LA PAZ — Bolivia has declared a nationwide state of emergency to free up resources for dealing with the effects of the El Nino weather phenomenon, President Rodrigo Paz said on Saturday. Paz signed the decree to accelerate the deployment of financial resources and rescue teams to regions hard hit by flooding and drought, Agence France-Presse reported.

Source: AFP via Al Jazeera

El Nino will have “very severe impacts in terms of drought and floods”, Paz said in an address to the nation, adding that Bolivia needs “the cooperation of all institutions”. The emergency measure is meant to let authorities move money and rescue teams more quickly to where they are needed, rather than waiting through normal procedures.

78,000Families affected by drought, in six of Bolivia's nine departments, according to a government report this week
75,000+Cattle lost to the drought, according to the same government report
9Departments in Bolivia in total — six of them are drought-affected

Drought is now affecting 78,000 families in six of Bolivia's nine departments and has led to the loss of more than 75,000 head of cattle, according to a government report released this week and cited in the AFP reporting. For farming families, cattle are both income and savings, so losses on that scale hit food supplies and livelihoods at the same time.

One weather pattern, two opposite disasters

El Nino is a natural climate pattern that occurs roughly every two to seven years, when surface waters in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean warm, shifting winds, pressure and rainfall around the world. The same pattern can bring drought to one region and flooding to another — which is why Bolivia is preparing for both at once.

The current El Nino is due to peak towards the end of 2026, but its impacts could continue well into 2027. In early September, the World Meteorological Organization reported a nearly 100 percent likelihood that the pattern will persist through February 2027, and the United Nations has warned that this El Nino could reach unprecedented strength, bringing havoc to Latin America, eastern and southern Africa, Asia and the Pacific.

Bolivia is also prone to flooding in its lowlands: in December 2025, floods in the Santa Cruz region killed dozens of people. Officials say the emergency decree, and the extra rescue teams it authorises, are intended to put help in place before the peak arrives rather than after disaster strikes.

What happens next

Watch for where the freed-up funds and rescue teams are actually deployed in the six drought-hit departments, and for river and rainfall warnings as El Nino approaches its expected late-2026 peak. The figures in this story are the Bolivian government's own, reported by AFP; they have not been independently audited.