Manuela Picq reports for Intercontinental Cry: The bolivian lowlands have been burning for over a month. Over 4 million hectares of biodiverse forests has already burned to ash–an area larger than Switzerland. Uncontrolled, the fires continue to spread across protected areas and Indigenous territories, provoking an incommensurable loss of life. The tragedy is increasingly referred to as…
Category: Environment
Bolivia Is Burning. Who Will Stop Its Fires?
Manuela Lavinas reports for The New York Times: Ms. Lavinas Picq is a specialist in indigenous politics and Latin America. President Evo Morales must issue a national disaster declaration to control the fires and avoid further loss of life. Fires have been ravaging the Bolivian lowlands for over a month. Nearly ten million acres have already burned,…
Bolivia’s forest fires expose risks for environmental reporters
John Otis/CPJ Andes Correspondent reports for Committee to Protect Journalists: When Pablo Ortiz, a veteran reporter for El Deber, the main daily in the eastern city of Santa Cruz, set off to cover massive forest fires, he didn’t realize how dangerous the assignment would be. At one point Ortiz was alongside volunteer firefighters as shifting winds…
Firefighters in Bolivia lose hope of taming blazes as burned area doubles
Channel News Asia reports: CONCEPCION, Bolivia: Bolivian volunteer firefighters, exhausted from battling blazes sweeping rapidly across the country’s lowlands, are starting to lose hope and retreat from the front lines of some infernos in the drought-stricken region. The fires this year are Bolivia’s worst in at least two decades, with the size of burned land…
UMSA declares the Chepete-Bala project unfeasible
El Diario reports: Study warns of environmental risk The document indicates that the construction of the hydroelectric plant will cause a serious impact on the populations of the area, such as Rurrenabaque and San Buenaventura According to ENDE, the Bala project would guarantee energy sovereignty for our country. Meanwhile, Waldo Albarracín says the consultancy study…
FAN: fires in Bolivia burned down 4.1 million hectares
AFP reports for Los Tiempos: Aerial view of smoke coming out of a fire near Charagua in Bolivia, on the border with Paraguay, which was recorded in August. | File photo | AFP The uncontrollable fires in Bolivia since August devastated 4.1 million hectares of forest and grassland, the private NGO Friends of Nature Foundation…
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