In the early hours of 6 May, a jaguar was run over by a vehicle near the site of works to widen a section of the Cochabamba-Santa Cruz highway, in central Bolivia. The incident would have gone unnoticed had it not been for what happened to the animal’s body.
After being alerted to the incident by locals and rangers, agents from the Forestry and Environmental Preservation Police (Pofoma) discovered its dismembered head and three of its limbs, half-buried, along with its full hide spread on a board, in a camp belonging to the Chinese company Sinohydro, which was in charge of the works.
Government officials told media that they suspected the parts were dismembered with the intention of being sold. The parts were recovered by authorities, and three Sinohydro employees – two Bolivian and one Pakistani – were linked to the incident, though no arrests were initially reported, nor had the driver who struck the jaguar been identified. The Pakistani worker is said to have voluntarily handed over the jaguar head and four of its teeth, according to a police report seen by Dialogue Earth.
At least five national laws in the country protect animals and punish biocide and wildlife trafficking with up to eight years in prison. The jaguar, classified as “near threatened” according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, is being conserved in Bolivia under a national plan. The Public Prosecutor’s Office therefore opened an investigation to determine who was responsible. Sandra Montaño, legal advisor to the Cochabamba Departmental Secretariat for the Rights of Mother Earth, a state environmental body, said that the Cochabamba government has joined the legal process.
The incident gained national prominence due to gory photographs of the animal carcass circulating on social media.
Three other Sinohydro employees, from its legal, human resources and environmental departments, were reported by local media to have assisted police authorities in the recovery of the animal parts, while the two Bolivian workers allegedly involved in the incident were reported to have left the company camp soon after. But the incident has been another potentially damaging episode for Sinohydro in Bolivia, where it has faced challenges since it arrived in the country in 2013.
The Chinese constructor – a subsidiary of state-owned PowerChina – is involved in six road infrastructure and energy projects in Bolivia, but has been the subject of complaints from environmental organisations and government officials, related to is record on deforestation around project sites, labour disputes, and the quality of the works it has delivered.
Environmental complaints
The company’s name first appeared in Bolivian media as the subject of environmental complaints in 2017. Tomás Monasterio, then a congressman for the opposition Democratic Party, filed a criminal complaint against Sinohydro over the deforestation of 6.8 hectares of trees on the banks of the Surutú River in Santa Cruz department, which he said increased flood risk and put local communities in danger. Almost a month later, he filed a second lawsuit against the company for deforestation of a further 1.8 hectares, this time on the banks of the Piraí River, which took place despite regulations prohibiting any logging within 100 metres of a river for environmental protection. Both instances took place as part of the construction of the Montero-Yapacaní dual carriageway in Santa Cruz.
The former parliamentarian described these incidents to Dialogue Earth as “a savage clearing”. During an inspection in Surutú, he reported that personnel from the Forestry and Land Authority (ABT) also found “buried toxic waste”.
The ABT announced the issuing of a fine of around BOB 14,000 (USD 2,018) for the first case, along with an order to reforest the entire area, and a doubling of the fine for the second. In both cases, the ABT confirmed that there was no authorisation to clear the land. But Humberto Nazra, the Bolivian Highway Administration’s (ABC) works prosecutor, told media that he did not believe Sinohydro acted in bad faith, and said the company had acknowledged its mistakes and was complying with orders issued to it by authorities.
Monasterio then filed a third criminal complaint. He said that as he was undertaking an inspection of the deforested Surutú site, a group of local community members – which he claimed consisted of Sinohydro employees and people supportive of the company and politicians who approved the projects – “held me back and threatened to lynch me, and I had to flee from Surutú”.
The former deputy says he was surprised to be informed, when his legislative term ended in 2021, that his three complaints were all rejected due to allegedly insufficient evidence, despite the environmental crimes committed being demonstrated and already subject to fines.
The Ivirizu case
Sinohydro has faced further criticism on its environmental performance in Bolivia, being mentioned before the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) in 2023. The case of the Ivirizu hydroelectric plant, under construction in Cochabamba, was highlighted by Franco Albarracín, a researcher at the environmental civil society organisation Cedib, who presented a report to the committee evaluating China’s business activities in Latin America and their compliance with international obligations and human rights laws.
He highlighted to the committee the company’s hydroelectric power plant, which he claimed as having “already affected 280 hectares of forest within the protected area [of the Carrasco National Park, within which the plant is located], which clearly has a negative and probably irreversible impact on flora and fauna”. Albarracín added that the construction has “affected 18 communities in the municipalities of Totora, Mizque and a large part of the protected area”.
Marco Gandarillas, head of monitoring Chinese investments at Ecuador-based NGO Latinoamérica Sustentable, highlighted the “complicated” nature of the Ivirizu project, “from deforestation and the treatment of deforestation waste, to the [power plant] itself”. Additionally, he claimed that there have been reports of incursions into the protected area by “colonisers” (a term often used in Bolivia to refer to people from the Andean region who seek land in the tropical zone), which he said has been made possible by the project’s creation of roads and paths for the movement of workers and materials.
