Bolivia’s Amazon forests are becoming scorched earth, with millions of acres lost each year to raging fires. Worse, this disaster is being caused by a government more interested in corrupt profits than protecting its people and wildlife.
May 2025
There are images I wish I could unsee: a young male sloth covered from head to toe in third-degree burns, its eyelids gone and arms outstretched in pain; a scorched howler monkey still clinging to the tree it burned to death with; and the once green macaws, brown armadillos, orange howler monkeys, yellow deer, green caimans, and grey crocodiles — all black now, charred to ashes. These are but a small handful of the kinds of horrors which I, and many others, witness again and again with the wildfires that now regularly inflame my country, Bolivia.
Since 2019, government-encouraged fires are set every year in the Bolivian Amazon, Pantanal, and Chiquitano forests. Before 2019, I did not know that animals scream while trying to escape death; that macaws, rather than abandoning their nests and fleeing the fire, will willingly burn with the trees rather than abandon their eggs; or that monkeys orphaned from the fires may refuse food to the point of death because they miss their mothers.
The human impact is equally devastating. Firefighters die, indigenous communities are displaced, and anyone living nearby may suffer fire- and smoke-related illnesses. On top of all that, the government attacks those of us who dare raise our voices to protest these fires. It is a national, never-ending nightmare.
I describe these images and experiences not out of morbidity, but to illustrate the impact of authoritarian rule on the environment and bring to light a tragedy that the world has been ignoring. From July to November 2024, Bolivia experienced the biggest environmental disaster in its history. That year alone, more than 12 million hectares of land were lost to fires, an area larger than the size of Portugal — and more than half of that was forested, mainly natural reserves and indigenous lands. During the second half of every year since 2019, my country has lost between 3 and 6 million hectares to the massive wildfires. And yet, when it comes to Amazon fires, the international community only seems familiar with Brazil’s devastation.
But what is happening in Bolivia is happening elsewhere. Around the world, authoritarian governments are adopting policies that sacrifice ecosystems and biodiversity for economic gain, often under the guise of development initiatives or agricultural expansion. Lack of press freedom and censorship of local NGOs inside these countries keep such disasters out of the international news. Bolivia’s silent destruction mirrors environmental crises in other authoritarian regimes, raising urgent questions about authoritarian governance and the fate of the environment.
A sloth with third-degree burns was rescued by the Forest and Environmental Protection Police (Pofoma) in Santa Cruz, Bolivia (Image credit: Santa Cruz Governorship Social Media).
The continual catastrophe in Bolivia has by no means been accidental. Starting in 2015, the Bolivian government, then led by Evo Morales (2006–19), enacted more than ten laws and executive orders that are still in place and known today as the “Incendiary Packet.” These laws promote the use of controlled burning to clear land, facilitating agricultural expansion and thus legalizing and normalizing fire as a routine component of economic development. The controlled fires did not become a full-blown national disaster, however, until 2019.
In April that year, the Morales government enacted Law 1171, establishing extremely low fines — as low as US$0.20 per hectare — for initiating illegal burnings during dry season. Two months later, the government inked a beef-export deal with China, another authoritarian government and close ally. With this agreement, Bolivia’s total beef exports, which had been around 7,000 tons annually, were expected to skyrocket, with 40,000 tons going to China alone each year. Meeting the agreement would require a radical increase in agricultural land for beef production. Twelve days after the deal was signed, Morales passed a presidential directive authorizing controlled burnings to enable expansion of agricultural activities in forest areas that had previously been protected by law.
Thus in 2019, more than 5 million hectares were lost to uncontrollable fires, 6 million mammals perished, more than 50 indigenous communities were affected, and three firefighters lost their lives. The first firefighter lost in this tragedy was Pablo Suárez. Pablo was the younger brother of Alan Suárez, a member of Ríos de Pie (Standing Rivers), the nonviolent movement I cofounded in 2017 to defend human rights and the environment.
Pablo, like many firefighters today, did not have the appropriate personal protective equipment to conduct his work safely. The Bolivian government classifies firefighter groups, which are volunteer-based, as “private” organizations and thus refuses to provide them equipment or any form of support. After inhaling carbon dioxide for hours on end while battling the flames, Pablo suffered a heart attack on his way back to the base station and passed away on the spot. The indigenous people of the Chiquitano forest held funeral services for the fallen hero, who has become a symbol of service and environmental protection. Today we continue our work to honor Pablito’s life.
