Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz announced on Saturday that he decreed the state of emergency in Bolivia to cope with the droughts and floods associated with the “super El Niño”.
© Lusa
01/11/2026
by
Lusa
O Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz announced on Saturday that he decreed the state of emergency in Bolivia to deal with the droughts and floods associated with the “super El Niño”, which is causing damage worldwide.
The measure will enable more economic resources and rescue teams to be mobilised in critical areas.
“ We have done a great deal of work to preserve the environment and to make the impact of this year’s super El Niño as small as possible,” Peace said in a message to the nation.
The drought affects just over 78,000 families in six of the nine departments of the country of South America. It also caused the loss of more than 75,000 head of cattle, according to the latest report from the Ministry of Civil Defense, published this week.
“ This will be a phenomenon that will cause very hard blows in terms of drought and floods, and we need the cooperation of all institutions,” added Paz.
The El Niño episode this year “can reach unprecedented intensity, literally exceeding the monitoring scales” climate used “four decades ago”, warned the UN this week.
In neighboring countries such as Peru, El Niño raised temperatures and favored forest fires, which have already cost at least 12 people their lives. It also contributed to the spread of dengue, a tropical disease that caused 81 more deaths in 2026.
In Chile, it was the cause of the rainiest October ever recorded in Santiago.
El Niño is a natural climate phenomenon in the Pacific that repeats every two to seven years. The surface waters in the center and east of the equatorial Pacific Ocean heat up from spring onwards, causing significant changes in wind regimes, pressure and precipitation worldwide in the following months.