 Thank you for being here. I'm Sofia Espinosa. In this opportunity, I'm going to talk a little bit about climate change in my country, Bolivia. Some of the effects that we are already suffering there and some of the possible impacts that we are figuring that it's going to happen in the next year. In this opportunity, I'm going to talk a little bit about the context, what are the characteristics of Bolivia and what are the climate change effects that we are already suffering there. Some strategies of adaptation that we are introducing in some communities mainly and some state policies that we are having in the recent years. And finally, some conclusions and recommendations. So, as you probably know, Bolivia is, this is the map of my country. We are located in South America, in the heart of South America. And in our climate, it depends mainly on our longitudinal distribution, our land's longitudinal distribution. As you can see, almost two-third parts of my country, Bolivia, it's located in lowlands, lower than 8,000 feet. For us, it's like lower than 100,000 meters. And it's all this area. We also have like middle lands, we call it like Bali, like similar to Napa and that kind of area. And we also have the high lands, which are more than 13,000 feet. So, and we have very big cities here and we have main cities in all these parts of the country as well. So, our climate also depends and is related with these events that we are suffering from the 90s. I think El Niño and La Niña, that drastically modify our climate behavior in many regions. In all these regions, they suffer for many effects that we have there. And according to some researches, we are expecting that we are going to suffer increases in temperature between 3.5 to 5.1 Celsius by 2000 and 100, sorry. And regarding on how is Bolivia contributing to the climate change this year. So, according to these maps, you can see that we are included in this group of countries that contributed a low, very low, low scale to the CO2 emissions. These maps are just including CO2 emissions. And because mainly because we don't have a very big industry in our country, our CO2 emissions are related mostly with the forestation in Bolivia. That's one of the main sources of the forestation that we have. So, how climate change is affecting our country? We have some natural conditions that make us a very vulnerable country. One of them is that we are located in a very climatically volatile region. Actually, Bolivia is one of the countries that is being affected with natural disasters in recent years. We have a very high percentage of indigenous people in South America, actually the highest percentage of indigenous people. And they suffer a lot of poverty and inequality. So, these are very vulnerable communities and populations that we have in Bolivia. Although we have a very great and high biodiversity, all these very rich biodiversity live in very vulnerable ecosystems as well. As I show you in the map, more than half of the country is located in the Amazon watershed. And in this region, we suffer a lot of high levels of deforestation and vulnerability to floods. That's the main risk that we have in this area. And we also are home of 20% of the world's tropical glaciers, who are melting in the recent decades. And they are causing terrible problems for communities that live below them. So, all these natural conditions, you can see that make us a very vulnerable country to climate change and rising in temperatures. In addition to these natural conditions that we have in Bolivia, we also have some problems with lack of reliability related with historical climate records. We don't have very good data that we can analyze. Some researchers have difficult to distinguish impacts of climate variability from climate change. That's also an issue when we are trying to analyze the climate change impacts. Some researchers, they analyze very scale climatic models. They include very large scale climatic models. And this information can't be used in a very low level, local level. And it is not a good information for local governments, for example. And I forgot this one. We also have just few studies about climate change. So, they are increasing in the recent years, but we still have just few. So, all these problems related with information, data, studies make even more difficult to quantify the real impact of climate change in Bolivia. So, so far we are experiencing very dramatic events, these extreme events that we are suffering from years and that can be related with climate change. One of them are the floods. We suffer from floods, especially in lowlands. Like almost every year we have this problem, as you can see these pictures that are from different areas in Bolivia. And from the other extreme, we also suffer from droughts. And this occurs mainly in this area, the highlands mainly. So, and this affects a lot to rural communities that have farmer production as main source of income. So, that's a big problem every year that we need to deal with that from our governments in our cities and in our rural communities. And one other thing is that we have experienced some loss of biodiversity and also some geographic relocation of species and ecosystems. And they say that the most vulnerable are the endemic species that we have because they are not able to adapt very easily to these changes in variations and temperatures and ecosystem variations that they suffer. Another thing that we are suffering is the loss of glaciers. In the last 20 years we have lost around 43% of our glaciers. These are some pictures of some of the glaciers that we have in Bolivia. This one has