Bolivia was for many years opposed to carbon markets. In 2010, the country passed a law that banned the commodification of Mother Earth and carbon markets. But in 2024, Bolivia’s constitutional court overturned the law. Shortly afterwards, the government published a decree giving the state exclusive rights to sell carbon credits.
This week, Ruairí Casey, Lisa Mirella Corti, Maria Cristina Fraddosio, and Abby Young-Powell report for The Guardian from Pando, a department in northern Bolivia. They write that since 2024, foreigners have been turning up hoping to buy what the communities describe as “invisible air.”
“We heard about this [carbon] business and nobody understood what it was,” Julio Mayo, from the Cavineña nation told The Guardian. “Even today, I don’t think people understand. We’re still in doubt.”
In 2024, months before Bolivia ruled that carbon markets were allowed, a small group of Indigenous leaders in the Pando region signed a carbon contract with the Federico Hecker Foundation.
According to the contract, the Foundation gained control over carbon credits, audits, and sales over an area of more than 88% of the Multi-Ethnic Indigenous Territory II (TIM II) for 30 years. That’s an area of 440,000 hectares.1
TIM II is home to about 3,600 people, living in 36 communities belonging to three Indigenous nations, the Cavineña, Tacana, and Ese Ejja. They won collective title to TIM II in 1996, following Indigenous pressure in Bolivia for land reform.
“They just told us that we were going to receive money, a lot of money,” Lucio Ayala, TIM II’s president told The Guardian, “but they didn’t explain what it was all about.”
A short Hecker family history
Leaders of the Tacana told The Guardian that they did not sign the contract, because they recognised the Hecker name. Federico Hecker arrived in Bolivia in the late 19th century from Switzerland. He was involved in the rubber industry. His son, Peter Hecker, was a senator for the department of Beni in northern Boliva. He was also a Brazil nut trader.
Indigenous People were kept as virtual slaves by the Heckers through the use of debt peonage, under which they were charged more for room and board than they earned. “Many families were bonded to the Heckers,” one community member told The Guardian. Debt peonage was abolished in 1953, but Indigenous People had little or no control over their territories before TIM II was established.
One Indigenous leader told The Guardian that the carbon contracts are “the way they [the Heckers] are trying to get back what they consider their land”.
Indigenous Peoples reject carbon credits
In March 2025, the board of TIM II put out a public statement to:
Categorically REJECT and REFUSE TO RECOGNIZE any contract, pact, or agreement signed between TIM II communities and the so-called Federico Hecker Foundation, as such agreements violate the rights and territorial sovereignty of TIM II.
The statement notes that the contract was signed without the free, prior and informed consent of all the communities in the territory.
In October 2025, following a meeting in Santa Cruz, Bolivian Indigenous organisations published a “Manifesto for Land, Territory, and the Environment.” The Manifesto states that,
We reject carbon credits for promoting the commodification of nature and undermining territorial sovereignty and the rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Hecker’s conflict of interest
The chairman of the Frederico Hecker Foundation is Aimé Hecker Urresti. But that’s not his only job. In 2025, Hecker was elected as a national MP. In that role, he has been working on promoting carbon markets with the Christian Democratic Party government under president Rodrigo Paz Pereira.
In 2025, Hecker was one of four MPs who presented a bill to congress to regulate carbon markets in Bolivia.
The Foundation’s website explains that,
His latest achievement is a groundbreaking political and legal effort enabling Bolivia’s entry into carbon markets, positioning the country to benefit from global environmental and economic frameworks.
“It cannot be that a lawmaker is now promoting a law that will regulate an initiative in which his own family is involved,” Miguel Vargas, a lawyer for Indigenous rights told The Guardian.
Predictably enough, Hecker denies any conflict of interest.
The EU is also involved. The Guardian reports that “an internal planning document for a joint €24m (£21m) EU-Swedish climate programme states that Bolivia’s opening to carbon markets took place ‘with significant support from the EU-Sweden initiative’”.
Mongabay reported the area as 407,585 hectares. Others report the total area of TIM II as 407,585 hectares, or 407,584 hectares.