UNEP’s Fire Ready Formula for Wildfire Managment

In News

• The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) called on global governments to adopt a new ‘Fire Ready Formula,’ as it warned that incidences of wildfires would rise in the future.

About the report 

• Publisher
  • The report is released by UNEP jointly with non-profit GRID-Arendal.
• Objective
  • The UNEP has called for strengthening international and regional cooperation on wildfires.
  • Development of an international standard for wildfire management has also been recommended.
• Spending
  • The new formula envisages that 66 percent of spending be devoted to planning, prevention, preparedness and recovery.
  • The remaining 34 per cent can be spent on response.
• Spike
  • The UNEP report also projected that the number of wildfires is likely to increase by up to 14 per cent by 2030.
  • It is projected to spike by 33 per cent by 2050. It would rise by 52 per cent by 2100.
• Budget
  • The direct responses to wildfires received over half of related expenditures, while planning and prevention received just 0.2 per cent of the total budget for wildfires.
• Arctic region
  • Even the Arctic region, previously all but immune, faces rising wildfire risk.

Significance of the move

• Building capacity: This will facilitate international cooperation and help all wildfire-prone countries build capacity for both domestic application and international assistance.

Causes of Wildfires

• Climate change: The prevalence and behavior of wildfires is changing due to numerous factors including, but not limited to, climate change.
  • Wildfires are made worse by climate change through increased drought, high air temperatures, low relative humidity, lightning, and strong winds resulting in hotter, drier, and longer fire seasons.
• Change in land-use and land management practices: are also responsible for the increasing risks of wildfires.
• Anthropogenic Factors:
  • Dropping a burning matchstick, torchwood or a bidi/cigarette.
  • A spark can also be produced when dry pine needles or leaves fall on an electric pole.
  • When temporarily built hearths are left behind with fire, they can lead to massive forest fires.
  • Sometimes the fire spreads to the adjoining forest when people burn their fields to clear them of stubble, dry grass or undergrowth.

Issues/ Challenges

• Delay progress: An increase in damaging wildfires may reverse or delay progress towards achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Paris Agreement and Sendai targets.
• The changing scale and intensity of wildfires may especially impact achievements in developing countries, across several of the SDGs that impact human health and well-being.
  • These include the SDG goals to end hunger, poverty and the goal on climate action too.
• The true cost of wildfires, financial, social, and environmental, extends for days, weeks, and even years after the flames subside.
• Money in the wrong place: Current government responses to wildfires are often putting money in the wrong place.
• Poorest nations: Wildfires disproportionately affect the world’s poorest nations.
• People’s health is directly affected by inhaling wildfire smoke, causing respiratory and cardiovascular impacts and increased health effects for the most vulnerable.
• The economic costs of rebuilding after areas are struck by wildfires can be beyond the means of low-income countries.
• Watersheds are degraded by wildfires’ pollutants; they also can lead to soil erosion causing more problems for waterways.
• Wastes left behind are often highly contaminated and require appropriate disposal.
• Wildlife and its natural habitats are rarely spared from wildfires, pushing some animal and plant species closer to extinction.

Suggestions/ Way Forward

• There is a need to invest more in fire risk reduction, work with local communities and strengthen global commitment to fight climate change.
• Achieving and sustaining adaptive land and fire management requires a combination of policies, a legal framework and incentives that encourage appropriate land and fire use.
• Governments are called to radically shift their investments in wildfires to focus on prevention and preparedness.
• It calls for a combination of data and science-based monitoring systems with indigenous knowledge and for stronger regional and international cooperation.
• Those emergency service workers and fire-fighters on the frontlines who are risking their lives to fight forest wildfires need to be supported.
• The restoration of ecosystems is an important avenue to mitigate the risk of wildfires before they occur and to build back better in their aftermath.
• The Fire Ready Formula could help in achieving these goals. 

Source: DTE