This article discusses the global challenge of wildfires exacerbated by climate change and presents sustainable solutions for fire prevention and disaster management that engage communities.
Recent wildfires in Japan, South Africa's Table Mountain and Los Angeles have only underlined the urgent need to embrace more effective pre-emptive measures for preventing or curbing outbreaks.
The Medford area of southern Oregon is not unlike the Provence in the south of France. The nearby hills are thick with pine and oak, while in the lower areas of the Rogue River Valley lie vineyards producing quality wines, but also broad swathes of fruit orchards and more recently, cannabis. This is a region highly vulnerable to wildfires with the last serious outbreak in the summer of 2020 when flames rampaged through the nearby towns of Ashland, Talent and Phoenix damaging or destroying 600 homes.
While visiting Medford in August, 2024, there were no outbreaks in the vicinity of this largely healthcare and agriculture-driven city of 85,000 people founded in the 1880s. But there was smog, a growing hazard to both humans and crops according to the World Meteological Organization (WMO). Scores of fires burned across the state and northern parts of California, often blocking the sky as if about to rain. But there was no rain, leaving the Rogue Valley hot, dry, and vulnerable.
Even with massive flooding last October in regions such as Valencia in Spain, parts of the Mediterranean – Greece, Spain, Portugal and Algeria – have witnessed major fires in 2024 caused by a mix of human neglicence and natural causes. Similarly, most of the outbreaks across the northwestern United States and Canada were inflicted by people burning debris, but also by loose tow chains and gas-powered mowers that can produce sparks. Lighting strikes, too, which are far more difficult to control, were also a cause.
Distant forest fire in Oregon near Crater Lake in August, 2024. (Photo: Edward Girardet)
One of the most devastating outbreaks occurred in July, 2024, when wildfires in Alberta’s Jasper National Park destroyed some 32,000 hectares of land as well as 30 per cent of the town of Jasper. Considered the largest recorded outbreak in over century, the fires were reportedly inflicted by lightening but exasperated by a “heat dome” over several weeks causing the drying out of trees and grass and the atmosphere itself.
As WMO notes, such outbreaks are having a devastating impact on the planet’s carbon levels. In 2023, when 15 million hectares burned, roughly four per cent of Canada’s forests, the fires released over 647 mega tonnes of greenhouse gases, more than some of the world’s largest carbon-emitting countries, such as Germany, Japan and Russia.
Firefighters earlier this year in Jaspar National Park, Canada. (Photo: Parks Canada)
It was a similar story in Greece. One of 2024’s first major fires broke out in June in the Ilia region of the Peloponnese peninsula. Believed to have been the result of arson, the fire was provoked by dry conditions, strong winds and temperatures reaching highs of 40C. By August 10, a “mega blaze” north of Athens ripped through farms and woodlands, most consisting of dry, highly volatile pine forests, prompting the evacuation of thousands of people. Only a year earlier, Greece had suffered the European Union’s largest ever wildfire, burning more than 810 square kilometres.
While wildfires are nothing new to the Mediterranean, drought and record high temperatures aggravated by global warming are inflicting huge economic costs. Ironically, the same goes for flooding elsewhere in Europe, another worsening impact of climate change, throwing natural balances into disarray.
According to meteorological measurements, June-August 2024 ranked as the hottest on record for the Northern Hemisphere over the past 100 years at 1.52 degrees C above average. The season also proved the Southern Hemisphere's warmest winter on record at 0.96 of a degree C above average. Key organizations such as the European Union and the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Rome are warning that wildfire outbreaks will only grow worse.
According to the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), fires in the EU, primarily in its southern parts from Romania to Portugal, burned more than half a million (504,002) hectares, twice the size of Luxembourg.
The Copernicus Fire Situation viewer for Europe and the Mediterranean. (https://forest-fire.emergency.copernicus.eu/applications)
Similar situations are found elsewhere on the planet requiring more concertation of ideas and possible solutions to be shared worldwide. Countries such as Australia and Chile suffered some of their worst wildfires in 2023. Last year’s megafire on the Hawaiian island of Maui, killed 101 people, marking the state’s worst known natural disaster. Fires across the globe in 2024 have been reportedly double the previous year, but, so far the overall impact, appears to less serious given more effective and prompt countermeasures. The season, however, is not yet over.
While governments and institutions have stepped up efforts to provide more appropriate, longer-term prevention, both scientists and economists warn that countries remain far from prepared. People need to be better informed with more consistent, and imaginative, media and educational outreach initiatives. These should include more hands-on approaches enabling the public, including tourists, local authorities, farming communities, schools and companies to become more engaged.
