- A 30,019-hectare (74,178-acre) forest in Santa Cruz, Bolivia is on the verge of being sold to Bom Futuro, a Brazilian agriculture company with plans to clear the land, documents reviewed by Mongabay suggest.
- The forest is being sold by a local affiliate of Dutch wood flooring producer INPA, which has helped sustainably manage the area since the mid-2000s.
- Conservationists say the plot is an important part of Bolivia’s Chiquitano dry forest, which acts as a transition between the Amazon Rainforest and the Gran Chaco and Cerrado savannas.
A large forest in eastern Bolivia is on the verge of being sold to an international agriculture company, raising concerns that it might be razed to make room for new cropland.
The 30,019-hectare (74,179-acre) plot in Bolivia’s northeastern Chiquitano dry forest has been sustainably managed for years. But now the land is on the verge of being sold to a Brazilian agribusiness firm, undercutting attempts by an environmental group that wanted to buy the land first, according to documents obtained by Mongabay.
“[The Chiquitano is] a critical link between very important biomes, and it’s one of the last solid blocks of forest in the whole area,” said James Johnson, a forestry consultant in Santa Cruz, the department where the property is located.
Covering about 24 million hectares (59 million acres), the Chiquitano dry forest connects the Amazon Rainforest with the Gran Chaco and Cerrado savannas. It acts as a corridor for wildlife in the different biomes.
Over the last decade, the area has suffered some of the worst deforestation on the continent, with agribusiness destroying millions of hectares.
Clearing the 30,019-hectare plot, which is about three times the size of the city of Paris, would represent a significant ecological loss and accelerate the degradation and desertification of nearby Indigenous lands, several people told Mongabay.
“What they want to do is change the land use [on the property],” said Juan Carlos Laura, of the Indigenous Peoples Support Foundation–Jenecheru, which works on legal matters with communities in the area. “By changing the land use of 30,000 hectares, they will directly affect Indigenous territories, because the Chiquitanía area in Bolivia is a transition zone,” he said.
A failed land deal
Since the mid-2000s, the plot has been managed by Dutch wood flooring manufacturer INPA Parket. The company practiced selective logging of native hardwoods like Bolivian rosewood (Machaerium scleroxylon) while also helping Indigenous communities with similar practices, according to Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) filings.
INPA entities have held numerous FSC certifications for sustainable work on the property. But in recent years, many of them have expired.
Paul Roosenboom, who manages the company’s forest and sawmill, told Mongabay that he’s been working on the land for around two decades but doesn’t have the resources to take care of it anymore, one reason they decided to sell it.
“This is the best option for me,” he said.
This year, the company was in talks to sell the land to Amazonas For Life Europe AB, a Swedish organization that invests in sustainable agroforestry projects. The sale had the backing of Rabobank, Invest International and the Netherlands Development Finance Company, according to internal emails reviewed by Mongabay.
Dutch government officials helped facilitate the financing discussions, and had previously worked with INPA through the Programme for Economic Cooperation in Developing Countries, a spokesperson confirmed.
Together, the organizations were considering conserving the property with cashew trees (Anacardium occidentale) and baru nut trees (Dipteryx alata), and selling carbon credits via Carbon Bank, a part of Rabobank.
The carbon credits would have been worth around $30 million over 10 years. Total financing for the land purchase amounted to around $26.1 million, according to the emails.
In a comment to Mongabay, a Rabobank spokesperson said the bank is committed to supporting efforts to grow agricultural production sustainably, without expanding land use. The other financial entities involved in the deal declined to comment or hadn’t responded by the time this article was published.
The land acquisition had the potential to create transparent, traceable agroforestry products in line with international trade standards, Amazonas For Life Europe AB founder Helena Lindemark argued in the emails. She also noted benefits to the Dutch economy, including using Dutch suppliers for forestry equipment and routing agroforestry products through the Netherlands.
But in July, a Dutch government official said in the same email thread that INPA had agreed to sell to Bom Futuro, a major producer of cotton, soy, corn and beef. The preliminary sale price was around $20 million, with a $2 million down payment that had already been deposited, according to the emails.
An INPA representative had told him Bom Futuro would like to cut down two-thirds of the forest for agriculture, and that a due diligence process was underway, the official said in an email.
“The sudden sale to Bom Futuru [sic] is a slap in the face for Amazonas For Life,” the official said.
Bom Futuro didn’t respond to a request for comment for this story.
Countermeasures
After the sale fell through for Amazonas For Life Europe AB, Lindemark used her other organization, the 2022 Initiative Foundation, to help raise funds for a legal challenge by the Lomerío and Monte Verde Indigenous groups, who live near the property.
The groups said they’re worried about deforestation and soil and water contamination from agrochemicals.
“We express our deep concern and rejection of the growing threats of land-use change in properties adjacent to our territory, especially in the property known as INPA, which is intended to be converted from sustainable use to an area of extensive monoculture planting,” said an August joint statement from the Central Indigenous Organization of Original Communities of Lomerío (CICOL) and the Organization of Indigenous Monkox Women of Lomerío.
With legal support from the Jenecherú Foundation, CICOL is considering filing a petition with Bolivia’s forest and land regulator, the ABT, asking it to recognize the INPA forest as protected land and halt all land-use changes involving monoculture farming.
The group is also looking into requesting that a 2020 authorization to partially clear the property be revoked, arguing that it contradicts a previous court ruling to keep the forest standing.
Should the sale go through, Bom Futuro wouldn’t be able to legally clear the property right away. It would need to receive approval from ABT and the Santa Cruz government. However, conservation groups said the laws are rarely enforced, so there’s a need to fight for these additional protections.
“[Losing the INPA forest] would accelerate degradation and drought across Chiquitanía and beyond,” Lindemark told Mongabay. “But it’s not too late to act.”
Banner image: A maned wolf (Chrysocyon Brachyurus). Image courtesy of Wikimedia.
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