Assessing CO2 Emissions from Deforestation and Fires in Bolivia during 2010-2023

Abstract

This report estimates annual CO₂ emissions from deforestation and fires in Bolivia from 2010 to 2023, considering both emissions and absorptions resulting from land clearing, land use change, fires, and forest regeneration. Using high-resolution annual land cover maps from MapBiomas Bolivia (1985–2023) and a global biomass density map, we track carbon pool changes at a 30×30 m resolution. We developed a bookkeeping model to monitor carbon storage across 1.2 billion land cover pixels nationwide. Fortunately, 93% of these pixels showed no significant forest change, allowing us to focus on the 80 million pixels that experienced changes during the analysis period. These pixels were categorized into 1,278 classes of change based on the year, original land cover, resulting land cover, and forest type. To estimate emissions from forest degradation due to fires, we used the Global Fire Emissions Database and subtracted emissions from deforestation within burned areas to prevent double counting. Our results indicate that CO₂ emissions from deforestation and forest degradation due to fires in Bolivia frequently exceed 200 million tCO₂ per year—70 million tCO₂ from deforestation and 126 million tCO₂ from degradation on average—making Bolivia a significant contributor to global warming, with per capita emissions among the highest in the world. Alarmingly, an increasing share of these emissions results from forest burning with no apparent productive purpose.