{"id":624437,"date":"2026-09-14T14:20:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-14T14:20:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/624437\/"},"modified":"2026-09-14T14:20:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-14T14:20:10","slug":"carbon-fever-threatens-hard-won-indigenous-rights-in-bolivian-amazon-bolivia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/624437\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Carbon fever\u2019 threatens hard-won Indigenous rights in Bolivian Amazon | Bolivia"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the village plazas of Pando, a remote northern Amazonian region of Bolivia<\/a>, the main talk is no longer just about the next harvest. One pressing issue is the \u201cinvisible air\u201d being sold to foreigners who regularly visit their communities.<\/p>\n

In June 2024, the country\u2019s constitutional court struck down the ban<\/a> on a funding mechanism linked to carbon markets. Since then, Indigenous leaders of three ethnic groups \u2013 the Tacana, Ese Ejja and Cabine\u00f1o \u2013 have complained about companies and foundations that arrive with offers of \u201cclimate solutions\u201d, often during the ever more frequent droughts or floods.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe heard about this [carbon] business and nobody understood what it was,\u201d says Julio Mayo, from the Cabine\u00f1a nation. \u201cEven today, I don\u2019t think people understand. We\u2019re still in doubt.\u201d<\/p>\n

In this corner of the Amazon, the air is a heavy blanket, scented with damp earth, and rivers snake through some of the world\u2019s most pristine rainforest. For Mayo and others, the forest is not a carbon sink or a commodity \u2013 it is their living pharmacy, a guarantee of food security and a sacred ancestor.<\/p>\n

A Brazil nut tree in the Amazon. Harvesting the nuts provides a livelihood for many in Pando\u2019s Indigenous communities<\/p>\n

Bolivia, where more than 40% of the population identifies as Indigenous<\/a>, and whose consent to any proposed laws or development of their land and resources is protected by the International Labour Organization\u2019s Indigenous and tribal peoples convention<\/a>, was until recently Latin America\u2019s staunchest opponent of carbon markets<\/a>. A law passed in 2010 on the \u201crights of Mother Earth\u201d<\/a> in effect banned the \u201ccommodification of nature\u201d.<\/p>\n

Yet that had changed even before the court decision. Months before the ban was overturned in June 2024, disputed carbon contracts were already being signed. On 12 March 2024, a handful of Indigenous leaders in the Pando region signed a contract with the Federico Hecker Foundation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The agreement handed the foundation control over carbon credits, audits and sales across 440,000 hectares (about 1m-acre) of the Multi-ethnic Indigenous Territory II (TIM II)<\/a> for 30 years. Lucio Ayala, TIM II\u2019s president, says: \u201cThey just told us that we were going to receive money, a lot of money, but they didn\u2019t explain what it was about.\u201d<\/p>\n

TIM II is shared by the Cavine\u00f1a, Tacana and Ese Ejja nations \u2013 each with its own authority, but held under a single collective land title. After the Cavine\u00f1a, the Ese Ejja signed the foundation\u2019s contract in September 2024.<\/p>\n

Mayo says: \u201cThey spoke nicely about the project, the benefits, but it wasn\u2019t in the contract.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leaders of a different community who did sign the agreement say they were swayed less by an understanding of carbon markets than by promises of food aid and better housing, which never materialised.<\/p>\n

The foundation \u201ccategorically denies that it offered money, bribes or personal benefits to obtain signatures\u201d, and says it put forward \u201cfrom the outset a comprehensive proposal for conservation and community development\u201d that would go beyond \u201csimply generating carbon credits\u201d.<\/p>\n

It added: \u201cFood security, housing and basic services were not isolated promises \u2013 they were part of a multidimensional development proposal designed to ensure that forest conservation would also lead to social and economic improvements and contribute to various SDGs [sustainable development goals].\u201d<\/p>\n

A river near Pando, Bolivia, which has shrunk due to increasing mining activity in the territory as well as droughts, which are occuring more frequently, Indigenous people say <\/p>\n

Leaders of the Tacana say they refused the offer specifically because they recognised the Hecker name. Federico Hecker was a Swiss immigrant who arrived in Bolivia\u2019s northern Amazon during the late 19th-century extractive boom<\/a> and rose within the rubber empire. His son, Peter Hecker, later served as a senator for Beni and became a Brazil nut trader.<\/p>\n

Tacana families remember the Heckers not as conservationists but as patrones \u2013 bosses under Bolivia\u2019s old debt-peonage system<\/a>. \u201cMany families were bonded to the Heckers,\u201d one community member recalled.<\/p>\n

Although debt peonage, known in Bolivia as Pongueaje or Pongueaje, was formally abolished under agrarian reforms decreed in 1953, Indigenous people maintained only precarious control over their ancestral lands. That arrangement ended only when Indigenous pressure for land reform won the collective title to TIM II in 2001. Another Indigenous leader claims the contracts are \u201cthe way they [the Heckers] are trying to get back what they consider their land\u201d.<\/p>\n

Referring to the large Bolivian estates geared to the extraction of rubber and then Brazil nuts, the foundation acknowledged that \u201cthe general history of the Amazonian barraquera economy \u2026 went through periods of highly asymmetrical labour relations and mechanisms of empowerment, indebtedness and economic dependence that gradually changed throughout the 20th century\u201d, but states that \u201cthis context does not lend credence to allegations against the Hecker family regarding members of TIM II\u201d.<\/p>\n

