Europe’s long, hot summer this year brought with it another deadly wildfire season – with shocking images of landscapes across France, Portugal, Spain, and even the UK being ravaged by wildfires.
Extreme weather led to an estimated €43 billion (£37bn) in short-term losses across the EU, according to new research – while the particularly devastating wildfires seen in Spain and Portugal were 40 times more likely due to to the climate crisis, according to the analysis from Imperial College London.
The EU is taking serious action to address this new climate reality, with the “EU Civil Protection Mechanism” – essentially an international fire-fighting force that includes 22 firefighting airplanes and some 600 ground fire fighters – called upon by countries including Greece, Spain, Bulgaria, and Albania this summer.
It is not just the EU. During January’s Los Angeles fires, Canadian “super scooper” firefighting planes and Mexican firefighting crews played a key role, while during Canada’s devastating 2023 wildfire season, which burnt an area larger than England, teams from South Africa, the US, Australia, France, Mexico, Portugal, Brazil, Spain, New Zealand, Chile, Costa Rica and South Korea helped out.
But for all the coverage of wildfires Europe and North America, Africa suffers many times the damage to its landscape from wildfires. Satellite data from the Global Wildfire Information System, which is backed by Nasa and the EU’s Copernicus observatory, shows that in 2024, some 7.3 per cent of Africa’s landmass was burnt, compared to just 0.6 per cent in both Europe and the US.
While Western countries are amping up their support for each other in the face of climate-driven blazes, the foreign aid programmes that support fire-fighting efforts in African countries have been slashed this year, The Independent has found, with experts warning that this could have devastating impacts on wildfire-prone nations.
Countries reporting significant fire events in the continent this year include the Democratic Republic of Congo (which in August saw tens of thousands of hectares burnt and at least 1,500 homes destroyed), South Africa (fires enveloped Cape Town’s famous Table Mountain in April) and Madagascar, (where in dry weather and strong winds in January fuelled hundreds of fires across the country).
Fires in Africa are so significant that the carbon emissions that they produce is typically far greater than those produced by the burning of fossil fuels. In 2022, African fires produced 2.4bn tonnes of carbon dioxide, compared to the continent producing 1.3bn tonnes of CO2 via burning fossil fuels.
As the climate warms, the threat of wildfires to African countries is set to become even greater. Process-based modelling from Silicon Valley-based research group ClimateAi, which has been shared exclusively with The Independent, shows that the threat posed by wildfires to Africa’s five largest cities is set to see a significant increase between now and 2050.
The modelling assesses the likelihood of fires based on a number of key conditions, including the availability of fuels in and around the urban area, changing temperatures and weather conditions, as well as ignition factors such as the strength of winds or the presence of power lines, according to ClimateAi’s VP of science and engineering David Farnham.
The modelling from ClimateAI shows that a similar increase in the threat posed by wildfires is also expected in the five largest cities in Europe.
European cities are set to continue sharing resources to tackle ever more extreme blazes. But apart from South Africa – which sent teams to Canada in 2023 – limited government budgets mean that such arrangements are not viable in African countries, and when huge fires come along there are often few options other than to wait for them to burn themselves out.
Africa is often referred to as the “Fire Continent,” with many sub-Saharan ecosystems long-adapted to burn and regrow, and fires long being a part of everyday life in subsistence farming and land management. However, experts are warning that an ever greater share of fires in Africa are unwanted and out of control.
“There’s been an increase in fires in tropical forests like the Congo Basin, which historically have not burnt before,” says James MacCarthy, research associate at Global Forest Watch. “A lot of the plant species here don’t have adaptations to fire, making it harder to recover than in the Savannah.”
