RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Lake Poopó, Bolivia’s second-largest lake, has dried up due to climate change and now resembles a desert; experts warn that it will never have water again.
Poopó, located in the western department of Oruro, was a source of life for locals who fished in its rich saltwater and farmed along its shores.
According to scientists, Lake Poopó, which straddles the Bolivian altiplano, has fallen victim to decades of water detour for regional irrigation needs, and to climate change that makes recovery of the lake increasingly unlikely.
Drought at Lake Poopó has forced communities that once settled on its shores to abandon the area.
Valerio Rojas, who once made his living fishing in Lake Poopó, told an international agency that village elders in Bolivia say the lake is replenished every 50 years. Still, when they look at the parched, white-lined salt desert that remains, they have their doubts.
The drought of climate change is also driving away communities that once lived on Lake Poopó because there is no water “and no more life,” said Benedicta Uguera, an indigenous woman who once raised cattle on an island in the lake.