LANDLOCKED DEVELOPING COUNTRIES: FOCUS ON BOLIVIA
GEARING UP WITH SCIENCE FOR CLIMATE AND DEVELOPMENT
Bolivia is treating climate change not only as an environmental challenge but also as a focus for research and development By Howard Hudson, OPEC Fund
Courtesy of Mauricio Céspedes Quiroga
“W e’ve come to the summit to pray for rain,” cried Susana Laruta beside the almost-dry Incachaca reservoir overlooking La Paz, Bolivia, in October 2023. Along with hundreds of local people Susana was praying to Saint Peter, who as keeper of the keys to heaven might finally “open the sky”. Annual rainfall had dropped almost 30 percent over the previous five years, according to the National Institute of Statistics, decimating agricultural production and leaving over half the country’s 12 million people in a chronic state of food insecurity. Meanwhile in the south of Bolivia, a town named Villamontes had just hit 45°C, setting a new record for the highest winter temperature in the entire Southern Hemisphere. Susana’s prayers were soon, but sadly, answered. with a see-saw force majeure. Seven of nine Bolivian regions had been in the grip of severe drought in late 2023; and then seven of nine regions came under alert from heavy rains in early 2024. Hundreds of homes were inundated and dozens of people
drowned in a perilous mix of floods and mudslides. The Incachaca reservoir almost burst, reaching “100 percent” at one point according to Iván Arias, Mayor of La Paz. This climate pivot is clearly on the radar of the Bolivian government, yet unlike many of its counterparts it is approaching these existential issues not only as an environmental challenge but as a focus for research and development: to better understand and prepare for the worst. Mauricio Céspedes Quiroga, Vice Minister of Science and Technology at Bolivia’s Ministry of Development Planning, attends our online interview during torrential rains that caused gridlock on the roads. He recalls how government officials recently met with hydrologists, who explained the new patterns of the dryer El Niño years and wetter La Niña years. “We previously had some time to recover between each phenomenon – perhaps two or three years – but now they’re occurring consecutively. One year we have problems with crops during the
Mauricio Céspedes Quiroga, Vice Minister of Science and Technology, Bolivia
dry season and the next year we have floods. It’s been more extreme over the last few years and, according to our scientists, this pattern is set to become more frequent. It may even become the ‘new normal’,” he warns. Put simply, Bolivia is particularly vulnerable to climate change. New weather patterns are causing droughts and flooding, with severe knock-on effects for water supply, food production and even human health. Vice Minister Céspedes Quiroga then points to Bolivia’s shrinking glaciers high in the Andes. The Chacaltaya Glacier, 30 km from La Paz, was once home to the highest ski resort in the world at almost 5,300 meters above sea level. Having existed for roughly 18,000 years, the glacier had completely disappeared by 2009 because of new precipitation patterns mixed with the warming and
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