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“This is not just an emergency, it is a planetary disaster. As the guilty are identified and the blame is apportioned, we must ensure that national and international responses go further than identifying a few scapegoats. This must never be allowed to happen again”.
There is growing feeling within WWF and IUCN that action is needed to try and catalyse a strategic international response to forest fires. There are no “magic bullets” for forest fires. The issues to be addressed are complex and cut across sectors, interests, donors, professions, regions, nations and communities. The organisations feel that action only takes place when fires are burning and that little attempt has been made to address the underlying causes.
This report is therefore issued as a follow-up to the 1997 report. It is part of an on-going programme of work by the two organisations to address forest fires. In early 1998 IUCN - the World Conservation Union and WWF - The World Wide Fund For Nature, joined forces in developing a Programme for “Strengthening National, Regional and International Networks for Forest Fire Prevention and Management, world-wide”.
This “FireFight” Programme seeks to secure essential policy reform at national and international level to provide a legislative and economic base for controlling harmful anthropogenic forest fires. The programme is intended as a contribution to efforts by national governments, and international organisations such as UNDP, FAO, UNEP and ASEAN, to establish more effective fire management and strategic, preventative responses.
It will mobilise the in-country and international staff of IUCN and WWF and contribute their scientific, environmental, legal and communications skills to develop an integrated policy response. It will cover five major regions of the world, Asia, Central and South America, Russia, the Mediterranean and the Sub-Saharan Africa.
Programme “FireFight” is being implemented in collaboration with regionally based WWF and IUCN staff and in close consultation with key UN agencies such as UNDP, FAO and UNEP. It covers a wide range of activities from analysis of the costs of fires and improved understanding of underlying causes, through to policy dialogue and follow up action.
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it looks like rising temperatures caused by climate change could cause the El Niño to become more frequent and intense. These El Niño events could in turn cause further climate change. The daunting fact is that the world faces a positive feedback cycle in which climate change exacerbated by forest fires and deforestation, increases the frequency of El Niño, which in turn causes more forest burning.