CIVICUS speaks with Andrea Barrientos, Senator of the Citizen Community (Comunidad Ciudadana) party for the department of Cochabamba, about recent fires in four of Bolivia’s nine departments. An estimated four million hectares have been affected by the fires, causing huge losses of flora and fauna and forcing Indigenous communities to leave their homes.
Andrea Barrientos is the main opposition politician who has complained about the government’s inaction in the face of forest fires.
What caused the recent forest fires in Bolivia?
The vast majority of the fires have occurred in protected areas: the Isiboro Secure Indigenous Territory and National Park (TIPNIS), the Madidi National Park and the Noel Kempff Mercado National Park. These are humid forests, which should not burn. It’s clear that these are arson attacks.
In dry forests, where spontaneous fires do occur, the source of the heat is identified and eliminated. But this is not possible in the case of arson, behind which there are powerful economic interests protected by politically powerful people.
It is believed these fires are being set for three reasons: to plant coca, in the case of TIPNIS in Cochabamba, for illegal mining, in La Paz and Beni, and in all three cases for land grabbing. For these reasons, more than three million hectares of protected areas have been burned.
A very worrying fact is that the Authority of Fiscalisation and Social Control of Forests and Land and the National Institute of Agrarian Reform have not provided geolocalised information on the fires, so neither the fire brigade nor the departmental government has had the possibility of identifying those responsible and imposing sanctions. This is a case of conspiracy to commit a crime and a cover-up by the central government.
Nobody has done anything. We have practically had to wait for rain before the fires were finally put out.
What have been the effects of the fires?
The result has been a considerable loss of biodiversity. The minimisation of the fires and the lack of response from the authorities is ecocide. Unfortunately, although laws can be changed, the biodiversity that has already been lost cannot be recovered.
The four million hectares and 10 million animals burned will have a negative impact on food security. The effects of the fires come on top of the floods and landslides caused by the rains that have placed seven of the country’s nine departments on orange alert.
The impacts on human health are imminent. Without forest there is no water, and the mercury-laced water left by mining is undrinkable.
What are your demands to the authorities?
We are demanding transparency and action. As long as there is corruption, nothing will change. To put out a fire you simply have to go to the source and put it out. As long as there is no will to act, the fires will continue.
Civil society support is vital for the government to recognise the fires and the loss of biodiversity. In four departments of Bolivia people have mobilised, and this has been a turning point. On 13 November, people took to the streets demanding that the authorities declare a natural disaster in the face of the increasing magnitude of the forest fires.
We need a government that thinks of our Amazon not as a land occupied by forest that needs to be cut down, nor as a source of income, but as an area preserved for the world. This is a vision that, unfortunately, our current national government does not have.
Citizen Community has launched popular actions – legal mechanisms that allow citizens to participate actively in the protection of collective rights and interests related to heritage, the environment, public space, security and public health, among others – and has initiated lawsuits for the protection of the environment in Madidi National Park. At first these initiatives were rejected by communities because the negative effects were still abstract to them, but now these same communities are looking to us for help because they are suffering the consequences of illegal mining and drug production in what used to be a forest. They realise that mercury is having a catastrophic impact on their lives and is making them sick with cancer.
Civic space in Bolivia is rated ‘obstructed’ by the CIVICUS Monitor.
Get in touch with Andrea Barrientos through her Facebook page and follow @AndreaBSahonero on Twitter and Instagram.
The opinions expressed in this interview are those of the interviewee and do not necessarily reflect the views of CIVICUS.
