A pivotal year for Bolivian conservation policy

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 3, pages866–869(2019)Cite this article

As Bolivia approaches presidential elections in October 2019, the country’s environmental leadership is at stake. We discuss urgent challenges and opportunities for reconciling conservation and societal needs in this mega-diverse country.

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Fig. 1: Policies that represent advances (left) and setbacks (right) for nature conservation in Bolivia since President Evo Morales’s inception in 2006.
Fig. 2: Bolivian National Protected areas (in gray) and their overlap with mega-dams, oil and gas blocks, main roads and deforestation.

www.protectedplanet.net (protected areas); http://geo.gob.bo (oil blocks, rivers, roads and forest extent and loss by 2000); ref. 4 (dams); https://earthenginepartners.appspot.com/science-2013-global-forest (forest change in 2000–2017)

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Acknowledgements

We thank T. Kuemmerle, J. Geldman and A. Ghodoussi for helpful discussions and comments on previous versions of the manuscript, as well as A. Balmford, V. Reyes-García and R. Rocha for enlightening discussions about conservation policies. A. Gyawali provided cartographic assistance. A.R.-M. acknowledges financial support from the German Research Foundation (grant no. KU 2458/5-1) and the German Ministry of Education and Research (grant no. 031B0034A), and A.F.-L. acknowledges financial support from the Academy of Finland (grant agreement no. 311176).

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Affiliations

  1. Geography Department, Humboldt-University Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Alfredo Romero-Muñoz

  2. Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science (HELSUS), Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

    Álvaro Fernández-Llamazares

  3. Global Change and Conservation (GCC), Organismal and Evolutionary Biology Research Programme, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

    Álvaro Fernández-Llamazares

  4. Herbario Nacional de Bolivia, Instituto de Ecología, Universidad Mayor de San Andrés, La Paz, Bolivia

    Mónica Moraes R. & Daniel M. Larrea-Alcázar

  5. Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Claire F. R. Wordley

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  1. Alfredo Romero-Muñoz
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  2. Álvaro Fernández-Llamazares
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  3. Mónica Moraes R.
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  4. Daniel M. Larrea-Alcázar
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Correspondence to Alfredo Romero-Muñoz.

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Romero-Muñoz, A., Fernández-Llamazares, Á., Moraes R., M. et al. A pivotal year for Bolivian conservation policy. Nat Ecol Evol 3, 866–869 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-019-0893-3

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