Bolivia: Environmental Challenges

Bolivia's rugged geography, spanning high Andean plateaus and lowland Amazonian rainforest, has left the country exposed to a range of environmental pressures. Forest cover, concentrated mostly in the eastern lowlands, fell from roughly 57.8 million hectares in 1990 to about 50.8 million hectares by 2020, driven by cattle ranching, mechanized soy farming, and small-scale agricultural expansion. Tree cover loss accelerated further in subsequent years, with annual losses rising from roughly 1,400 square kilometers in 2001 to more than 18,000 square kilometers in 2024. Coca cultivation has also contributed to clearing, since planting a single hectare of coca has been estimated to require clearing roughly four hectares of forest.

Bolivia is home to an estimated one-fifth of the world's tropical glaciers, and these have retreated sharply as temperatures have warmed; researchers have documented the Chacaltaya glacier losing about half its surface area and two-thirds of its volume since 1990. Because mountain glaciers help supply water to cities such as La Paz, their decline has raised concerns about long-term water security, a strain compounded by uneven access to water resources that boiled over in the 1999 Cochabamba Water War. Habitat loss from ranching and agriculture, along with illegal wildlife trade, has placed hundreds of endemic species on international threatened-species lists.

Government responses have been mixed: Bolivia submitted a national reference level for deforestation emissions to the United Nations climate process in 2023, yet protections for some reserves were loosened in the 2010s, including a 2015 decree permitting hydrocarbon activity inside protected areas and a 2017 decision altering the status of the Isiboro Sécure National Park. Waste management remains limited nationwide, with only a small share of landfills regulated and recycling still a minor part of overall waste disposal.