The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations and the United Nations Environment Program will launch a Global Fire Management Hub that aims to strengthen countries’ capacities to implement integrated fire management. Source: Timberbiz
The Global Fire Management Hub was announced in a video message by FAO’s Director-General QU Dongyu at the International Wildland Fire Conference, which brings together the global fire management community every four years to discuss global development sand best practice.
“With wildfires a growing threat around the world, countries urgently need to shift their attention from battling to put huge fires out to preventing them in the first place,” said FAO Forestry Director Zhimin Wu.
“The Global Fire Management Hub will help FAO and partners accelerate this approach at regional, national, and community levels by making available the best information and training to support countries in a coherent, comprehensive and consistent way over time.”
The hub brings together partners working on integrated fire management and will focus on knowledge and data sharing, capacity building, fire risk assessment and early warning, wildfire resilient communities, and policy support.
The hub will support countries to scale up integrated fire management through policy and technical advice, knowledge generation and exchange, and projects such as the
Assuring the Future of Forests with Integrated Risk Management (AFFIRM) Mechanism, funded by the Korea Forest Service and now being piloted in Southeast Asia.
Climate change and land use changes have led to increasingly frequent and extreme wildfires in recent years with disastrous effects on ecosystems, livelihoods and national economies.
Globally, more than 370 million hectares of land burn every year, releasing over 1.8 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases. While wildfires in forests only account for 5% of the land burned, they contribute to more than 80% of these emissions.
Some fires occur naturally, but humans cause at least 90% of them, and extreme wildfires are set to become about 50% more frequent by the end of the century.
Countries are spending vast resources on emergency response efforts to fight fires when they strike and have increasingly been calling for support from the international fire community to reduce the impacts and build their capacity to address wildfires before they start.
FAO has worked with global partners to develop an integrated fire management approach that addresses fire issues holistically, considering biological, environmental, cultural, social, economic and political interactions. The approach considers every aspect of fires from their causes to risks, response, readiness, response and recovery. It needs to be embedded into policies and strategies across all sectors and diverse stakeholders, including Indigenous Peoples and rural communities living in and near forests, must be involved.
“The Global Fire Management Hub – by drawing on this vast expertise – promises to have a major impact of reducing the many negative effects of wildfires on people, landscapes, and global climate,” said Tiina Vähänen, Deputy Director of FAO’s Forestry Division.