taken kind of recently, it's still considered a glacier, but you can see like in two years how much snow has lost during that years. And we used to have a very, very well-known ski center, the Chacaltaya, that it was actually the main, the glaciers that started to point to, I don't know, to put this alarm that we are facing some problems with the glaciers. Because they were predicting that this should take like, I don't know how many years to be melted, but it took even lower than that. So it was a very, very important situation that they study. And as you can see in these pictures, like after 60 years you can see that now it looks like that. And this is like almost 15 years ago. So now it's not considered a glacier anymore, Chacaltaya. It's just like a mountain without any snow. And sometimes we can have snow, but it's not maintained in the top of the rock. What are some consequences of climate change impact that we are experiencing in Bolivia? And we are predicting that it's going to happen in the future and are related with these problems that I was presenting. The first one is that for sure we are going to suffer from water availability and scarcity, both in urban and rural areas because of all of these problems, even floods and droughts and the glacier melting. We expect that we will have less food security, which is a big problem, especially for rural communities, because our agriculture production will be very affected in poor communities. Most of our food comes from rural communities and we depend on that. Even cities, we depend on this production that comes from rural communities. And every time that we have these problems that food increases in prices and we have food scarcity, it's a very big issue in Bolivia. We know that we have the risk of potential dangerous overflows and avalanche from the 25 glacier and these lakes that we have there are related with the glaciers. Since we have these ice that is melting from the glaciers, we have kind of lakes that can produce these avalanches and they can affect some communities. Actually, I know that we already experienced some of these problems and these communities have to migrate to other areas in order to avoid this risk. And it also puts the risk of the production and the living for these communities. We predict that we will also have more frequent and intense natural disasters and extreme events next year. Also, since the temperature is rising, we will have increased mosquito-borne disease. And finally, we already have problems with fires, but we are predicting that we will have even more fires because of the wind changes and temperature changes. So all of this will affect our forest fires as well. I was doing some research to present all this information now. And when I was doing this research based on some studies that we have available, I found something that is kind of positive thing related with climate change. And it's a very interesting story about some women in some communities that suffer from climate change impact or these extreme events. They needed to migrate, especially men are the ones that migrate to other cities, to other communities in order to find some other jobs or incomes. And women stay at their communities. So in this case, they are in charge of farming, livestock or doing other activities in order to have some income. So in these cases, we have some communities that are mainly populated by women. And women are very, very empowered in these communities. And they say that climate change makes them stronger. As women in their communities, they feel more powerful, which is a good experience. Like even this experience of crisis, of problems make them very strong and it's a good thing to recognize for these women. And also they said that some positive impacts related with climate change will be like some local positive effects. That some dry areas that we have now may receive more precipitation, more rain, and this will favor agriculture and biodiversity. But it's difficult to measure and know how much of this will happen in reality. We are experiencing some adaptation strategies, especially in rural communities. And these strategies are mainly, they are kind of, they are some ideas that come from the same communities that are suffering these extreme events. They are supported in some cases by NGOs and some organizations, but the government still needs to work on this area. But some communities and farmers, they know that they are suffering from these problems. And they, for example, when it's related with livestock, the producers are taking actions and they are moving the lamas or other camelids and ships to other grazing lands, not to their communities, or they are also reducing the number of livestock and animals that they have. They are selling these ones and in order to reduce the animal burden on grasslands because they know that these grasslands are not like in the past, that they are not able to have all these animals every year. And when it's related with irrigation, then some communities are also implementing some technological innovations, kind of simple, but they are helping to ensure water availability in their communities and irrigation systems, water harvesting, cut-off and drinking droughts. So they are implementing this in order to have water most of the years and even if they suffer from droughts or that kind of things. And from the state policies, our government has implemented different laws related with environment and that includes a climate change. The most famous one is that in 2010 we implemented a law related to the rates of mother earth. It's a very, very beautiful law that we have. In 