Since 2009, the Rainforest Alliance has been helping community groups and businesses in Bolivia’s Northern La Paz Department to adopt sustainable forestry and become more competitive.
The Angel Sandoval concession is one of the first and largest businesses in Bolivia to become FSC-certified by the Rainforest Alliance. Located in Bolivia’s eastern lowlands, the concession covers an area the size of Rhode Island, and its forests provide habitat to tapirs, otters and pumas.
Community Forestry in Bolivia
Bolivia is located in the Andean Region of South America, landlocked between Chile, Peru, Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina. It is among the top ten most biologically diverse countries on earth, with 2,194 known species of amphibians, birds, mammals, and reptiles, and more than 17,000 species of plants. Bolivia covers four major biomes: tropical forests, high Andean grassland plains, savannas, and wetlands. Over 54 percent of the country -- nearly 59 million hectares -- is forested, about 38 million hectares of which is lowland Amazon rainforest.
Key threats to Bolivia's biodiversity and tropical forests include oil and gas development, unauthorized logging, over harvesting of selected species, forests fires, and conversion of forests for commercial agricultural expansion. During the 1990s, Bolivia's deforestation rate reached nearly 0.5 percent annually; the country lost 6.5 percent of its forest cover during the period 1990-2005. Forest loss rates continue to increase: as of 2010, over 300,000 hectares of forest are now lost annually according to Bolivia's national forestry agency.
In the face of such circumstances, it is notable that over the past decade Bolivia has become a leader in tropical forest certification. More than 3 million acres (1.5 million hectares) of its forests are Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified, ranking third in Latin America and the Caribbean. The success of FSC in Bolivia bodes well for improving forestry practices and conserving the country's globally significant biodiversity.
The Rainforest Alliance Training, Extension, Enterprises and Sourcing (TREES) program works through a consortium of partner organizations in Bolivia to execute the USAID-funded project Initiative for Conservation in the Andean Amazon (ICAA). This Consortium promotes biodiversity and natural resource conservation through the production and marketing of timber, non-timber forest products, coffee, cacao, and tourism services by promoting best management practices and sustainable product certification in Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru.
For more information, please contact your regional TREES representative.
Since 2009, the Rainforest Alliance has been helping community groups and businesses in Bolivia’s Northern La Paz Department to adopt sustainable forestry and become more competitive.
The Angel Sandoval concession is one of the first and largest businesses in Bolivia to become FSC-certified by the Rainforest Alliance. Located in Bolivia’s eastern lowlands, the concession covers an area the size of Rhode Island, and its forests provide habitat to tapirs, otters and pumas.