increased 43 percent compared to the same period the previous year, between April 29th and May 9th. Nearly 20 percent of the 1,369 fires registered occurred in protected forest reserves. The government’s admission follows in response to denunciations made by the Fundación Solón that April saw the largest annual increase in forest fires in the previous ten years. The month registered 3,926 fires according to data reported by the Bolivian Ministry of Environment and Water.
Alarm over the recent spike in forests fires raises concern that the Amazon may suffer a further repeat of the devastating land clearance fires witnessed in 2019 that burned an estimated 5 million acres in Bolivia. Like in neighboring Brazil, the 2019 forest fires in Bolivia were motivated by transnational agribusiness interests seeking to expand soya cultivation and cattle ranching.
While international coverage of the massive 2019 Amazonian fires focused on Brazil and the polarizing figure of rightwing President Jair Bolsonaro, the Bolivian Amazon was equally devastated. Forest fires were concentrated in indigenous Chiquitanía region were community volunteers fought to save wildlife and control fires deliberately set to promote land trafficking.
The dismissive and late response by the government of then leftwing President Evo Morales to control the Chiquitanía fires precipitated protests across the country and a month-long march by indigenous organizations demanding international aid while accusing Morales of committing “ecocide”. Indigenous communities and civil society organizations blamed the fires on the recent Presidential Decree 3973 permitting large scale land clearance fires.
Morales’ culpable policies behind the Chiquitanía fires followed in line with his political realignment during his 14-year presidency from a champion of indigenous rights to a promoter of monopoly agribusiness, all to the detriment of indigenous demands. Morales’ actual policies starkly contrasted with his international celebrity as an indigenous protector of the Pachamama or “Mother Nature”. The further blow to Morales’ credibility by the Chiquitanía fires directly contributed to his poor performance during the subsequent disputed reelection results in October 2019.
Evo Morales’ resigned in November 2019 following protests and revelations of fraud in his reelection, succeeded by the rightwing opposition senator Jeanine Añez. While international observers have focused on accusations of Añez’s interim presidency being the product of a military coup, in reality, the more consequential scandal of Añez’s government is her continuity with the previously corrupt and environmentally destructive policies of Evo Morales.
In 2019, Jeanine Añez joined protestors and indigenous activists from her home region of the Bolivian Amazon, Beni, in denouncing government policies during the Chiquitanía fires. Upon assuming the presidency, she symbolically raised the indigenous Amazonian flag, the Patujú, in the Presidential Palace alongside the Andean Whipala flag. However, as a matter of policy, she has refused to repeal the unpopular Decree 3973 permitting massive land clearance fires.
Like Morales before her, Añez has promoted policies to the benefit of elite and monopoly agribusiness. Her short administration, now occupied with controlling the COVID-19 pandemic, has been marked by similar scandals and corruption that were endemic to the later years of Morales’ rule: from nepotism to embezzlement, the permitting of genetically modified crops, and the suppression of free speech. Additionally, she reversed her initial promise as an interim government not to run for the presidency in new elections. Presidential elections have been postponed from their initial date in May due to the pandemic.
Alarm over continuing threats to the Amazon in Bolivia under both leftwing and rightwing governments is an instructive reminder during the pensive times of the COVID-19 pandemic that effective environmental policy does not come through a simple change of political leadership. Rather, fundamental economic and social reform is required.
Devin Beaulieu is an anthropologist and lives in Bolivia.
