Forestry & Industry Development Programme in Bolivia (FIBOL)

Forest Legislation in Bolivia

Bolivia has a modern forest legislation balancing a sustainable use of the forests with environmental considerations. The Forest Act (Ley Forestal), approved in december 1996, defines the institutional and legal framework for the forestry activities. The Forest Act is regulated in more detail by the Reglamento Forestal and the Technical Standards (Normas Técnicas). The forest legislation defines some new important criteria for forestry operations in Bolivia:

• The forest companies and also local associations (ASL) can obtain forest concessions on a 40 year contract, subject to regular environmental audits. The annual concession fee is established in the law as one USD per hectare of concession.
• All forest operations must be performed within the framework of a forest management plan, which has to comply to many technical requirements. No forest operations on areas without management plans are permitted. For making the management plan, forest inventories and mapping must be carried out.
• Forest management, when based on a selective management system, must respect a minimum cycle of 20 years between logging operations on the same area. Furthermore, conservatively established minimum diameters must be respected.
• Permanent sample plots must be established for monitoring the growth and yield of the logged-over forests.
• The roles of the State is divided between two entities, the Ministry of Sustainable Development that is responsible for defining policies, norms and technical standards, the Forest Superintendency responsible for the supervision and control and acting as the State's representative as owner of the concession areas.

The technical standards for forest management are very ambicious and correspond in most cases to the requiremens for certification according the principles and criteria established by the Forest Stewardship Council, FSC.

For more information, download the following documents as PDF-files

• Ley Forestal (114,950 bytes)
• Reglamento Forestal
• Normas Tecnicas para Planes de Manejo