Memorial honoring volunteer firefighter Pablo Miguel Suárez Núñez, who died battling wildfires in the Chiquitania region in September 2019, built by his fellow volunteer firefighting team (Image credit: Volunteer Firefighters Ajayu Social Media).
In 2020, the International Rights of Nature Tribunal ruled that the 2019 fires had been an “ecocide” caused by both the Incendiary Packet policies and the Bolivian government’s negligent response to the blazes. Based on a careful assessment of the catastrophe, the Tribunal ruled that “the promulgation and enforcement of laws and administrative policies which condoned burning in order to expand the agricultural frontier and which guaranteed impunity for illegal burning, as well as the weak institutional framework of the state bodies at their different levels of government responsible for the control and supervision of forests, have been fundamental factors in causing events denounced in this case.”
What We Learn on the Ground
Field work has taught us that even though agricultural expansion seems to be the main driver of deforestation, it is not the only economic factor driving the devastating fires. The Bolivian government, like many authoritarian governments, sustains itself through a web of political patronage. The regime, under Morales and now Luis Arce (2020–), has been relocating members of its party to newly cleared forest areas in exchange for political loyalty and voter support. This practice is known in Bolivia as “land trafficking” and the government transplants as “interculturals” since they come from areas and cultures foreign to the Amazon basin.
The government can quickly and effectively use fires to clear natural reserves that can then be granted to loyalists. In many instances, some of which my team and I have witnessed personally, locals and firefighters have caught interculturals starting new fires in areas where a fire had already been extinguished. Not surprisingly, conflicts — sometimes violent — have erupted between interculturals and indigenous communities in these areas.
In the same vein, drug trafficking, along with wildlife, human, and mercury trafficking as well as other criminal activities, also play a prominent role in the fire crises. This is not something that environmental activists or other prominent figures in Bolivia mention publicly, fearing reprisal from drug cartels or the government, but it would be misleading to omit it here. Talking to indigenous communities on the ground, we learned that drug traffickers often build chemical (drug) factories inside protected areas, where such facilities can be hidden from sight. These cartels also have roadways, landing strips, and even small airports inside protected lands to quickly transport their products to neighboring countries. While a few brave journalists have reported on this, the government has done little to disband such groups or destroy the landing strips.
Because fires are a cheap way to clear land for new routes and facilities, firefighters have become targets of the cartels. Some firefighters have been pushed out or shot at while trying to extinguish fires in protected areas. In 2022, a sixteen-year-old volunteer firefighter was killed in the Amboró natural reserve after being shot seven times by an armed group that opened fire on volunteers attempting to enter the forest to combat a wildfire. Three other firefighters were also injured, with two almost losing their lives. Despite local authorities denouncing the presence of drug cartels in the area, the central government, which has been publicly exposed for having close ties to drug-trafficking rings in the region, took no decisive action. I have been in these areas myself and seen enough to believe it.
The regional government of Angel Sandoval shared these images on their social media asking for support: “We are surrounded by fire. We need help” (Image credit: Ángel Sandoval Sub-Governorate, Santa Cruz, Bolivia).
Since this tragedy first began in 2019, Ríos de Pie has been conducting on-the-ground campaigns to support volunteer firefighters, indigenous communities, and animal-rescue efforts while also staging nonviolent protests nationally to demand changes to the laws and the government causing this crisis.
We have trained alongside firefighters to act as their support personnel when needed, and we work with park rangers to identify fires quickly and coordinate the response. We have also established chapters in all nine of Bolivia’s cities, where citizens can bring donations for firefighters: food, medicine, personal-hygiene items, protective equipment, and even letters and drawings from children sending their gratitude to these heroes. We deliver the items personally and regularly to the firefighters in the field who tell us what they need. We post the lists on social media so citizens know what to donate and where it is needed.
In 2024, Ríos de Pie delivered more than 40 tons of supplies to firefighters thanks to donations from Bolivians at home and abroad. The repressive nature of the government, however, has discouraged us from becoming an official nonprofit organization. So all this work is done by unpaid volunteers in our movement.