2012 we implemented the framework of the Mother Earth and Integral Development Tool Life Well, which is also one of the main tools that the government is using in order to implement some projects. And in 2014 we have a law of risk management. So we have all this law in paper, but it's kind of difficult to implement it in practice. We have a lot of information, we have a lot of regulation, but these policies have not yet implemented in practice. Or maybe they are starting to implement it, but it's not enough to deal with all these problems that we are suffering from climate change and rising temperatures. So what are the main conclusions? First, you can see that Bolivia is a country that makes a small contribution in terms of CO2 emissions and other greenhouse emissions. So we are contributing in a very low scale to global climate change. But we are considering, and this is a very new information, we are considering among the most vulnerable and least prepared in South America to mitigate all these damages. So it's very important for us to start thinking about how are we going to deal with all these problems that we are going to face next year and actually we are facing right now. But because we have a lot of problems and we are not well prepared to mitigate all these damages that are coming. Related with research, I was telling that since we are not one of the main contributors to global climate change, we certainly have CO2 emissions and these come mainly from the deforestation process that are very, very important for our rising temperatures, changes in temperatures that we suffer locally and these floods and some other problems that we face in some different areas in Bolivia. So deforestation is a big issue actually and maybe it's one of our most important environment problems that we are facing last year. We don't have enough data to analyze climate change and some of them are not accurate sources of information. And even in all this research that they do, they use different methods to measure climate change effects. Some of them are kind of uncertain and contradictory so even we have some information but we don't know how to use it and how reliable is this information. That's also a very important thing to consider. And related with policies, what are we doing there, what our government is doing related to climate change and all these problems that we are suffering. As I told you, we have some very interesting laws related with mother earth and environment but these are not being practiced yet. So we lack of regulation. We need to think more about like how are we going to implement all these laws that we have because they have really good things to implement but for us it's very difficult to put it in practice. We don't have policies for reducing deforestation which is again our main source of CO2 emissions. And actually some policies from the government are trying to promote land change use and convert forests to lands or agriculture and cattle. So in this case it's kind of contradicting policies that the government is trying to promote like deforestation and have more cattle and agriculture lands. We suffer from lack of policies for environmental awareness and efficient use of natural resources. Even in cities we have a lot of problems with a good management of our natural resources that we have. And it's like I think probably in cities we have more awareness from population that we are starting to suffer all these climate change issues and extreme events but we don't have a lot of information on how to deal with all these problems or how to avoid or how to mitigate all these events that we are going to suffer and we are already suffering. And in a municipal level we don't have many public policies and a municipal level is very important for us because it's more close to rural communities so we need to work in that area too. Some recommendations based on this kind of quick research that I did about climate change in Bolivia will be first that we need to develop and implement an overarching and national policy on climate change. We don't have like a climate change program or some policy that is clear and how are we going to deal all these problems that we are going to face next year. Since we know that we are going to suffer about water availability next year related with all these problems we need to invest in potable water and water systems for irrigation especially in rural areas. It's important to consider the needs and role of women in adaptation policies is some examples that we saw that women can be very, very important in these processes of adaptation and they can lead some of these processes as well in a good way. It's important to consider them in this process. Include disaster risk reduction in long term planning at all levels of government. We don't have this so far and this will be important for farmers introduce an agriculture insurance since they are going to experience maybe some losses in their production. It will be very good for them to have this kind of support in order to protect and avoid this food insecurity that we can suffer next year. Support local communities in their efforts to adapt and manage risk of climate change. We are receiving some support from international cooperation, NGOs, some foundations that we have there but we need more support from the government as well. And we still generate more information and research especially from the state. We don't have an official source of information about climate change from the state that will be good. Sometimes the government speech, when they talk about climate change, they are based on information