In order to carry out this project – which Bolivian public utilities company Ende stated in 2016 would be used to generate surplus electricity for export – a Cedib dossier notes that the zoning of the protected area was modified for the development of the project, which was declared “of national interest and priority” by the government only a month before the modification. In May 2023, the Ministry of Hydrocarbons and Energy announced the project was “more than 86%” complete.
Additionally, when more than 50 Bolivian environmental organisations sent a letter in 2020 to Sinohydro, one of the requests made was that they make public the environmental studies, in which they stated that the intervention of the power plant in the park “will have irreversible impacts”, reports Gandarillas. “But both the company and the Bolivian authorities refused,” he adds.
Sinohydro has not responded directly to these issues, and did not respond to Dialogue Earth’s approaches for comment. In a 2023 article published on the website of parent company PowerChina, it referred to the obtaining of environmental impact assessment and tree felling permits in 2018, and emphasised the project’s attempts to adhere to Bolivian environmental law, claiming that it had “strictly followed” environment protection measures and “ensured that local ecology is not damaged”.
On its official website, Ende states that Ivirizu is a “sustainable solution” to Bolivia’s energy challenges. It also claims that environmental impact studies were carried out, and “prevention and mitigation measures were implemented to protect biodiversity and local ecosystems”. Additionally, the website states that Ivirizu is “the first project in Bolivia” to implement rescue plans for flora and fauna such as amphibians and reptiles as a mitigation measure as part of its environmental licence.
Labour and quality claims
In 2021, Sinohydro was also linked to alleged labour violations in Ivirizu, revealed by the Ombudsman’s Office, whose report also pointed to a lack of action taken by the Ministry of Labour. These related to subcontracting and outsourcing, as well as poor conditions in workers’ lodgings.
Disputes were also reported in the construction of the Padilla-El Salto highway in Chuquisaca department in 2018, where a Chinese Sinohydro employee was arrested after allegedly attacking a woman working for one of its subcontractors, who was protesting about its failure to pay her wages. The incident sparked wider hostilities, with workers from the subcontracted company and other local organisations blockading Sinohydro’s camps. The company initially denied the accusations, saying that payment was the responsibility of its subcontractor, and claimed on the contrary that its workers were the victims of the incident, having been forcibly prevented from entering its camp. However, it was later reported to have paid the missed wages and agreed to remove the employee involved in the alleged assault from the project.
In another project, the El Sillar dual carriageway – which links Santa Cruz with Cochabamba – Mikenny, a separate company subcontracted by Sinohydro, was also sued for “non-compliance with labour and industrial safety regulations” in 2022. Between 2015 and 2019, the non-profit Centre for Labour and Agrarian Development Studies (Cedla) logged 153 complaints against Sinohydro related to labour issues in Bolivia – the highest amongst 17 Chinese companies active in the country during the period – and six “conflicting projects”, or ones that have caused environmental and labour conflicts.
The El Sillar project was delivered and opened in November 2023, but subsequently received complaints from the ABC after the press recorded sinkholes and collapses in at least ten sections of the road, leading the authority to demand guarantees from Sinohydro on repair work. This work is still ongoing, and is close to where the jaguar was struck.
Dialogue Earth attempted to contact representatives of Sinohydro to discuss the issues raised in this article, but was unsuccessful. An exhaustive review of local media showed that the company issues press releases on social issues, but rarely gives interviews. In one of the few available, given by a Bolivia branch manager in 2016, he sought to defend the company amidst delays in several of its projects. In December 2023, another was given by a branch manager stating the company’s commitment to conducting repair works on the El Sillar project.
Sinohydro has sustainable development policies, but they are little known outside ChinaMarco Gandarillas, Latinoamérica Sustentable
Both Cecilia Requena, a current senator from the opposition Civic Community party and a noted environmentalist, and the then-deputy Monasterio told Dialogue Earth that they had requested reports from various ministries in relation to the environmental complaints against the Chinese firm.
In June, a month after the incident involving the dismembered jaguar was publicised, Requena sought more information from the Ministry of Government on the nature and progress of the police intervention in the case; from the Ministry of the Environment, to learn more about the environmental licences given to Sinohydro; and from the Ministry of Public Works, to understand the impact on wildlife, among others. At the time of publication, she said the authorities had yet to respond.
Gandarillas, of Latinoamérica Sustentable, says that though the Chinese state itself has established control mechanisms and policies surrounding sustainable development in its companies overseas operations, its entities have not always complied with them. “Sinohydro has sustainable development policies, but they are little known outside China,” he notes. “In fact, China also has open and effective dialogue mechanisms to facilitate the exchange of information on issues of common interest, such as environmental issues.” In 2020, the NGO compiled these policies into a report published in Spanish, but Gandarillas says there has been no response to its publications.
Following the UN CESCR review in 2023, as part of which Latin American NGOs filed their report on Chinese investments in the region, the Chinese government issued a response stating its intention to study the findings and “fulfil its obligations under international human rights instruments”. It said it “will continue to engage in constructive dialogue and cooperation with all parties”.
