Bolivia Declares Disappearance of Lake a National Disaster

Bolivia’s second largest lake has dried up with devastating impacts, proving that financial support from the European Union was not enough to save the high-altitude saltwater ecosystem of Bolivia’s Lake Poopo prompting local authorities to declare a national disaster, local media reported Sunday.

The governor of the Oruro province where the lake is located, Victor Hugo Vasquez, enacted a law to declare the situation a natural disaster. The measure is aimed at speeding up the acquisition and use of funds to improve the disastrous situation, which affects the economy of the population in eight municipalities in the area.

South of La Paz at a height of over 12,000 feet in Bolivia's altiplano mountain region, the saltwater lake covered a surface area of over 750 square miles just two decades ago, but the government-declared “disaster zone” has reached crisis levels lakebed becomes as the increasingly parched.

Fishing boats sit on the dried Poopo lakebed in Bolivia on Dec. 17, 2015. I Photo: Reuters

Local media have reported that Lake Poopo, fed in part by Bolivia’s largest lake Titicaca but increasingly under stress due to lengthy droughts, had been reduced to just three pools.

The shrivelling lake ecosystems has caused a mass die of millions of animals, according to research, and some 200 species of birds, mammals, fish, and other animals have disappeared from the area, including the endangered flamingo, Bolivia’s La Razon reported.

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The massive dry-up comes just years after Bolivia’s Poopo Basin program received a US$15 million donation from the Europe Union in 2010 to support local conservation efforts.

A dead bird on the dry Poopo lakebed shows the environmental destruction. I Photo: Reuters

According to former director of Bolivia’s Department of Agriculture and Livestock Severo Choque, specific and adequate work on the lake “was not prioritized,” even though various studies and agricultural and aquatic projects were undertaken with the funding, La Razon reported.

Researchers have pointed to climate change, including increasing frequency and intensity of the El Niño climatic phenomenon, as a key factor speeding up the lake’s disappearance. But local mining activity has also exacerbated the problem with contaminated sediment deposits building up in the lake.

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Bolivia, among the developing countries hardest hit by climate change, has been on the front lines of demanding climate reparations that would see rich countries largely responsible for fueling climate change pay poorer countries to settle their historical carbon debts and help fund a global transition to clean energy.

A man inspects the dry Poopo lakebed in Bolivia’s altiplano region. I Photo: EFE

In the wake of COP21 reaching a climate agreement that has been heralded as a “historic” deal signaling the impending end of the fossil fuels era but also slammed by environmental activists as a “cop out,” parched Lake Poopo could become yet another tragic symbol of the urgent need for for global climate action.

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The environmental disaster has already wreaked havoc on local communities, where hundreds of families have relied on fishing as a primary livelihood. Dozens of families have already been forced to leave the area.

Bolivia’s largest lake, Lake Titicaca, the largest freshwater lake in the world, also faces environmental challenges due to pollution.