that they gather from other sources but not from state sources. That's a concern that we need and we need to deal with that. We need a state source of information. So that will be all. Thank you. Well, I'm done with my presentation so you are free to do some questions. I will be happy to answer them. Sophia, you mentioned sort of a difference between the people in the rural areas and the cities. Do you believe in general the people of the country understand that climate change is what's causing so many of these difficult problems? Or do you think in the United States we have an unfortunate number of people who seem to be denying that this is going on? And I just wonder if you think that's similar in your country or not. I think we also have both. I think even some research are not very accurate to say like this is related with climate change for sure. We have these events of Niño, La Niña, we have some of these extreme events that can be related with climate change. But we for sure know some of these events are related with rising temperatures. Increasing in flats and droughts, for example, they confirm that it's related with rising in temperatures. So I think in cities a population is more aware about these kind of problems that are related with climate change because we have more information. But in rural communities they have little information so they notice that the weather is changing, the climate is changing. They notice because they as farmers they know that they cannot rely on rain in the same seasons than before, for example. They notice that the weather is changing, the climate is changing. So we need to bring more information to them in order to let them know that there is a global problem that we are facing. And we also have some people that don't believe in climate change as well. We also have these people that say that there is kind of a cycle that we are suffering and it's normal and we are going to deal with this and it's kind of a natural problem. But I think it's good that research is increasing and it's kind of demonstrated that climate change problems related with temperatures are real. And we have some of them in Bolivia as well and we need to deal with that. I would think as awareness grows that in fact you are one of the countries that has contributed the least to climate change and is suffering the most. There would be a rising demand for help since it's not really your fault and you're suffering so much. And do you see that happening either in the cities or in the rural parts of the country? I mean people from the Altiplano are having to leave, they can't grow their crops and there's a water shortage so they're having to come down lower in order to survive. But I don't know if they're connecting that it's not their fault. And it's not really a natural thing that they're just bad luck. And at what point will they start to point the finger and say we really should be receiving some funds from other countries who are at fault. Is that happening at all or no? I think in the rural area we have problems with information and maybe most of them they don't have this information that this is a global scale problem. And then it's related with these greenhouse emissions that have been released many, many years ago and Bolivia as a country didn't contribute very much with this. I think they are not very aware of that maybe in cities since we have more information but our government has expressed that in many opportunities in these global events that we have related with climate change that he wants big countries, the main contributors to climate change that recognize that make all this damage and they should compensate the small countries that didn't contribute in a different way. That's why our government, the actual government sometimes is again some market solutions for these kind of problems that we are facing for example. And for sure our government is kind of trying to deal with this global impact that we are suffering in small countries like Bolivia and trying to find a way that the big contributors for climate change take some responsibility about that. I think that for sure this government is trying to make that possible at least in words. I've seen that actually Bolivia has been a leader in trying to demand some reparations or some help. Sofia, you mentioned that the municipal governments are important in Bolivia and in some countries local governments have actually pushed and gone much further and been more aggressive in adopting policies to address climate change than their national governments have in Bolivia or the local governments in a position to be able to do that. I think they are in a position to do that for sure. They have the power but the problem that we face every year is about monetary resources. Sometimes they don't have enough resources and they prioritize some other problems like we still face like basic needs related to basic needs, basic services. So they prioritize all these policies instead of these preventing damages or preventing or risk management related to climate change effects or that kind of things. I know that they have some budget to deal with these damages that can be caused by floods or droughts that kind of things. But some policies that are trying to avoid or trying to prepare people in order to face these problems in the future are very few. I think we are very weak in that sense. Hi Sophia. You mentioned that deforestation was an ongoing problem and I see sort of a dichotomy between the indigenous farming practices and deforestation. My assumption is that deforestation is more of the industrial level of agriculture. And I'm