Although we are making a difference, as long as Bolivia does not have a fully democratic government, these fires will continue to burn and Bolivians will continue to breathe in smoke for months every year. The devastation in my country is not just about failed environmental policy — it is a clear failure of governance. The government’s destructive actions, masked by the international reputation of Evo Morales and his MAS party as environmentally conscious and pro–indigenous peoples, show how authoritarian regimes disguise their abuse and prioritize short-term gains over the long-term survival of ecosystems and human life.
The Fallacy of Eco-Authoritarianism
There is an ongoing debate among both scholars and environmental activists that must urgently and unequivocally be put to rest, both for the sake of democratic principles and for the protection and safety of biodiversity itself: Can authoritarian governments defend ecosystems better than democracies can? Those who argue “yes” contend that “constraints” such as public debate, consensus building, and political gridlock make democratic government slow and inefficient. Authoritarian regimes, in contrast, have no need to build consensus and can therefore act swiftly and effectively to protect the environment or respond to disasters. The government-encouraged wildfires that destroy millions of hectares in Bolivia every year demonstrate not only that authoritarian regimes cannot be trusted to protect the environment but also that they cannot be stopped from destroying it.
There are two false assumptions inherent in the eco-authoritarian argument: first, that leaders in authoritarian regimes will know in advance what to do in a given crisis; and second, that these regimes will have the expertise and capacity to take appropriate action via existing institutions. Yet if we look at the traditional composition of authoritarian regimes and how they have handled environmental disasters, both assumptions prove mostly false.
Authoritarian leaders, because they lack the legitimacy brought about by free and fair elections in democracies, often prioritize allegiance over competence. They need to ensure obedience and avoid any threat to their authority; thus they generally appoint longtime loyalists — not policy experts — to higher government positions. And given the lack of checks and balances in authoritarian systems, rulers can appoint unqualified individuals with impunity. With critical decisions in the hands of inexperienced nonexperts, the swift action that authoritarian centralization supposedly promises is in fact often late, inefficient, or harmful.
Indeed, the very nature of authoritarian rule — its reliance on loyalty over competence and lack of institutional checks and balances — refutes the eco-authoritarian argument. Centralized power, often praised for its supposed speed and efficiency, ensures that unqualified individuals will be making critical decisions and doing so with impunity. Moreover, without the preexisting capacity and expertise to battle or contain a given crisis, authoritarian governments often respond in ways that are ineffective or even counterproductive, exacerbating the crisis and leaving citizens and the environment to suffer the consequences. Authoritarian efficiency is a myth; centralized power without accountability leads to failure.
Busting the Myth
The global standard system for responding to large-scale wildfires was developed in the United States in the 1970s. According to this system, an adequate response to a wildfire emergency will have: 1) operational collaboration and organized decisionmaking through an Incident Command System (ICS), which enables the participation of different types of institutions — governmental entities at every level (national, regional, municipal), firefighting groups, civil society organizations, and experts, among others; and 2) multiagency coordination of resource allocation, led mainly led by firefighting experts who set national and regional priorities, but also including governmental and civil society groups. Bolivian law recognizes the ICS system as the standard for wildfire response.
What actually happens during a wildfire in Bolivia, however, could not be farther from this model. All firefighting efforts have been informally delegated by the president directly and solely to the military. In 2019, Morales appointed his minister of government, Juan Ramón Quintana, a career militaryman and the strongest figure within Morales’s close circle, as de facto head of firefighting operations. Quintana then mobilized a large contingent of soldiers to Roboré, one of the affected communities, and coordinated efforts directly and privately, along with only a few local authorities and the army. Civil society groups, indigenous leaders, first responders, and even firefighting groups who were doing the groundwork to combat the fires were completely shut out.
Firefighters near Roboré, Bolivia, walk where wildfires destroyed the forest, August 2019 (Image credit: Santa Cruz Department Governorship).
Not only were the government’s efforts insufficient, but Quintana himself had had no formal training and possessed no specific knowledge about fighting wildfires. The few times he spoke to the press on location, Quintana gave no guidance for responding to the fires or evacuations and instead attacked local leaders and opposition figures demanding a better response to the crisis. Similar practices continue today. President Arce has assigned Deputy Defense Minister Juan Carlos Calvimontes to lead the country’s firefighting efforts. Calvimontes has a long history in the MAS party and no background in firefighting.
