By Nneka Nwogwugwu
A new report by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and GRID-Arendal has revealed that climate change and land-use change are projected to make wildfires “more frequent and intense”, with a global increase of extreme fires of up to 14 per cent by 2030, 30 per cent by the end of 2050 and 50 per cent by the end of the century.
UNEP is the leading global voice on the environment. It provides leadership and encourages partnership in caring for the environment by inspiring, informing and enabling nations and peoples to improve their quality of life without compromising that of future generations.
GRID-Arendal is a non-profit environmental communications centre based in Norway. It aims to transform environmental data into innovative, science-based information products and provide capacity-building services that enable better environmental governance.
The report, released on Wednesday, states that the Arctic, faces rising wildfire risk.
Experts, who are alerting the world ahead of the upcoming UN Environment Assembly in Nairobi, said wildfires and climate change are “mutually exacerbating”
“Governments are called to radically shift their investments in wildfires to focus on prevention and preparedness,” they added.
In Nigeria, the wildfire hazard is classified as high according to the information that is currently available to scientists.
This means that there “is greater than a 50 per cent chance of encountering weather that could support a significant wildfire that is likely to result in both life and property loss in any given year”.
The report, Spreading like Wildfire: The Rising Threat of Extraordinary Landscape Fires, finds an elevated risk even for the Arctic and other regions previously unaffected by wildfires.
The publication calls on governments to adopt a new ‘Fire Ready Formula’, with two-thirds of spending devoted to planning, prevention, preparedness, and recovery, with one third left for response. Currently, direct responses to wildfires typically receive over half of related expenditures, while planning receives less than one per cent.
To prevent fires, authors call for a combination of data and science-based monitoring systems with indigenous knowledge and for stronger regional and international cooperation.