wondering if the role of the US is recognized in deforestation. My understanding is that a lot of the deforestation is happening to clear land for cattle to export beef primarily. And I'm assuming that indigenous agricultural practices are very different from that. So I guess I'm wondering if, and you mentioned that the government has maybe contradictory policies. Sort of the old way was to encourage deforestation and the new policies perhaps conflict with that. So I'm wondering if the political will to take on the forces that are causing deforestation and the demand for beef in the United States. If that political will is there, what can be done? Has there been any developments or any improvements in that situation? It's true that deforestation, the highest rates of deforestation that we have in Bolivia are mainly related with change in land use for cattle and agriculture. And at the industry level that's true. But we also have this, and it's true that communities, rural communities, they have a different way of, they have a different use of land, right? It's a small land that they have. But we have many, many communities and we, for example, in some area of the Amazon area that we also start facing some increasing levels of deforestation. We have many families there, so they give land to family, to each family or household. And they are able to deforestate, I don't know, I think last year or a couple of years they increased the size of land that they are allowed to deforestate. So even if it's a small scale, when you consider all the families or the households that they are allowed to deforestate in a big scale is a considerable deforestation. Even that they manage this land in a different way, that industry. So both are kind of important issues to deal with. Industry also because they are increasing crops and these crops are mainly related with some exports that we have. They are not products that we are using in Bolivia. And cattle, this policy that the government has for the next years to increase cattle is also related with meat that they want to sell to China and Russia mainly, as far as I know from the news. So it's kind of worry about this kind of contradictory policies that the government has because from one side he wants to improve the economy. But from other he needs to deal with all these problems that we are facing related to climate change, deforestation. So it's not very clear what's going to happen because deforestation is one of our main problems that we are facing there. But we are not sure what's going to happen like in the next years if this becomes real. We are going to increase a lot of deforestation for cattle and also for crops. Do you know if the children and the young people in the rural areas are migrating more to the urban areas for jobs and a different way of living? Or does it seem that most of the folks in the country sort of stay put in where they were born? We have a lot of problems with migrations and for certain one of the reasons that they migrate is because they have these difficult conditions to crop like droughts and floods. So this is one of the reasons. It's not the main reason maybe because we also have some social problems that make them migrate to different cities or even different countries. And people that migrate are mainly men and young men, young adults. When young adults migrate sometimes are for like having a better education for example. But migration in adult population I think is more related with some sources or incomes that they are trying to find in different cities or even different communities that they have very close. Hi. I have a question about whether water reuse is if there is a tradition of water reuse at all in Bolivia. And of course the cities and the countryside will have two different traditions. But what are the water systems like? You mentioned that water scarcity is going to be a big problem. Is there any tradition of reusing water in households in the cities and what about in the agricultural setting? In the cities, the answer is no. We don't have that tradition. It's something that we need to work on. Reusing and be more efficient in using natural resources, especially water. Because we've been in La Paz, one of the biggest cities that we have there. We suffer from water scarcity a couple of years ago and it was a very important crisis. People didn't know what to do because we didn't have water in our houses. And at that time we were trying to learn how to use in a very efficient way the water. But after that we didn't have more policies to make people aware of this problem. We can suffer like any time and we are going to suffer for sure in the next years. So we need more about this policy like this more awareness, more information to the people. Like our local governments, municipality governments, they need to work on that too. Because for sure it's something that we need to learn how to do this in cities. And in communities we also have problems with irrigation. There are not good and efficient systems with irrigation. Some recommendations are related with that, that we need to improve our systems, our maintenance issues also. Even the equipment, the systems that we have, they are not very efficient. So we need to improve a lot in that area too, both in rural, more related with irrigation. And because we spend a lot of water in the irrigation system. And in urban areas with drinking water and use of water. In the rural sort of sustenance type agriculture where I assume families are growing their own food and living off of the food. I'm curious what percentage of people are living off their own food. And how many