LA PAZ, Aug 29 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Fires have destroyed 1.2 million hectares of forest and grasslands in Bolivia this year, the government said.
The news comes after President Evo Morales suspended his re-election campaign to direct the government’s response to a growing environmental disaster in the Bolivian portion of the Amazon rainforest, where wildfires have been raging since May.
Bolivia’s total forest area has been steadily shrinking in recent years, from 47.3 million hectares in 2005 to 43.8 million hectares in 2017, according to a study published by Bolivian environmental and human rights organization the Solon Foundation.
The Friends of Nature Foundation NGO says the true extent of forest destruction this year is 1.8 million hectares.
Ecologists have attacked a law promulgated by Morales that offers incentives to burn forest areas to transform them into pastureland.
A group of 80 environmental and professional institutions are demanding that Morales recall the 2016 law.
The government, though, blames dry weather and strong winds for the voracious wildfires.
Morales’s government has plans to plant 4.5 million hectares by 2030, to comply with commitments given to the United Nations.
On Tuesday, Morales mocked a G7 pledge of US$20 million to help fight the Amazon fires as “tiny.” — NNN-AGENCIES