Advocates of authoritarian environmentalism and authoritarian crisis management argue that independence from public opinion and industry pressures makes autocracies more effective, as they can take the radical actions necessary to protect the environment and population without worrying about criticism. According to this view, authoritarians’ capacity to suppress dissent ensures that drastic measures can move forward regardless of public pushback. Proponents would argue that it is sometimes necessary to sacrifice human and civil rights in order to protect the “greater good,” which they claim is the authoritarians’ ultimate goal.
All this implies that authoritarian radical action is made possible due to centralization of power paired with suppression of criticism. It is important to recognize that “criticism” under authoritarianism includes not only public expressions of disapproval but also any information that contradicts or is different from the regime’s narrative. What is considered fact-checking in a democracy is often instead viewed as criticism or dissent in a closed society.
In reality, suppressing criticism during emergencies directly undermines relief efforts, as decisionmaking at the local, regional, and national levels will be effective only if factually informed. A regime that suppresses and punishes dissent intentionally creates a culture of self-censorship. Thus valuable information, expert advice, and constructive criticism that could have been useful in the context of a national emergency are often lost. No matter the intent, state actions that are ill- or misinformed will likely be harmful.
Adaptability and improvement are also necessary for effective crisis management. Everyone involved must learn quickly from both mistakes and successes, and doing so requires public criticism and feedback loops. Political persecution of critical voices, however, makes this impossible. And in societies where criticism is suppressed, transparency is often also absent, leaving room for mismanagement, corruption, and abuse of power.
Moreover, transparency — not a hallmark of authoritarian rule — is critical for authorities to foster trust and build credibility among the population when it comes to crisis management. Both are essential for the government to successfully carry out operations that may be new or challenging for communities, such as evacuations, search-and-rescue efforts, and recovery operations. Strong yet compassionate leadership and positive interactions between authorities and victims of environmental disasters will help build community resilience.
Bolivia’s authoritarian government has consistently suppressed criticism and stifled information about the fires and their consequences. In 2019, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported on the dangers and difficulties that environmental journalists faced while covering the first government-encouraged fires — not just from the smoke and flames but also the prospect of government retaliation for critical reporting, including lawsuits and loss of state advertising. The situation today is even worse. Firefighters who have discovered MAS-affiliated civilians and police starting or reigniting fires in protected areas have been threatened with death to keep them from going public. So, while a few firefighters have been brave enough to speak out and some independent media outlets have published their stories, most of these incidents go unreported.
My movement, Ríos de Pie, is one of the few remaining groups to publicly denounce the fires and the intentionality behind them despite the threats we have received. I, personally, have been threatened with death and rape both online and on the street, followed and photographed by intelligence agents, and publicly insulted by government authorities on more occasions than I can count. I have also been forcibly detained at the airport for taking donations to firefighters, forced into hiding for days due to death threats, and beaten by police during street protests. This is the price one pays for speaking truth in an authoritarian country. So it is understandable that people self-censor. But as long as we remain in the dark about the true origins of these disasters, we will not be able to prevent them from happening again.
A man kneels in desperation as his home burns, 2024 (Image credit: Riberalta Government Social Media).
When a regime silences all critical voices and erases any information contradicting the government’s narrative, disaster response suffers. The heavy repression and fear-driven environment in Bolivia has led local NGOs to stop publishing the number of hectares lost to fires each year. Because the government does not broadcast the real scale of the fires, firefighters and first responders have depended on data from civil society groups to plan for the next fire season. Today Fundación Tierra is the only organization still providing a hectare count of fire destruction. In response to these efforts, Environment Minister Alan Lisperguer has called Fundación Tierra “irresponsible” and accused it of having “political motives.”
Proponents of eco-authoritarianism also claim that nondemocratic regimes face less pressure from industries that oppose environmental regulations. In democracies, the argument goes, corporations and interest groups can heavily influence policy through lobbying, donations, and public campaigns. As authoritarian governments have no need for campaign funding or to cater to business interests, they should be able to prioritize environmental concerns.
