Safeguarding land for future generations
How cacao farmers in La Paz secured new laws to ban mining and protect their lands and livelihoods.
El Ceibo is promoting initiatives to strengthen the cocoa sector, which will also benefit other cocoa organisations (Photo: Daniela Claros/FAO)
Based in the municipalities of Alto Beni and Palos Blancos in the department of La Paz, El Ceibo is Bolivia’s largest organic cocoa-producing cooperative federation, bringing together 48 grassroots cooperatives and more than 1,300 members.
In 2017, when mining activities that were causing serious pollution and environmental harm began to encroach upon the two municipalities, El Ceibo – with support from the Forest and Farm Facility (FFF) – successfully lobbied for a change in the law to ban mining in Alto Beni and Palos Blancos, thereby safeguarding the environment, agriculture, livelihoods and food security for future generations.
Forest and Farm Facility activities
Technical and financial assistance from the FFF enabled the federation to develop technical and statistical inputs to highlight the importance of keeping the region free of mining. El Ceibo carried out advocacy efforts, supported by its board of directors and technical team. They organised demonstrations and built alliances with local authorities and, subsequently, departmental and national authorities.
Through its research unit, El Ceibo developed a regulatory proposal, mobilised its members and held board meetings with municipal authorities, providing technical inputs, production data and information on organic regulations that could be affected by mining settlements.
Significance of impact
The push for the creation of local regulations led to the municipality of Palos Blancos being declared an agroecological, productive and mining-free territory through Municipal Law 233, enacted in March 2021. Subsequently, the municipality of Alto Beni approved a similar regulation the following July.
The FFF also supported and advised El Ceibo to scale up the regulation from the municipal to the departmental level in La Paz. Departmental assembly members visited the area and requested production data, georeferencing and other information necessary for the declaration.
Illegal mining uses mercury; miners settled in the Alto Beni area and social organisations have been evicting them. But they have also demanded a municipal law. Municipal Law 233 was enacted, declaring the municipality of Palos Blancos free of mining activity and pollution, thereby guaranteeing food security. But the state had jurisdiction over mining matters, so we have convened social sectors, Indigenous organisations, universities, El Ceibo and others to draft a departmental law.
− Bernan Arancibia, mayor of Palos Blancos
Conclusion
These municipalities, with the support of El Ceibo’s board of directors, have followed through on the regulation and escalation process, successfully securing the passage of Law 239 by the La Paz Departmental Legislative Assembly enacted in March 2024, which declares the two municipalities “free from mining activity and pollution”.
Further reading
Mobilising internal finance within a forest and farm producer organisation: a case study of Alternative Finance for Development (AFID) of El Ceibo, Rubén Darío Usnayo Ramos, Boris Fernández Arancibia (2023), project report
News: Bolivia’s top cocoa producer shares success, Forest and Farm Facility (2025)
News: The story of El Ceibo cocoa producers in mobilising internal finance, Forest and Farm Facility (2023)
Video: Producer organisations’ internal financial mechanisms: the case of El Ceibo, Bolivia