Dealing with conflagrations driven by climate change will require modifications to the way people live and how land is used
Smoke and flames rise as firefighters, locals and volunteers try extinguish a wildfire, near Vilia Village, Western Athens, Greece, on Aug. 18, 2021. Credit: Nick Paleologos/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
By Anna Gross, Daniel Dombey and Eleni Varvitsioti,
A colossal heatwave, with temperatures hitting a record 48.8 degrees Celsius in Italy last week, has stoked the wildfires that have devastated swaths of land and killed dozens of people across southern Europe and North Africa, from Turkey, Greece, and Italy to Morocco and Algeria.
“What’s clear is that climate change will lead us to see [more of] such events,” French President Emmanuel Macron said this week after traveling to the Saint-Tropez region, where a huge blaze caused 10,000 people to be evacuated from their homes.
Tom Smith, associate professor at the London School of Economics, said “climate change is certainly playing a role in every wildfire on the planet now.” By drying out the air and sucking moisture from vegetation, rising temperatures create ideal conditions for fires to start and rapidly spread.
The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has predicted the Mediterranean region will face more extreme heat in the decades to come.
Yet while climate change plays an indisputable role in the proliferation and scale of wildfires, so too have changes in how people live and the way land is used. Human actions are also behind the vast majority of Europe’s blazes.
Much of Europe is fertile ground for fires, with about 40 percent of its landmass covered by trees. As rural populations have moved to cities and towns in search of employment, some farmed land has been turned over to flammable vegetation and forest.