“Everyone needs to feel that they are part of the solution and that they can make a difference,” noted an FAO expert.
Unless long-term action is taken now, such specialists stress, the environmental and economic impact on everything from tourism and agriculture to urban development could prove devastating. The livelihoods of millions of people are already being affected. As noted by WMO’s Deputy-Secretary General Ko Barrett, the impact of climate change and air quality cannot be treated separately.
“They go hand-in-hand and must be tackled together,” he warned. “It would be a win-win situation for the health of our planet, its people and our economies, to recognize the inter-relationship and act accordingly.”
Firefighters in Portugal late summer 2024. (Photo: Feu de forêts et d’espaces naturels)
Forest fires and rising temperatures are having enormous impacts on tourism and lifestyles. An estimated 84 per cent of visitors to the Mediterranean, mainly Spain, France, Italy and Spain, come from Germany, UK and other parts of northern and western Europe. Many are now thinking twice about spending their holidays on the Med. The summers are simply becoming too hot with fires and smoke threatening camp sites and outdoor recreational activities. (See related story on tourism and the Bahamas by Peter Hulm)
This is good news for traditional northern European vacation locations. With cheaper air travel and the opening of exotic destinations during the 1970s and 80s such as Bali, the Seychelles and southern Spain, closer holiday sites such as the European Alps, Brittany and Normandy as well as the North Sea resorts lost many of their tourists.
Hotter summers and wildfires are now persuading families to once again spend their summers closer to home. Europeans, too, have been turning to North America, but the smoke and pollution of recent fires in Canada and the northern United States as well as high prices – cities like Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles are now more expensive than even Geneva and London – may constrain numbers despite recent “Visit USA” campaigns.
Smoke pollution caused by wildfires is a growing health hazard, particularly for people with cardio problems. (Photo: WMO)
Health, too, is a rising concern. Wildfires release inordinate amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere as well as toxic smoke with hazardous pollutants, such as PM2.5, nitrogen oxide ozone or lead. According to Colleen Reid of the University of Colorado Boulder, “once those particles are deep in the lung, they can cause systemic inflammation, which can affect all other systems of the body.” There is also evidence that such pollution exposure can affect cardiac health, she adds.
The 2023 fires and intense heat in places like Rhodes and Sicily provoked numerous travel cancellations, although this year has proved less contentious even if tourists did cancel flights with the rise of the outbreaks around Athens. Tourism regions such as Benidorm on Spain’s Costa Bianca, which relies heavily on British and Scandinavian tourists, are worried.
“We may have to do a lot of re-thinking in the way we market ourselves,” noted one city tourism representative. This was reiterated by Antonio Mayor, chair of the Valencia region hotel and tourism association, whose main activities are centred on the three summer months. If the heat waves continue, he warned, “the impact on our economy would be significant”.
As the UN’s World Tourism Organization in Madrid notes, there is already a lot of re-thinking in southern Europe from Croatia to Spain in the way local economies should be developed with a move from ‘mass’ to ‘quality’ tourism. In Barcelona, which declared a drought emergency in February 2024 placing water restrictions on its six million residents, including businesses and farmers, many of its inhabitants have been demonstrating against what they describe as the excessive “touristification” of their economy.
This includes intolerable numbers of visitors coupled with drastic rental rises as property owners seek to attract AirBnB clients. As residents from Split, Dubrovnik and Corfu complain, they can no longer enjoy their own hometowns because of growing tourism invasions. (See related story on WIKI’s Centennial Expedition to make people aware)
Mediterranean fires are affecting real estate. Potential buyers are wary of purchasing or renting properties close to forests and agricultural land. The rustic French town of Le Plan de la Tour near St Tropez, for example, relies economically on viticulture but also a growing population of retirees, part-time expatriate residents and professional internet nomads and consultants.
When southern France’s first major fire of summer 2024 broke out last June in the Massif des Maures north of Le Plan deploying over 700 firemen and soldiers supported by 150 fire engines, it provoked worry that such outbreaks will only become more frequent. “My husband and I are planning to retire soon and thinking of buying a place in Le Plan. But with these fires, it is sounding less like a good idea. We could lose our property in a matter of minutes,” noted Delphine Hedbaut, a French hairdresser in Ferney Voltaire near Geneva.
Water tanks placed in forests and potential wildfire zones in the south of France. (Photo: Edward Girardet)
So what can be done about curbing the impact and un-necessary destruction of wildfires? Solutions are available. But for these to succeed, they need to be part of mainly long-term approaches with broad public involvement. Here are some possibilities:
One increasingly heard, but not necessarily popular approach, is a call for more controlled burns through improved forest management, notably deliberately started fires under carefully monitored conditions. Prescribed ‘cold’ burns, often done when the ground is slightly wet, can promote healthier ecosystems by reducing fuel loads, such as dry undergrowth, which will only lead to harsher fires.
