Bolivia

Bolivia’s Green Recovery Program for Sustainable and Resilient Landscape Management

Sunset in the Amazon Rainforest in Madidi National Park, Bolivia

Program Summary

This activity will improve the enabling conditions for ecosystem services restoration, sustainable landscape management and resilient food systems, in the Chiquitania ecoregion of Bolivia.

Challenge

Bolivia’s lowlands are increasingly exposed to significant pressure from an expanding agricultural frontier, e.g., fire for land clearing, the impacts of which are exacerbated by drought and seasonal variation from climate change. Since 2011, in Chiquitania, a tropical dry broadleaf forest covering 23 million ha primarily in Santa Cruz Department–uncontrolled wildfires have burned 500,000 ha annually. In 2019, mega-fires impacted 3.9 million ha, 17 percent of the ecoregion. To address these challenges, the World Bank is supporting Bolivia to strengthen integrated landscape management, promote sustainable agricultural production, and build capacity to prevent and control wildfires, focusing on the Chiquitania. 

Approach

PROGREEN activities will support improved livelihoods while tackling biodiversity and forest cover loss, land and soil deterioration, and increased risks of uncontrolled forest fires, all exacerbated by climate change.    By adopting an integrated landscape approach in Chiquitania,  PROGREEN activities will contribute to develop landscape diagnostics, land-use planning tools, tenure security assessments. In addition will support coordinating   financial   incentive   mechanisms   to   encourage   agro-ecological approaches and capacity building for communities to participate in sustainable landscape management (SLM) activities. 

[Expected] Results

  • Forest and landscape governance diagnostics: diagnose role of land regulations in promoting natural ecosystem transformation to agricultural lands and fostering illegal land markets.
  • Land-use planning tools: develop tools that support integrated landscape management as input to updated municipal five-year land-use plans, e.g., remote sensing and land-use cover analysis, and permit valuation of ecosystem services. 
  • Coordinating financial incentive mechanisms that encourage agro-ecological approaches: analysis of fiscal incentives promoting deforestation; market demand and opportunities for sustainable agricultural products; and making the business case for climate-smart agricultural technologies.
  • Community capacity building to practice SLM: validate and disseminate silvo-pastoral approaches to livestock production; improved livelihood options through agroforestry, intercropping, etc.