By March 2025, TIM II\u2019s board and the Ese Ejja nation had formally rejected the agreement<\/a>, saying their representatives had been \u201csurprised, pressured and manipulated\u201d into signing a document that \u201cshould never have existed\u201d. The foundation rejected the allegations.<\/p>\n

Opposition to the agreement was not confined to TIM II. At the National Forum on Land, Territory and Environment in Santa Cruz in October 2025, Indigenous organisations from across Bolivia issued a joint statement<\/a> saying: \u201cWe reject carbon bonds for promoting the commodification of nature and undermining territorial sovereignty and Indigenous rights.\u201d They also pointed to deals such as the Hecker contract as examples of what they feared.<\/p>\n

Indigenous leaders and farmers from Miraflores \u2013 Mario Guari, Lucio Ayala, Wilfredo Guari and Felman Cartagena \u2013 by a Ceiba tree, also known as a kapok or suma\u00fama<\/p>\n

Critics warn that the carbon market<\/a>, meant to fund environmental projects and cut emissions, often worsens inequalities. Problems include unfair contracts that remove community control, land grabs, displacement, limited access to traditional lands, conflicts with food production, and false promises of jobs, income and infrastructure.<\/p>\n

The deal may have been signed in Bolivia\u2019s remote fringes, but it has direct ties to the country\u2019s parliament. Aim\u00e9 Hecker Urresti was elected in 2025 as a national MP and has been working with the centre-right government of Rodrigo Paz Pereira<\/a> to advance carbon markets.<\/p>\n

The foundation\u2019s website lists Hecker Urresti as chairman and credits him with the \u201cgroundbreaking political and legal effort<\/a>\u201d that opened Bolivia to carbon markets. He is one of four MPs who formally presented a bill in 2025 to congress to regulate the market his own foundation wants to operate in.<\/p>\n

A family\u2019s house in the Pando region. Critics say the carbon market often worsens inequalities<\/p>\n

\u201cIt cannot be that a lawmaker is now promoting a law that will regulate an initiative in which his own family is involved,\u201d says Miguel Vargas, a lawyer for Indigenous rights and a former director of the Centre for Legal and Social Studies (CEJIS), a non-profit Bolivian human rights organisation based in Santa Cruz de la Sierra.<\/p>\n

Hecker Urresti says all parties to the foundation\u2019s contracts were fully informed of the stipulations in advance and that the foundation respects their right to annul the agreements.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe communities were not regarded as passive recipients. The contracts assigned roles to the Indigenous councils and authorities for outreach, coordination, providing information to the communities, and monitoring and oversight,\u201d the foundation said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Hecker Urresti also denied any conflict of interest and stressed that the bill had been substantially revised since the initial draft.<\/p>\n

Bolivia\u2019s supreme decree 5264<\/a>, issued in October 2024, centralises control of the market in the national government but excludes Indigenous authorities from its structure and sets no binding rules on consent, carbon ownership or benefit-sharing on Indigenous land. A new bill, which is reportedly intended to address this, mentions consultation but grants no veto rights and bears Hecker\u2019s signature.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe draft bill is not intended to establish privileges but to define general, transparent, verifiable rules that apply equally to all participants in the carbon-credit market,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Ayala says he learned about the new bill only when reporters told him. \u201cNow the worry is with the current government. I\u2019ve just heard about it; they\u2019re drafting a law so carbon can be sold. If it passes, what are we supposed to do? We no longer have a voice or a vote,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

However, Hecker Urresti says: \u201cComments [were] gathered during the consultation process with Indigenous organisations, public bodies, sub-national governments, specialists and other stakeholders involved in climate finance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lucio Ayala, an Indigenous leader of the Cabine\u00f1a nation, speaks about carbon credits with members of the Portachuelo community in Pando<\/p>\n

Struggling economically and battling loss of forest, the country\u2019s president is now touting Bolivia as a new source of carbon credits<\/a>, with the pro-business government saying it aims to sell billions of dollars\u2019 worth in the coming years.<\/p>\n

European governments and initiatives are also involved. The EU says it has never directly funded carbon-credit projects in Bolivia, yet an internal planning document for a joint \u20ac24m (\u00a321m) EU-Swedish climate programme states that Bolivia\u2019s opening to carbon markets took place \u201cwith significant support from the EU-Sweden initiative\u201d.<\/p>\n

The EU delegation in Bolivia maintains it \u201cdid not influence or participate directly\u201d in adopting the decree. Since 2021, the EU has allocated approximately \u20ac104m for environmental programmes in Bolivia. Last year, the EU officially incorporated credits into its emissions-reduction targets by 2040.<\/p>\n

Deep in the Amazon, local communities are gathering the last of the season\u2019s nuts and preparing their small plots of yucca. They have survived the rubber fever, the timber fever and the gold fever. Now they fear that \u201ccarbon fever\u201d will deprive them of full rights to their lands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the village plazas of Pando, a remote northern Amazonian region of Bolivia, the main talk is no…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":624438,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[246,61,60,82],"class_list":["post-624437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=624437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624437\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/624438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=624437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=624437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=624437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}