Small, managed low-intensity fires can also help rejuvenate forests beneficial to conservation and can lower fire risks. Certain wildlife plant and animal species require fire to re-produce. (See video on prescribed burns, Alberta Government, Canada)
Town authorities, farmers and tourism operators, however, are often reluctant to embrace prescribed fires. Some prefer instead to manage wildfires preventively even though emerging evidence suggests that this may counter-intuitively promote even more extreme outbreaks by enabling unburned undergrowth to accumulate.
Traditionally practised for thousands of years, controlled burns must be conducted under certain conditions. Indigenous populations across the planet have long used fire to clear land to allow smaller plants to grow, while in East Africa farmers regularly instigate fires to eliminate insects, create fresh grazing for animals, help fertilize the soil and promote the growth of trees such as brachystigia or miombo. The only problem is that too many farmers, anxious to obtain better yields, have taken to several burns a year, which ultimately destroy the soil.
In North America, European settlers suppressed traditional fires but scientists are now pointing to the ecological benefits of burning off thick undergrowth to release nutrients and prevent the buildup of decaying organic matter which will only fuel fires to grow quickly. Today, uncleared undergrowth can burn more readily than in past years given that drier conditions are likely to induce more rampant fires.
Roadside public information sign outside Le Plan de la Tour in the south of France warning property owners to clear forest undergrowth to help curb wildfires. (Photo: Edward Girardet)
Imperative, too, is to incorporate a wider use of firebreaks and other control techniques to protect homes and farmlands. In southern France, many forest areas now have water tanks located at different points to combat outbreaks, while dirt roads have been broadened to prevent fire jumps.
Local communities, too, are increasingly requiring landowners to legally clear strips of undergrowth. While this can be done with tractors, new initiatives involve the renting out of donkeys and goats to do the job far more effectively. Some communities caught up in the Los Angeles fires had proposed engaging herders to clear undergrowth with goats but local councils refused to pay for them.
Donkeys are an effective and inexpensive way of clearing forest undergrowth to reduce wildfire outbreaks. (Photo: Edward Girardet)
As scientists point out, there needs to be a far broader move toward “mixed forests” with different tree species rather than traditional “mono forests” consisting of a single type of indigenous Mediterranean species such as ubiquitous Stone and Aleppo pines. This can be combined with re-wilding with more open spaces ensuring more varied plant and animal species as well as natural fire breaks in the form of meadows and even artificially created dams and wetlands. (See related story on the Alps, Europe’s water tower)
Many vineyards and olive groves, scientists add, are dangerously lined with potentially dry forests simply waiting to burst into flame. Working with an imaginative mix of solutions involving local communities could prove an effective answer toward reducing outbreaks that threaten to destroy entire crops. (See our article on Valais trees about towns encouraging shade varieties that better withstand higher temperatures along their streets (LINK).
Potentially fast-burning pine trees are part of the beauty and threat facing the Mediterranean region. (Photo: Cote d’Azur Tourism)
Equally crucial, both governments and local communities together with private enterprise need to utilize more remote sensing technologies, such as satellite imaging and surveillance. These can help detect fires at an early stage enabling rapid response and containment.
For such approaches to work, scientists warn, they need to be incorporated into better land-use planning and conservation efforts. Given that fire fighters are known to be prime arson initiators, often to ensure more paid work, communities should consider placing volunteers on retainers in a bid to reduce such criminal incidents.
More effective public information campaigns aimed at farmers, entrepreneurs, schools and tourists, such as not throwing away burning cigarettes or making campfires in non-safe locations, could make a huge difference. This means engaging the public far more effectively and even appealing to local communities and media for ideas aimed at solutions.
“It really is all about making people aware,” noted Leigh Ann Hurt of IUCN (World Conservation Union) based in Gland, Switzerland specializing in the engagement of sports in global conservation practices. “And key to all this, are young people.”
Global Insights editor Edward Girardet is a journalist and author focusing on conflict, humanitarian crises, environment and development. He is a founder of WIKI’s Centennial Expedition and the multi-media HelpSaveTheMed initiative of the non-profit Global Geneva Group. Girardet has written and edited various books on Afghanistan and other conflict and humanitarian zones as well as the crucial role of credible journalism as a means of informing the public in an age of misinformation and disinformation. Girardet has recently completed a new book to be published in 2025: Tales of the American Club: From the Hippie Trail to the Afghan Wars.
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