In Europe, as around the globe, they are becoming more frequent, intense and widespread. In 2023 alone, they scorched an area around twice the size of Luxembourg, causing more than €4 billion ($4.3 billion) in damages and releasing 20 megatons of climate-heating CO2 emissions into the air — equivalent to nearly a third of all annual emissions from international aviation in the EU.
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Around 90% of EU funding for tackling wildfires goes into response, and only 10% into prevention, according to one estimate from German EU lawmaker Anna Deparnay-Grunenberg.
The occurrence of fires that are extremely difficult to bring under control — such as those during Portugal's 2017 wildfire season that burned a total of 500,000 hectares and claimed over 100 lives — highlight the limits of prioritizing fire response, said Alexander Held, senior expert at the European Forest Institute.
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Bognar said rethinking the EU approach to rising wildfire threats needs to include more long-term solutions, such as pushing through the proposed Forest Monitoring Framework — which would give a clearer picture of Europe's forests — and implementing the Nature Restoration Law which, despite being watered down and facing resistance from some member states, aims to support fire resilience by increasing forest biodiversity.