Country Comments

Bolivia is one of the poorest countries in South America, with a per capita income of US $7700 (2018) far below the regional average. The country has among the highest fertility and infant mortality rates and lowest average life expectancies in Latin America.

The fertility rate has averaged 3 children per mother the past 5 years which has caused an increase in 160,000 additional citizens every year. The country maintains a significant amount of biocapacity and can withstand five times as many citizens at current consumption rates. Bolivia should remain sustainable for the foreseeable future.

Bridging Amazonia and the Andes, Bolivia harbors astonishing biodiversity and ecosystems of outstanding global conservation concern. Agricultural expansion is causing massive biodiversity loss and eroding protected area connectivity. The country is blessed with substantial natural resources but monetizing these resources is being met more and more with resistance by its citizens who are increasingly concerned about the consequences of the exploitation and degradation to Bolivia’s countryside. In the past decade, Bolivia has been a pioneer in environmental policy-making by legally encoding the rights of nature and proposing alternatives moving away from market-based environmental policy instruments.

Few countries in the world have advanced so quickly toward gender parity in politics as has Bolivia, where women now hold almost half the seats in congress and laws mandate gender equality at lower levels too.(1)

(1) https://apnews.com/article/c9eee24a05704c25b542b618f93057e2