One hot night in Roboré, a town in Bolivia’s eastern lowlands, the community leader Rubén Darío Arias was hunched over a laptop, smoking intensely as he pointed to the red spots where forest fires were breaking out all over the map.
This was in September 2022 – but it could have been any other recent year. Large forest fires are now an annual phenomenon in Bolivia – cause and effect of the deforestation linked to its booming agribusiness.