Ashes and Tears: It's Not Just Climate Change Anymore

Impotence. This has been the feeling that the hundreds of brigade members who for more than a week have fought against the fire that has devastated Castellón and Teruel, with more than 4,700 burned hectares in a perimeter of almost 60 square kilometers, have conveyed for days. It was an impotence generated not by the extent of the burned land, but by the way in which a tragedy unfolded that has kept 1,700 people evacuated for several days.

Because what has happened these days offered a symptomatology that experts have been alerting for a long time, an explosive combination, never better said, of several factors: high temperatures, hurricane-force winds, dry soil (it has not rained at all this winter in the area), low humidity and abandoned spaces, in many ways. It only took a spark for everything to explode.

This report, based on the testimony of various specialists, aims to warn that it is no longer just about the effects of climate change, which are devastating in themselves, but that other determining factors are involved in what are now called “sixth generation fires”.

This is what Andreu Escrivà, an environmentalist and one of the best Spanish specialists on the effects of climate change, warns. He comments that we must assume that the weather conditions experienced these days, as well as the brutal excess of heat that we suffered in 2022 (300 days with a positive temperature anomaly) “have a strong influence on the severity and intensity of forest fires.” But Escrivà reasons that “we are the ones who, due to our disproportionate occupation of the territory (both in intensity and extension), have caused serious imbalances in the functioning of ecosystems, through fragmentation, contamination, impoverishment of ecological relations or the introduction of invasive alien species, among other attacks. Forest management responds to a human need, not nature’s”.

It proposes “reconnecting with nature” and trying to close the gap that exists between the majority of the population (eminently urban) and the enormous wealth and diversity of our territory. “I miss, in each fire, that we also talk about biodiversity, ecosystems and habitats, the beauty that we lose. That we look at the mountain with different eyes, not as a problem and a powder keg”.

Mónica Parrilla, spokesperson for Greenpeace in Spain, expressed the same sense. Climate change, she points out, causes rising temperatures and droughts to make forest masses more flammable. But she adds that “forest management is lacking.” “We cannot modify valleys or mountains, nor change the weather, so the key is managing our forests, which are increasingly vulnerable to a changing climate. It is urgent that this management becomes a priority of our administrations ”, she adds.

If there is someone who has studied forests in depth, it is Ferran Dalmau, an engineer who is an expert in forest management. “We have abandoned that 60% of the territory that has sustained us for tens of thousands of years,” he comments. “The combination of droughts, excessive temperatures and strong winds is causing large forest fires never seen before and to fight them, the classic responses are no longer valid. We must anticipate and prevent because we still have time to mitigate the effects of our past actions”. What does it mean to intervene? Dalmau concludes, first, that everything that we do not manage as a society, in a preventive way, will be managed by climate change and/or forest fires. “You need well-designed plans, and the resources to execute those plans. A depopulated and abandoned territory is a highly flammable territory and very vulnerable to the phenomenon of desertification. The maintenance and recovery of the rural population is an opportunity in the face of the climate emergency with the potential to generate employment outside the cities. But investment is needed in services, in health and educational provision, in telecommunications ”, he warns. For this specialist there are three ideas to summarize: regain control, carry out active land management policies and create a shock plan “that does not exist”.

For Escrivá, there is an urgent need for a policy capable of returning to the front line the environmental management of the territory “which has been left in the background after the emergence, sometimes false, of a political concern, but also partisan and electoral, for climate change” . He also adds that “a reductionism that has little to do with territorial reality should be abandoned, and ecosystem management of natural spaces should be considered, which goes far beyond the compartmentalization and atomization of nature for productive purposes.”

Another factor, minor for some and important for others, is depopulation. Elena Cebrián, Autonomous Secretary of Territorial Cohesion and Policies against Depopulation of the Generalitat Valenciana, points out that “our mountains are home to forest ecosystems of incalculable ecological and landscape value, but with very low economic profitability and productivity (in wood), except for specific exceptions. ”. She defends that linking the maintenance of the population to a possible profitability derived from forest management, and making the avoidance of forest fires depend on it, “is unrealistic.” “The recovery of traditional activities (rainfed agriculture, grazing) can help with some maintenance, but by themselves they could not combat the risk of fire or generate enough income or jobs.” She appreciates that it is important to reinforce public policies and adapt them to the current socioeconomic context and climate change, “whether we are talking about preventing fires and conserving our forests, or about solutions to structure the country territorially and combat depopulation.” “The protection and conservation of the valuable and diverse ecosystems of the Mediterranean forest converges in both challenges.”

Escrivá states that “the fires are a sad reminder that we cannot continue looking at environmental reality through a carbon tunnel.” No, it is not only climate change that has caused and will cause tears to flow at the ashes that the fire continues to leave behind as testimony to the oblivion of the Valencian and Spanish mountains. The problem is that the solutions are known, but not applied. “We need to articulate a new form of relationship with nature, since we are part of it”, concludes Escrivá.