FAO says rise in climate driven wildfires calls for more investment, prevention

By Anjali Sharma

UNITED NATIONS – Food and Agriculture Organization official  Amy Duchelle on Thursday said that the deadly wildfires through the Los Angeles area, destroyed whole communities and caused billions in damage, revealed why countries must invest more in stopping these devastating blazes before they start.

Amy Duchelle said that it’s much needed, as wildfires are rapidly increasing in intensity, frequency and duration due to the climate crisis and changes in land use.

“Historically there has been very strong attention on suppression but much more intention and investment need to be on prevention,” she said.

FAO’s Senior Forestry Officer and Team Leader on Forests and Climate explained how the UN agency is helping countries to boost integrated fire management and why everyone must play a part.

Amy Duchelle said that wildfires basically require three ingredients – a fuel source, hot dry weather, and an ignition source and the situation in Los Angeles had all three of those to a severe degree, including strong winds which made those fires continue to burn out of control.

Fire is not something that’s new to humanity, she noted.

Fires have been used by humans for millennia and in fact are a traditional and important land and farming management tool for small holders and indigenous peoples, especially in developing countries, Ms. Duchelle added.

She explained that fire has been part of the earth system for hundreds of millions of years and occurs in every terrestrial vegetation biome and on every continent, except for Antarctica. But we see that patterns are now changing in terms of the intensity, frequency and duration of extreme wildfires.

Amy Duchelle said that an estimated 340 to 370 million hectares of the Earth’s land surface is affected by fire annually, and that includes approximately 67 million hectares of forested areas. 

The public’s attention on wildfires is a situation like we have currently in Los Angeles, where the images of the devastation are absolutely horrifying, she said.

“I think, and many are saying, that we are in a new era in terms of climate change-fuelled wildfires, catastrophic wildfires, and so the approach to dealing with these wildfires needs to be different.”

She added that historically, there has been very strong attention on suppression but much more intention and investment need to be on prevention, so really dealing with the wildfire issue before the fires even began to burn.

Many of these aspects have been put into place by many countries, but much more work is needed, she concluded.