people are selling for profit. And if there are indigenous practices that are more water wise that are still in place. Or has there been a movement to sort of adopt supposedly progressive western irrigation techniques? I think in rural areas related with farming, we have both. They depend on their food production to have their own food, but they also sell this food. But in so many cases these are considered food for own sustainability. Even if they sell some of this food that they produce, this is just like the basic income that they need to survive. It's like a very low level of income that they can reach with this food that they sell. So I will say that in most of the country they produce both for sale and also for consuming their own food. And about irrigation systems, we have this problem mainly in the highlands and probably in the middlelands that we have. Because in the lowlands we have a lot of rain there. So basically crops they don't need irrigation in that area. They have some products that they depend just on the natural rain. So they don't need irrigation. I've heard that in some cases they are experiencing some problems with water as well, which is kind of new. And I think they are going to research more about this. They are going to study more about this because it's unusual to have water scarcity in lowlands because that area is very wet. It's very humid. We have the forest there. So it's basically very, very rich in water. So that's kind of new. But our irrigation problem will be more on the highlands. And about the systems that they are using, I don't know. I think it's a combination as well, maybe some very modern systems. But some of them maybe traditional systems that they have or maybe some basic. For sure the industry that we have related with crops, they are very, very well developed in irrigation systems. But probably family households, they have very basic systems with that use. So just to be clear, they used to have irrigation systems that work just fine based on the melting of the glaciers. And now the glaciers are based on the seasonal melting of the glaciers. And now with the glaciers melting and gone and not forming again, that's what's causing the problems. That they don't have that seasonal melt. And eventually, like the one you showed us, the glaciers are gone entirely and there is no more water. So that's a big change from climate change, that loss of water. So it's not like they've never had systems that work. They did have systems that worked. For sure we need to improve the system as well, but all these communities that depend on this water from glaciers, they are suffering for this problem that they are facing and they need to move from other places and that's true. So in that case, irrigation, they used to have irrigation or maybe some, even if it was a very basic irrigation system, but they had the water there, very close, that's the thing. But yeah, in some other areas maybe the problem is like irrigation efficiency. So I think we have different kinds of problems. And since we, I think we have water in Bolivia, we need to use it in a very efficient way. We need to deal with all these problems that we have like the melting of glaciers because we know that now even cities depends, like La Paz depends on this glacier water in some proportion, like 15% of the city of La Paz is using this water from glaciers. So we need to work on that. What's going to happen? What are we going to deal with this problem? We need to find other sources of water. We need to explore this. So I think the government has started to work on this as well. It's kind of slow, but we need to work on that like anyway. Is there one thing that you see in Bolivia today that gives you hope that it will be able to address, if not, it's certainly not fully at least do its part in addressing the problem? I think yes, even that from the government perspective, it's kind of contradictory. The policies that they are implementing, that's for sure. Maybe local governments, they will be able to do more. We have regional governments, like we are divided in departments. So maybe these governments will be able to do more than the national level. And we also have the same communities that know that they are suffering of all these problems and they are taking some action. They are searching for some sources of help. They are knocking the doors of some organizations or foundations to work with them, to help them, not only to understand what's happening, because we are starting to work, for example, in adaptation strategies with crops that are more resilient, that kind of thing. So they need help with that. I think in that level, community level, farmers, they will try to find these options, for sure, because it's the work they do to survive. So they depend on that, so they will find a solution, even if they don't have a lot of support from the government. I hope that the government will have more projects related with climate change impacts and all these problems that we are facing. And we'll see, because we are going to change our government this next year as well. Sophie, you have been talking for an hour and you must be getting tired. Thank you so much for letting us have some insight into how things are going in Bolivia. We certainly hope your country does well and holds on to that belief about the importance of Mother Earth. Thank you. Thank you for coming here. I'm glad to share a little bit about Bolivia and a little bit about our problems that we have there facing with climate change. And I hope next year we'll have more answers to deal with the problems that we are facing now. Thank you.