If we think about tropical deforestation in Latin America, countries like Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay and perhaps even Mexico tend to come to mind. But Bolivia? Not so much.
Yet last year Bolivia - so often and unhelpfully dubbed “Andean” - lost almost eight times more tropical primary forest than Peru, almost 15 times more than Colombia, more than 16 times more than Mexico, 36 times more than Paraguay and 70 times more than Ecuador, according to the US NGO World Resources Institute.
Indeed, in 2024 only Brazil lost more tropical primary forest than Bolivia - not just in Latin America, but across the entire world. Last year Bolivia was way, way ahead of even the likes of Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
In an attempt to draw attention to this veritable environmental and humanitarian crisis, the UK-based Gecko Project (TGP) has made a film titled Bolivia Burning: Inside a Latin American Ecocide. After being screened at various venues in Bolivia over the last few months, as well as on Bolivian national television and in Berlin last week at the Long Night of the Climate festival, it is being released internationally today on TGP’s YouTube channel.
The film, a 52-minute documentary, follows myself and Bolivian lawyer and activist Alvaro Bozo García into the Chiquitano Dry Forest in the vast Santa Cruz region where over the last few decades the large majority of the country’s deforestation has been occurring. Our visit was made mid-to-late 2024, during two of the worst three months for forest fires in what turned out to be the worst year for fires in Bolivia’s history. According to a report earlier this year by the NGO TIERRA, more than 12.5 million hectares of the country were burned - the single most appalling environmental disaster in Bolivia’s 200 year history.
The main thrust of the film is our discovery of a brand new Mennonite colony - not on any map at the time - in the far east of Santa Cruz, very close to the border with Brazil. There are more Mennonite colonies in Bolivia than any other country in South America, and they play a key role in the country’s soy industry - one of the biggest drivers of Bolivian deforestation. According to a report last year by the NGO CEDLA, at least 16% - almost certainly an underestimate - of all the deforestation in the country between 2016 and 2022 happened in Mennonite colonies.
“What was it like here when you arrived?” I ask the leader of the new colony in one scene of the film, as we stand in a recently-bulldozed clearing, with felled tree trunks lying around us and a few of them still smoking after fires had torn through a couple of weeks before.
“Beautiful, green, very humid,” comes the reply.
“All forest?”
“All forest.”
Bolivia Burning also shines a light on the importance of Bolivian legislation, regulations and government policies encouraging or facilitating the fires and deforestation, as well as the role of companies like Cargill, the US agribusiness giant, which has operated in the country for decades and is one of the biggest exporters of Bolivian soy. For years, Cargill has been claiming to be concerned about deforestation and saying it will eliminate it from its supply chains.
Towards the end of the film, we visit an indigenous community, Lomerío, which is impacted by the deforestation going on around it but has managed to preserve much of its own forest. It’s a powerful, if obvious reminder that there are alternatives - despite all the government and agribusiness public relations bilge claiming that knocking down vast swathes of the forest to grow enormous fields of monoculture crops with all manner of imported, toxic inputs is the only way for anyone to farm and the country as a whole to progress.
To watch Bolivia Burning click here.