Bolivia has declared a nationwide state of emergency to free up resources for dealing with El Niño, as drought hits six of the country's nine departments and the government braces for floods in the same season.

President Rodrigo Paz signed the decree on Saturday. It also calls for further deployments of rescue teams in areas hard hit by drought and flooding. "This will be a phenomenon that will have very severe impacts in terms of drought and floods, and we need the cooperation of all institutions," Paz said in an address to the nation.

Paz said the emergency declaration would allow authorities to deploy resources more quickly where they are needed. The decree is an administrative tool rather than a solution: it lets the government move money and personnel faster than normal procurement rules permit, and it signals to international partners that the country expects to need help.

The government report released this week puts the drought toll at 78,000 families, with more than 75,000 head of cattle lost. Bolivia is also prone to flooding: in December 2025, floods in the Santa Cruz region killed dozens of people.

A regional pattern

Bolivia is not alone in feeling the cycle. Neighbouring Peru has seen increased temperatures and wildfires that have killed at least 12 people, and Chile's capital, Santiago, recorded its rainiest October on record.

In early September, the World Meteorological Organization reported a nearly 100 per cent likelihood that El Niño conditions would continue through February 2027, and scientists have predicted that the phenomenon could be linked to more than 450,000 deaths globally, with the poorest countries hit hardest. The United Nations warned this week that the current event could have "unprecedented" strength, bringing havoc to Latin America, eastern and southern Africa, and parts of Asia and the Pacific.

El Niño is a global climate phenomenon that occurs roughly every two to seven years and is part of the planet's natural weather cycle. Warming in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific changes winds, pressure and rainfall patterns worldwide. Its intensity varies, and its effects differ by geography, but this cycle could be the strongest in recorded history. It is due to peak at the end of 2026, and its impacts could continue well into 2027.

Why a decree matters

A state of emergency is an administrative tool rather than a solution. In Bolivia it allows the government to move money and personnel faster than normal procurement rules permit, and to coordinate ministries, regional governments and the armed forces in a single response.

The decree also signals to international partners that the country expects to need help. Bolivia's drought is concentrated in the highlands and the dry valleys, while the flood risk sits in the lowlands, so the same national government is managing two opposite emergencies at once.

That dual exposure is what makes the El Niño cycle expensive. Drought destroys crops and livestock over months; floods destroy roads, bridges and homes in days. A country that is still repairing one season's damage when the next arrives has little fiscal room left.

The economic stakes extend beyond the farm gate. Bolivia's food prices, like those elsewhere, are sensitive to weather shocks, and inflation has been a political issue across the region. The government's ability to keep basic food affordable depends partly on whether the harvest survives the next few months.

There is also a longer argument about preparedness. The 2022 UN truce in Yemen showed how quickly a fragile calm can collapse, but in Latin America the equivalent lesson is about early warning: the meteorological agencies saw this cycle coming months ago, and the question is whether the money and the evacuation plans arrive before the water does.

Comparable emergencies elsewhere show the pattern. Hawaii has been under a flood watch this week, an event we covered in our report on the Hawaii flood watch, and European governments have been fighting over who pays for energy and climate adjustment, as our account of the UK energy price cap describes.

Food and energy costs are also feeding directly into inflation measures that shape central bank decisions, a link we examined in our report on US inflation and growth.

For Bolivia, the immediate task is to reach the families in the six affected departments before the rains arrive in force. The decree gives Paz the legal cover to do that, and the deployment of rescue teams is the first test of whether it works in practice.

The harder test comes after the emergency. Drought relief is expensive and slow: water trucking, animal feed and cash transfers have to be sustained for months, and the harvest that farmers have already lost cannot be recovered. Flood recovery is faster to see but heavier to pay for, because roads, bridges and homes have to be rebuilt. A government managing both at once is choosing between two kinds of spending with the same limited budget.

The next budget will show whether the emergency is funded as an emergency or treated as a seasonal expense. For the families in the affected departments, the answer will be measured in whether food, water and veterinary support arrive before the rains change the problem from drought to flood.