Living Land

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Bolivia is the fifteenth richest country in the world in

forest cover, and the eighth richest in biodiversity. In 2010,

the estimates for surface covered by different types of forest

in Bolivia reached 46 million hectares. However, recent

studies by the Bolivian non-governmental organization

(NGO) Fundación Amigos de la Naturaleza (the Union of

Friends of the Nature), show that between 2000 and 2010

1.8 million hectares of wood was cleared in Bolivia. Even

though deforestation has decreased since the 1990s, when

250-300 million hectares were lost each year especially due

to the expansion of agriculture, the yearly rate between 2000

and 2010 was still as high as 200 million hectares per year.

Bolivia has a wide system of protected areas, which covers

around 15 per cent of the country. The national parks and areas

cover the full range of the different terrains and ecosystems to

be found in Bolivia, but unfortunately most of the country’s

valuable resources are hidden in their grounds. Therefore, the

protected areas are also exposed to deforestation.

The Bolivian Government has taken different approaches

to reducing deforestation and helping the local people to

obtain a sustainable way of living in harmony with the

country’s forests. The Royal Embassy of Denmark in Bolivia

has assisted in the Government’s focus on reforestation

through the Danish development cooperation, Danida.

A new way to support local capacity building are the

programmes financed by Danida to strengthen the civil society

in order to promote sustainable forest management. The Civil

Society Fund for sustainable forest management (FOSC, its

acronym in Spanish for the Fund Manager in Bolivia), finances

three Civil Society Organizations in three prioritized regions

of Bolivia: Northern La Paz, Pando/Riberalta and Chiquitanía.

It aims at strengthen the civil society to adapt to and mitigate

climate change in the 3 regions and to improve their liveli-

hoods and incomes. The purpose is to develop local capacities

for sustainable forest management to reduce deforestation.

The three programmes began in May 2015 and will last 30

months until October 2017.

The programme in Northern La Paz takes place in the middle

of the national park Madidi, where the Wildlife Conservation

Society (WCS) has been working since the late 1990s. The park

is over 15,000 square miles, and covers the tropical Andes in

Bolivia. The landscape and ecosystems in the park vary from

moist tropical rainforest to grasslands and montane forests. The

biodiversity also shows the vast diversity of the park: here reside

1,100 bird species and 300 mammal species, among them jaguars

and Andean bears. WCS finds that the biggest challenges in the

park in regard to deforestation are the building of roads, hydro-

electric projects, illegal logging, mining and agriculture.

Image: Kathrine Dalsgaard

Local communities are the prime beneficiaries of the different development programmes in Bolivia

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