Through this project, we aim to curb greenhouse gas emissions from wildfires by shifting the paradigm of fire management from suppression to prevention and promoting fire-smart landscapes.
Scientists estimate that in the Mediterranean region along the 21st century the total burned area from wildfires is projected to increase by 40-100%. One of the main causes of wildfires is inadequate land management leading to accumulation of dry biomass and landscape simplification. The abandonment of rural areas of Mediterranean countries with a traditional mosaic-like landscape of high environmental and socioeconomic resilience, has led to the homogenization and simplification of the territory. The consequences are accumulation of biomass, poor landscape planning and the consequent fire risk exacerbation.
Throughout the last decades, there has been growing criticism of the ineffectiveness of concentrating resources on fire suppression. Most of the wildfire management public policies and funding in the Mediterranean countries still focus on sophisticated extinguishing equipment, undervaluing the need of major preventive landscape planning and implementation measures. The metaphor of the “firefighting trap” is used by managers to describe a short-sighted cycle of problem-solving: dealing with fires as they arise fail to address the underlying cause, rather than understanding and addressing the factors that cause the problem.
Conversely, evidence on the need to develop integrated strategies including fire prevention actions is reaching widespread consensus among landscape and forest managers. However, there are still significant barriers that prevent the large-scale planning and dissemination of integrated fire prevention plans and measures that allow landscapes to swift from fire-prone to fire-smart ones.
Solution: Smart fire landscape planning
The MediterRE3 project promotes a relatively novel approach to manage wildfire hazards: the so-called “fire-smart landscape management This integrated approach is primarily based on biomass management and fire spread/fire intensity reduction. In this way, forest landscapes become more resistant to the spread of fire.
In the past two decades the development of the principles of Forest Landscape Restoration (FLR) highlighted the benefits of this integrated landscape management approach to promote fire-smart landscapes. In the coming period, we will also define a Landscape Action Plan for the application of the FLR principle to Prokletije National Park and Komovi Nature Park, which will be published on the website.
The goal is to ensure long-term support for the management of these areas, through the identification of adequate financial resources for the fight against climate change and land degradation. Further dissemination of the action will be guaranteed by Medforval, a network of Mediterranean forest landscapes of high ecological value.
Over the course of this project, we will develop guidelines for forest landscape restoration (FLR) fire-smart landscape planning in the Mediterranean region, providing guidance to practitioners with the goal of reducing wildfire hazard through integrated landscape management. We will facilitate the drafting of Landscape Action plans that will set the ground for the reduction of wildfires in the target areas. Using the knowledge management platform of the MedForVal network of High Ecological Value forest landscapes, we will upscale the outputs at the international level. This project is implemented in a partnership with Instituto Oikos and Luberon Natural Regional Park, CIHEAM-MAICh, National Observatory of Athens.
Read more about this project at the link.
This project is financially supported by the European Climate Initiative (EUKI) 2021.