In reality, not only are authoritarian regimes not free from economic influences, but these are the main drivers of authoritarians’ actions. Business elites inside closed societies are controlled by the state and often closely related to the dictator. They are the main beneficiaries of state corruption and, in turn, provide the dictator with needed resources and services. Authoritarians must therefore protect the interests of the elites who uphold their rule. Far from being immune to influence, authoritarian and semi-authoritarian governments can be even more vulnerable to demands of specific industries, undermining any claim that they would inherently protect the environment. The 2019 Bolivia-China beef export deal is a clear example of economic interest driving environmental destruction, as is the lithium-extraction partnership between the two countries forged the same year.
Finally, in authoritarian countries, the rule of law is nonexistent. All branches of the state, including the judiciary, are centralized under the executive, whom they must obey. So there are no government or independent investigations after environmental disasters, and therefore no accountability or documentation of events — no pressure for a regime to enact or enforce preventive measures and no findings to inform official or grassroots prevention efforts. This creates a dangerous cycle in which the absence of oversight guarantees both environmental destruction and the regime’s continued failure to respond adequately.
Lack of accountability and weaponization of the judiciary practically guarantee political persecution against environmental activists. Authoritarian regimes view any opposition to environmental policies or corporate interests tied to the ruling elite as a direct threat to the regime. Activists, journalists, and even local communities attempting to expose environmental abuses or advocate for their reversal are often criminalized, silenced, or imprisoned. Without the ability to freely critique, challenge, or offer alternatives, environmental degradation will continue. It is for this reason that civil and human rights cannot be separated from environmental work.
When there is no rule of law, no one who challenges the regime is safe. Thus the murder or assault of an environmental activist in an authoritarian regime, whether a government orders it or not, will likely go unpunished. This makes the cost of environmental advocacy high — and keeps the number of people willing to fight for the planet low. Worse, in Bolivia, the huge number of drug cartels makes it cheap to hire a hitman (as low as $200). I have been warned repeatedly that it would cost little to silence me, and there would be no proof of the regime’s involvement. It is strange to know the exact price of one’s life, and a reminder of how easily authoritarian governments can silence dissent.
Yet for all their power, authoritarian regimes are plagued by weakness. They depend on loyalty not expertise, they lack accountability and repress dissent, and they put political survival and short-term economic gains over competent disaster response and prevention and long-term environmental protection. Without transparency, criticism, or independent oversight, their decisions can only be flawed and corrupt. Authoritarianism does not simply fail to protect ecosystems, it actively threatens them and the communities that depend on them.
Animals often die trying to escape the fire, and are found reduced to ashes (Image credit: Jorge Banegas, Mongabay Media).
How to Fight Back
There are things that the international community, including global and regional organizations and NGOs, can and should do in the event of large environmental catastrophes. First and foremost, if possible, support should go directly to first responders and civil society organizations providing humanitarian or environmental relief. Channeling financial assistance directly to an authoritarian government will only strengthen its repressive mechanisms, enhance its misinformation operations, and line the pockets of regime loyalists. And second, outside support for documentation and investigation efforts — providing satellite imagery for determining the damaged areas, for instance, or medical tests to assess the health of affected populations — is incredibly valuable to environmental activists inside the country.
But we must remember that these problems will never be permanently solved in the absence of true democracy and rule of law. As Václav Havel wrote in The Power of the Powerless (1978), democracies may not be perfect, but problems such as power struggles and corruption are far worse under governments not subject to public scrutiny or bound by any law. And, more often than not, environmental and humanitarian emergencies magnify the weaknesses and the brutality of authoritarian rule.
Democracy is and always will be the only solution. While local activists and international partners can provide critical short-term assistance, it is only under democratic government that environmental damage and disasters can be properly managed and, most critically, prevented. A system that prioritizes transparency, accountability, and the protection of human rights is essential to creating sustainable, long-term solutions to both ecological and humanitarian crises. It is urgent that we understand and accept this. The longer we delay, the more we stand to lose — human lives and entire ecosystems. Bolivia is the burning proof.
Jhanisse Vaca Daza is an activism outreach specialist and director of the Freedom Fellowship program at the Human Rights Foundation and cofounder of the Bolivian nonviolent citizen movement Ríos de Pie (Spanish for Standing Rivers).
Copyright © 2025 National Endowment for Democracy
Featured image: Large-scale wildfire in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, July 2024 (CONTIOCAP).
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