This summer time, I made a decision to hunt refuge from the warmth in Mount Pelion, a mountainous area within the coronary heart of Greece, midway between Athens and Thessaloniki. It’s residence to breathtaking forests and vibrant native communities, the place the preservation of pure wealth is a lifestyle.
However quickly after I arrived, the spectre of a significant wildfire introduced a lot nervousness to residents of the realm and their company. Because the local weather disaster has intensified lately, so has the wildfire season in Greece. This 12 months continued this pattern. By the top of July, greater than 500 wildfires have been burning throughout the nation.
A few of them swept by way of the plains of the area of Magnesia, the place Mount Pelion is positioned, killing two folks, burning greater than 5,000 hectares (12,000 acres) of land and inflicting immeasurable financial injury. However Mount Pelion itself remained untouched.
Native volunteers, together with forest fireplace brigades, mobilised to place out the flames at any time when they approached the mountain and threatened the forest.
Pelion is residence to farming communities that know the mountain very nicely and deal with it as a part of their agricultural actions. They’re additionally fairly well-organised and have a robust communal bond that retains a neighborhood volunteer firefighting drive well-equipped and able to take motion at any time when there’s a fireplace emergency.
I witnessed firsthand this communal spirit one August night time on the native cafe within the village of Stagiates on the outskirts of Magnesia’s capital Volos. Residents launched a fundraiser for the native patrol of volunteers monitoring the forest and the coffers rapidly stuffed up. Everybody contributed and everybody appeared to agree that conserving the forest secure – and by extension property and farms – is a communal duty.
Whereas Mount Pelion survived the flames this summer time, one other mountainous area, the nationwide park of Dadia, within the northeast, close to the border with Turkey and Bulgaria, burned badly. Greater than half of its space was fully ravaged by the fireplace.
Evros area, the place Dadia is positioned, witnessed Europe’s largest wildfire on file, with greater than 94,000 hectares (232,000 acres) of land and forests burned.
The folks of Evros mobilised too, however some didn’t battle the blaze. Official claims that among the fires have been the results of intentional arson despatched native residents searching for scapegoats. Shopping for into authorities anti-immigrant rhetoric and rumours that asylum seekers crossing from Turkey have been beginning fires, they began “looking” for the perpetrators. In a single incident, native residents kidnapped and locked up 13 refugees in a trailer for hours.
What occurred to Dadia and Pelion this summer time illustrates nicely how the present strategy of the Greek authorities to wildfire administration is failing and what they need to be doing as an alternative.
Launched in 1998 for the primary time, the present state technique to deal with wildfires invests closely in placing out fires with firefighting brigades moderately than stopping them by way of higher forest administration. It additionally doesn’t embrace native communities in firefighting efforts, prevention and planning.
The failures of the wildfire administration technique are compounded by a long time of state negligence in city planning and nature preservation. Lax management of building has led to settlements changing into demise traps throughout fireplace emergencies. On the similar time, weak safety of forests and different pure habitats has allowed human encroachment on these areas and thus put them at greater danger of fires.
In consequence, the nation has fared a lot worse by way of wildfire-cased destruction than different nations with comparable landscapes and weather conditions. In accordance with the Nationwide Observatory of Athens, the nation’s most distinguished analysis institute, Greece ranks first amongst Mediterranean nations by way of space burned by wildfires this 12 months – near 688,000 hectares (1.7 million acres); it is usually first by way of the variety of acres affected per forest fireplace – 19,207 hectares (47,462 acres).
In recent times, the European Union – recognising the awful actuality of local weather change and its impact on wildfires – has began a union-wide effort to extend wildfire preparedness. For instance, at the start of the summer time this 12 months, firefighting brigades from different nations have been despatched to Greece; when the fires began, they have been instantly mobilised alongside their Greek colleagues.
The Greek authorities was additionally in a position to activate the EU Civil Safety Mechanism to request extra assist in the primary section of the fires. However even with EU help, Greece was unable to deal with the inferno of this wildfire season.
