“Chronic health impacts, although less frequently studied, are significant. For example, long-term exposure to suspended particles from wildfires has been associated with increased mortality in Portugal, where between 31 and 189 deaths were attributed to wildfire smoke between 2015 and 2018,” says the report by the European Academies’ Scientific Advisory Council (EASAC), prepared by 23 experts from the European Union.

The document, entitled “Changing forest fires - Policy options for a fire-literate and fire-adapted Europe”, was presented in Brussels and has the collaboration, on Portugal's part, of the president of the Agency for the Integrated Management of Rural Fires (AGIF), Tiago Oliveira, and the rural fire specialist and professor at the Instituto Superior de Agronomia José Cardoso Pereira.

In addition to the health impacts, the report also draws attention to the psychological consequences of rural fires, which are “increasingly recognised”, stressing that “post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and anxiety have been documented in adult and pediatric populations following wildfires, with effects that persist for years”.

The report, which is the result of two years of work, concluded that climate change, drought, urban expansion and land-use change will double the number of wildfires in the EU by the end of the century, especially in Spain, Portugal, southern France, Italy and Greece, with the European Union needing to move from “a policy of suppression to a policy of adaptation”.

The study also states that future projections indicate continued vulnerability in these fire-prone regions, where changing land-use patterns exacerbate existing challenges.

Spain dominates

According to the report, Spain dominated the statistics on burned area in the 1980s and 1990s, but in the 21st century, Portugal took over that position, “with notable exceptions such as the devastating fires in Greece in 2007”.

“In Portugal, high-intensity fires have increased dramatically and Greece has seen equally notable increases in the intensity, extent and frequency of wildfires, with projections suggesting up to 40 additional days of high fire danger per year in the southern and eastern regions by the end of the 21st century,” the document states, considering that “current EU policies prioritize suppression”.

However, he points out, “the increasing intensity of forest fires” shows that “greater investment is needed in proactive fire management, together with mitigation and adaptation to climate change, prioritizing damage reduction over minimizing the area burned”.

While fighting fires is imperative, experts argue that it is equally important to anticipate the events that science detects will occur with investment policies in prevention and adaptation that prioritize “a proactive approach focused on landscape management, recovery and fire literacy.”

The EASAC report also highlights that some Member States with frequent forest fires, such as Portugal, Spain, France, Italy and Greece, have developed national policies to combat forest fires.

“However, the lack of coordinated policies at EU level creates significant challenges in the case of cross-border wildfires and for Central and Northern European countries, where wildfires have historically been less of a concern but are now increasing due to climate change,” EASAC points out.

EASAC stresses the need for “strengthened institutional capacity, cross-border collaboration and better resource sharing among EU states”.