Why we need to pay urgent attention to one of Mother Earth’s great tropical dry forests
Bolivia's not-so-well-known Chiquitano forest is being rapidly deforested for soy beans and beef
Standing there right in the middle of it, in eastern Bolivia’s Santa Cruz region, it really didn’t look much at all. Not as immediately captivating or somehow mysterious as the forests of the lowland Amazon or cloud forests of the eastern slopes of the Andes, not tropical, not biodiverse. Other adjectives - rather disparaging ones - came to mind instead: scrubby, thorny, inhospitable. . .
Yet, of course, appearances can be deceptive. This was the Chiquitano, described by scientists at Kew Gardens in the UK as the “world’s largest intact tropical dry forest”, and by the Bolivian NGO Fundación para la Conservación del Bosque Chiquitano (FCBC) as the “last great tropical dry forest in the world.” Ultimately stretching for more than 20 million hectares across Bolivia, I had found myself there in 2022 and 2023 as a consultant for the UK-headquartered NGO Global Witness investigating the country’s under-reported deforestation tragedy, its booming soy trade, and the giant private US company Cargill, one of the biggest players in the global food industry.
Tropical dry forests extend for approximately one million km² around the world, it is estimated, and more than half are in South America. The threats to them, to say nothing of their conservation value, are not widely understood.
“In their entirety, the dry forests of the New World may contain as many or possibly more species than the Amazon rain forest,” British tropical botanist and biogeographer Toby Pennington and other researchers wrote in a paper in Current Biology in 2018. “Regarding agricultural expansion in dry forest and savanna areas in Latin America as unproblematic for biodiversity conservation because they are outside the Amazon is dangerously wide of the mark, especially given they have already suffered far greater deforestation than Amazonia.”
“There is a general perception that the most urgent conservation issues in the tropics concern rain forests but their disproportionate scientific, policy and public profiles have distracted attention from the vulnerability of tropical dry forests and savannas,” Pennington et al continued. “The high population density in tropical drylands has led to widespread ecosystem impact and destruction. For example, in Latin America, because of their fertile soils, less than 10% of tropical dry forests remain intact. This stands in stark contrast with the Amazonian rain forest, which remains 80% intact.”
Never heard of the Chiquitano? Obviously not as well-known as the Amazon, nor even the Gran Chaco, it goes somewhat under the radar. Here are five reasons why we need to pay urgent attention to what is happening there:
1 It is being very rapidly deforested, with large-scale soy bean cultivation, despite the poor soils, and cattle-ranching for beef considered to be the main drivers. Out-of-control fires - often started to clear the forest for agriculture - have been a major cause too, particularly in 2019, when Bolivia was hit by one of the worst environmental disasters in its history and massive areas burned. According to a recent article by mostly FCBC researchers published in the journal Sustainability, almost three million hectares had been lost as of 2022. The Chiquitano is “severely vulnerable and under considerable pressure, which should generate worldwide attention and concern, considering its importance in terms of biodiversity and climate,” the Sustainability article ran.
2 Cargill, as highlighted in a report by Global Witness last September, to which I contributed, has a major presence in the Chiquitano. Most significantly, that report demonstrated that the company, backed by some of the world’s most well-known banks, has been buying soy beans from Mennonite communities where 1000s of hectares of forest have been razed over the last few years, despite public commitments that its supply-chains would become “deforestation-free” first made years ago, and despite a rising number of financial institutions ostensibly becoming more interested in lowering or ending their portfolios’ exposure to deforestation. In addition, Global Witness revealed the existence of an internal Cargill map showing the company’s apparent openness to buy soy from areas that currently remain standing forest and would mean a further three million hectares being knocked down.
3 Despite the Chiquitano becoming such an obvious deforestation hotspot, Cargill, together with 13 other giants of the global food industry, appear to be completely ignoring it in their public commitments. In their heavily-criticised “Agriculture Sector Roadmap to 1.5°C” - released at the United Nations’ “COP27” climate change conference in Egypt in 2022 - Cargill et al committed to eliminating deforestation for soy production in the Amazon, the Chaco and the Brazilian Cerrado by 2025, but made no mention of the Chiquitano.
4 The Chiquitano was singled out for special mention by the International Union for Conservation of Nature three years ago when , while declaring South America’s tropical dry forests in general a conservation priority, it described the Chiquitano’s “deforestation rates [as] increasing and alarming.” The ancestral territory of the indigenous Ayoreo, Chiquitano and Guarayo people, it is estimated to contain more than 3,000 plant species and roughly 1,200 mammal, bird, amphibian and reptile species, including jaguars, pumas and ocelots, as well as endemic species such as the Chiquitano frog, or Ameerega boehmei. According to the recent Sustainability article, dozens of protected areas are in or include parts of the Chiquitano, one of them being the world-famous Noel Kempff Mercado National Park.
5 Although there are many reasons why the Chiquitano is being deforested so rapidly, a key factor is Bolivian government policy which has been vigorously promoting large-scale agricultural expansion in various different ways. This has been happening despite the country’s well-known “Mother Earth” rhetoric on the international stage, and pioneering domestic legislation on rights for “Mother Earth” herself and nature. Somewhat under the radar too is that Bolivia, beaten only by Brazil and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, has had the third highest deforestation rate in the world for the last few years - an estimated 40% of it happening in the Chiquitano.