Bolivia battles vast fires as Brazil’s Amazon crisis captures world attention
- Like his Brazilian counterpart, Bolivia’s leftist President Evo Morales has been criticised for his land-clearing policies
While global attention has been focused on fires burning across the Brazilian Amazon, neighbouring Bolivia is battling its own vast blazes, which have charred an area nearly as extensive as the nation of Lebanon.
At least 38,793 fires were burning across the country as of the weekend, and a total of 9,580 sq km had been burned so far this year, according to Cliver Rocha, director of the national Forests and Lands Authority.
While some of the fires were burning in Bolivia’s share of the Amazon, the largest blazes were in the Chiquitania region of southeastern Bolivia, a zone of dry forest, farmland and open prairies that has seen an expansion of farming and ranching in recent years.
The College of Biologists in the capital, La Paz, has estimated that the fires have destroyed US$1.1 billion worth of timber.
President Evo Morales, who has been under criticism for an allegedly slow response to the fires, has interrupted his re-election campaign to help oversee firefighting efforts involving more than 3,500 people, including soldiers, police and volunteers.
“Any cooperation is welcome, whether it comes from international organisations, celebrities or from the presidents who offered to help,” Morales said in Cochabamba, where he had been campaigning for a fourth term in office.
The leading opposition candidate, Carlos Mesa, also suspended his election campaign in response to the national crisis.
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Morales said he had been called by global leaders, including the presidents of Paraguay, Chile and Spain, as the G7 group of the world’s richest nations announced an aid package to fight Amazon fires.
Firefighters from Chile and Argentina as well as France, Spain and Russia were deployed to help fight the flames, according to local media reports.
The government has also contracted the world’s largest firefighting tanker plane from the United States, and officials say it has helped control expansion of the fires, but hot, dry and windy conditions have kept the blazes burning.
The Bolivian Friends of Nature Foundation has complained that the government ignored fire precautions needed at a time when the area – unlike the Amazon further north – was suffering drought conditions.
Morales in July issued a decree allowing controlled burns and clearing of lands. While people are supposed to obtain prior permission, authorities say most of the fires have been started illegally.
Morales also granted an amnesty for people caught burning fields illegally last year.
More than 2,700 fires had been registered by Bolivia’s early warning fire detection agency on Monday , in a swathe of flames across the country, from the Amazon north-east to the south-eastern Chaco biome.
Known in Bolivia as chaqueo, slash-and-burn is often practised by migrant small farmers as a cheap and easy way to clear land, she added.
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Blazes haves destroyed part of the Chiquitano forest, the Amazon and Bolivia’s Pantanal region which it shares with Brazil and Paraguay.
“It’s very sad for we indigenous peoples, we’ve lost our means of survival,” said Adolfo Chávez, the former president of the Bolivian indigenous confederation CIDOB.
He said Morales had turned his back on indigenous people by allowing the destruction of their habitat for the advance of agribusiness.
Last week, the pan-Amazon indigenous organisation COICA accused Morales, and his Brazilian counterpart, Jair Bolsonaro, of “gutting every environmental and social strategy to strengthen environmental governance of the Amazon”.
Bolsonaro a climate-change sceptic – has also faced criticism at home and abroad over his delayed response to the fires, and thousands have protested in Brazil in recent days to denounce the destruction.
But he received backing from US President Donald Trump, an ideological ally on the environment, China and trade.
The Brazilian president “is working very hard on the Amazon fires and in all respects doing a great job for the people of Brazil – Not easy. He and his country have the full and complete support of the USA!” Trump tweeted.
Bolsonaro responded, also on Twitter: “We’re fighting the wildfires with great success. Brazil is and will always be an international reference in sustainable development.”
Associated Press, The Guardian, Agence France-Presse
