Greenpeace appreciates that the fire that is still active in Castellón and Teruel, with 4,000 hectares burned and 1,500 displaced, confirms that “in times of climate emergency, the management of our forests is urgent.” In a statement from the organization, its spokesperson in Spain, Mónica Parrilla, warns that in Spain the increase in temperatures and droughts make forest masses more flammable. “This, added to the lack of forest management, creates the perfect scenario for fires,” she adds.
Parrilla warns that “we are witnessing more and more mass evictions and thousands of hectares affected. The fires, in a context of climate change and with the lack of management of our forests, pose an environmental and civil security problem.” In this sense, he defends that fires should be at the top of the political agendas and should not be addressed when heat and fire arrive, “but rather by preventing much earlier, with management adapted to this new reality”.
Greenpeace recalled this week (with the presentation of the new IPCC report) that climate change, caused mainly by fossil fuels, “is modifying the climate, exacerbating extreme weather events and diluting the transition seasons (spring and autumn)”. The current summer covers five weeks more than at the beginning of the 80s. The year 2022 was the hottest of the last 107, with 4,700 people dying as a result of the different heat waves.
“Our forests are also suffering from climate change with higher temperatures and prolonged droughts, which make forest masses much more flammable. This, added to the lack of forest management, dry and continuous fuel, gives us the perfect scenario for a fire,” says Parrilla. The fire depends on the topography, weather and fuel. “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,” added the Greenpeace spokeswoman.