Different EU nations vulnerable to wildfires have realised that investing solely in a firefighting drive or ready for EU help doesn’t assist and have taken motion. Portugal is a working example. After experiencing a devastating blaze in 2017, the Portuguese authorities overhauled its strategy to tackling wildfires.
From establishing an built-in fireplace company that features forest specialists and conservationists to banning new plantations of the extremely flammable eucalyptus tree and coordinating managed burning of particles, Portugal launched quite a lot of practices targeted on prevention, and it labored. To date, there was no repeat of the 2017 megafire.
Greece, in contrast, has chosen to not study from previous tragedies. After the tragic 2018 fireplace close to Athens, which resulted in 100 deaths, world-renowned Professor Johann Goldammer, director of the International Fireplace Monitoring Heart on the Max Planck Institute in Germany, was requested to advise the federal government on how you can enhance fireplace administration within the nation.
The committee Goldammer fashioned produced a report, emphasising one precept above all: prevention. His suggestions, nonetheless, have been by no means carried out.
It’s time to right this error. Greece ought to develop a complete strategy that prioritises environmental stewardship and long-term planning for local weather disaster mitigation over short-term financial beneficial properties from land growth. That requires a paradigm shift in governance that overhauls financial growth and spatial and concrete planning methods.
Which means that the state must deliver again the forestry company into wildfire administration actions, develop a forest stock and a functioning cadastre. It should work with communities to assist and coordinate self-organisation and preparedness for wildfires, use native data of the terrain and promote actions that assist take away flammable supplies from lands and forests – together with focused grazing and forest particles clearing.
One of many key suggestions of the Goldammer report is to scale back wildfire danger by restoring agricultural actions within the countryside to handle biomass. This implies supporting rural communities and inspiring the reversal of urbanisation as a state coverage.
Up to now, immigrants have helped maintain deserted areas of the countryside alive. As an alternative of fuelling xenophobia and hatred in opposition to these folks, the federal government can maybe encourage them to play this function once more.
The Greek state additionally wants to ascertain agency management over building. Presently, with varied financial sectors lobbying exhausting for lax rules, the legislation in Greece permits lands which have been burned by wildfires for use for the development of housing, tourism services, wind generators, and so forth. Aside from prioritising enterprise pursuits over the restoration of devastated forests and habitats, such authorized provisions could encourage arson.
All of those measures is not going to solely assist with wildfires but in addition different pure disasters. Restoring forests, correctly managing land, regulating building, and dealing with native communities also can assist mitigate the results of floods.
The heavy rains that swept by way of barren land in Greece have been a great reminder of that. Storm Daniel drowned the nation, killing 14 folks and paralysing central Greece – the center of Greek agriculture.
Shortly after, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis travelled to Strasbourg to satisfy EU Fee President Ursula von der Leyen to ask for monetary assist. Because the fallout of the local weather disaster intensifies throughout the EU borders, the union should take into account making a everlasting local weather loss and injury fund to assist probably the most affected member states.
However the EU technique ought to transcend monetary devices. It might want to overhaul its personal political and financial methods and constructions to have the ability to deal with local weather challenges. Progress in any respect prices wants to offer technique to sustainable growth, conservation, and safety of habitats and native communities. Painful adjustments should be made.
And whereas Greek and EU political and financial elites waver when exhausting selections must be taken within the face of local weather disaster, the residents of Mount Pelion don’t. After the floods that adopted the fires, they as soon as once more did what they know greatest: they organised.
They labored exhausting to open blocked roads, helped with post-flooding cleanup, saved a bunch of refugee kids from an overflowing river, and commonly equipped town of Volos with clear water from the mountain.
The folks of Mount Pelion don’t undergo from any doubts. They know that placing the preservation and wellbeing of the neighborhood and nature above slender egoistic self-interest is the proper factor to do.
The views expressed on this article are the writer’s personal and don’t essentially mirror Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
