Wildfires Are Becoming More Frequent and Intense Globally, Researchers Find

Wildfires will become more fre­quent and intense in the future, accord­ing to a report pub­lished by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and GRID-Arendal, a non-profit.

The impact of cli­mate change and changes in how land is used for human activ­i­ties will lead to a 14-per­cent increase in extreme fires by 2030.

Estimates show that their num­bers and sever­ity could grow 30 per­cent by 2050 and 50 per­cent by the end of the cen­tury.

“Uncontrollable and dev­as­tat­ing wild­fires are becom­ing an expected part of our sea­sonal cal­en­dars,” the sci­en­tists wrote in the report. ​“Wildfires occur on every con­ti­nent except Antarctica, and most regions expe­ri­ence weather con­di­tions con­ducive to the out­break of a wild­fire at some point in the year.”

According to the report, more than 30,000 peo­ple die every year from wild­fire smoke expo­sure in the 43 coun­tries ana­lyzed by the researchers.

“Other species also pay the price: besides a dev­as­tat­ing loss of habi­tat, the smol­der­ing swathes of land left in a wildfire’s wake are scat­tered with the charred remains of ani­mals and plants pos­si­bly fast-track­ing extinc­tions,” the sci­en­tists wrote.

The researchers pro­vided a few exam­ples of the mas­sive dev­as­ta­tion caused by wild­fires, such as last year in the Pantanal, the world’s largest trop­i­cal wet­land that stretches from Brazil to Bolivia and Paraguay.

Fires in the Pantanal destroyed one-third of what is con­sid­ered one of the world’s most sig­nif­i­cant bio­di­ver­sity hotspots. The researchers added that the chance for the wet­lands to recover fully is low.

The report also fore­casts wild­fires of vary­ing degrees over time, depend­ing on how much green­house gas emis­sions will be cur­tailed in the com­ing decades.

“By the end of the cen­tury, the like­li­hood of cat­a­strophic wild­fire events will increase by a fac­tor of 1.31 to 1.57,” the sci­en­tists wrote. ​“Even under the low­est emis­sions sce­nario, we will likely see a sig­nif­i­cant increase in wild­fire events.”

“Not only can wild­fires reduce bio­di­ver­sity, but they con­tribute to a cli­mate change feed­back loop by emit­ting huge quan­ti­ties of green­house gases into the atmos­phere, spurring more warm­ing, more dry­ing, more burn­ing,” they added.

The eco­nomic loss caused by wild­fires is also increas­ing over time. In the United States alone, ​“the annu­al­ized eco­nomic bur­den from wild­fire [is] between $71 bil­lion to $348 bil­lion (€65 bil­lion to €318 bil­lion).”

According to the researchers, most nations do not assess the dam­ages caused by wild­fires. Still, they added, ​“the sit­u­a­tion is cer­tainly extreme; it is not yet hope­less.”

Wildfires at sev­eral lat­i­tudes are likely to have severe eco­nomic impacts by destroy­ing crops and agri­cul­tural land, inflict­ing dam­age that can take years to recover from.

Olives are among the crops increas­ingly vul­ner­a­ble to wild­fires, which are often fueled by low lev­els of soil mois­ture and an abun­dance of dry veg­e­ta­tion caused by drought, heat­waves and lack of main­te­nance.

In rel­e­vant Mediterranean olive-pro­duc­ing coun­tries such as Greece, Portugal, Italy, Algeria and Turkey, recent wild­fires have destroyed olive grow­ing areas closely con­nected to the local peo­ple’s iden­tity, tra­di­tion and income.

Gianluigi Bacchetta, a biol­ogy pro­fes­sor at the University of Cagliari in Italy, who was not involved in the UNEP report, told Olive Oil Times that tra­di­tional olive grow­ers in the Mediterranean should switch to a proac­tive approach to pre­vent wild­fire dam­age rather than a reac­tive approach.

“We need to work on pre­ven­tion, which means to take care of our land,” Bacchetta said. ​“When sum­mer is com­ing, with its hot tem­per­a­tures and dry­ness, those who take care of the olives should mow the grass, remove resid­ual veg­e­ta­tion and any mate­ri­als that could poten­tially fuel a fire.”

He added that the coun­try­side should also be con­stantly mon­i­tored in the riski­est sea­sons, and more action should be taken to ensure that at-risk regions are kept safe.

“We wit­ness the phe­nom­e­non of tra­di­tional groves which are often being aban­doned,” Bacchetta said. ​“In the Mediterranean, this hap­pens when cer­tain crops which once brought income to local grow­ers are not prof­itable any­more.”

That not only means fewer sur­veil­lance and pre­ven­tion mea­sures but also fuels inci­dents, includ­ing fires gen­er­ated by ille­gal waste left in deserted areas or wild­fires that start on the side of coun­try roads.

One of the worst wild­fires in recent his­tory in Sardinia spread after a car broke down, stopped by the road­side and caught fire.

“From there, the dry veg­e­ta­tion sucked the flames in and in a mat­ter of hours, the wild­fire grew way beyond any pos­si­ble inter­ven­tion,” Bacchetta said.

Fueled by the winds, the flames spread through a large area between Montiferru and Planargia for three days, envelop­ing 14 munic­i­pal­i­ties and dam­ag­ing his­tor­i­cal olive groves.

When such olive groves are burned by fire, farm­ers and agron­o­mists must wait a few months to iden­tify plants that can­not be recov­ered and must be removed, plants that might need seri­ous prun­ing and plants that may poten­tially be recov­ered.

“Waiting is essen­tial because that allows us to under­stand what to do with every sin­gle plant affected by fire,” Bacchetta said. ​“Once a tra­di­tional olive grove is hit, the even­tual removal of all the burned plants might be very costly and inef­fi­cient.”

“The good news is that some­times the plants sur­vive, and due to their pow­er­ful roots, as hap­pened in Sardinia, many of them can quickly recover, be grafted and go back to pro­duc­tion in a few years,” he added.

However, the cul­tural, eco­nomic and social land­scape of farm­ing com­mu­ni­ties hit by such extreme wild­fires can be dam­aged beyond the means of restora­tion and com­pen­sa­tion mea­sures.

“Sometimes a fire brings almost com­plete destruc­tion of the top­soil lay­ers, which means that all the organic mate­r­ial in them is oblit­er­ated or vastly reduced,” Bacchetta said. ​“After that, when the rain comes, it increases the dam­age by wash­ing away both the top sur­face lay­ers and those that sit below them, which brings to a huge loss of fer­til­ity.”

The more slop­ing the ter­rain, he added, the greater the dam­age done.

“Since many olive groves in Sardinia and through­out the Mediterranean grow on slopes, the risk for those is even worst,” Bacchetta said.

According to the UNEP/GRID-Arendal report, the world ​“must learn to live with fires.”

Institutions and local com­mu­ni­ties must learn to man­age bet­ter and mit­i­gate the risk wild­fires rep­re­sent for human health, bio­di­ver­sity, liveli­hoods and the global cli­mate.

The report calls for gov­ern­ments to dras­ti­cally change their approach to the prob­lem, define new strate­gies for ecosys­tem restora­tion and spend money on pre­ven­tion instead of com­pen­sa­tion for those affected.

• GRID-Arendal
• United Nations Environment Program