Mediterranean forests are a burning issue

On average, some 400,000 hectares of forest go up in smoke each year in the region, notably in Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece, creating billions of euros worth of damage and all too often taking human lives.

Climate change threatens to make matters worse. Not only will the more intense and frequent heat waves and hotter summers, predicted by climate change models, make forest fires more devastating, rising temperatures and lower rainfall pose their own problems of adaptation for the region’s flora and fauna, threatening the survival of many.
“Mediterranean forests face important threats…forest fires, climate change, agriculture, urban developments are eroding biodiversity,” said Juan Antonio Prado, FAO director of forest resources.

Environmentalist group WWF says the number of large-scale forest fires in the Mediterranean has increased dramatically over the last few decades.
The heat waves of 2003 and 2004, which provoked huge blazes across the northern Mediterranean climatic region, particularly in Portugal, were a taste of the sort of searing summer weather that can be expected with climate change. In 2007, Greece had its worst ever fires.

People and Planet