Deforestation, especially in the Andean highlands of Bolivia and Peru, was the main driver of this year’s disastrous flooding in the Madeira river watershed in Bolivia’s Amazon rainforest and the drainage basin across the border, in Brazil.
Unusually heavy rainfall, climate change, deforestation and two dams across the border in Brazil were cited by sources who spoke to IPS as the causes of the heaviest flooding in Bolivia’s Amazon region since records have been kept.
“We can’t take any more abuse,” Carmelo Tayo, the head of this small Tsimané indigenous village, says sadly. The community has lived for decades on land in Bolivia’s Amazon jungle that outsiders are now trying to gain control of.