EU Nations Face New World Of Fires; Natural Forests The Best Defense, Monocultures Fatally Vulnerable

Firefighters in southern France are grappling to control a large wildfire that has swept through an area bigger than the size of its capital, Paris. Spain and Portugal are also battling wildfires.

Forests are once again burning in many parts of the world. In most cases, forest fires are caused by humans: either intentionally to expand agricultural land, or unintentionally when discarded glass, cigarette butts or even hot car exhaust pipes ignite dry forest or grasslands. Global heating caused by the emission of greenhouse gases is another major wildfire accelerator.

"Climate change has created a rapidly changing situation in which it is getting hotter and hotter worldwide and drier and drier in many places, and the risk of forest fires is increasing," said Albert Wotke, a forest expert at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), an environmental protection organization.

Between 2001 and 2024, wildfires wiped out 152 million hectares of trees, which comprises a third of the loss of all trees globally during the same period. Extreme wildfires worldwide will increase by about 14% by 2030, and 30% by 2050 according to the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). And as more global regions experience more heat and drought, fires are also increasingly breaking out in places once humid enough to prevent them — such as rainforests in the Amazon and Indonesia. "We can try to prevent it, but we as humanity must adapt to it," said Wotke.

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