C L I M AT E C H A N G E
TAKE BACK THE LAND
AN ACTIVE, RURAL SPAIN IS A CRITICAL TO THE PREVENTION OF WILDFIRES BY MARÍA SANTOS EDITOR’S NOTE: The Spanish newspaper el Agora recently published an interview with Jordi Vendrell, firefighter by profession and general manager of the Pau Costa Foundation. Vendrell puts the increased fire risk in Spain in a global context, and analyzes the role of an active rural society in fire prevention. Reprinted with permission; translated and edited for clarity. This article is a follow up to the transcript in the Q3 issue of Wildfire of former Spanish prime minister Felipe Gonzalez’s presentation to the 16th Wildland Fire Safety Summit | Human Dimensions of Wildland Fire conference in May. The Pau Costa foundation is a supporting partner of IAWF.
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The Pau Costa Foundation this year celebrates its 10th anniversary as a platform for exchanging knowledge about wildfires. More than 60 top-level multidisciplinary professionals founded this institution in 2011 with the aim of connecting a network of experts worldwide to improve the suppression and manage wildfire emergencies, to create awareness in society, in general, and to influence wildfire prevention through fire ecology. This year has been a turning point due to the global increased risk of fires due to the abandonment of the landscape in rural environments and the impact of climate change. Fire in itself is not bad, but fire is one functional element of the ecosystem that Spain has learned to manage over the years due to the intense exposure of the peninsula to these
catastrophes. This experience has made Spain an international benchmark, not only in the fight of fires, but also in research and innovation in the field. In fact, Spain, through the Pau Costa Foundation, will lead a European project that has been provided with 60 million euros in funding to identify strategic lines of research and determine where to invest in prevention, research, and territorial management. “From the Spanish experience we are going to identify and decide the key lines of the European Commission (EC) in the next 10 years in terms of wildfires,” said Jordi Vendrell, general manager of the Pau Costa Foundation. The project will help to establish a collaborative and
The migration of people to the city from rural areas has resulted in a build up of fuels, and fires that burn longer and are more virulently. The Pau Costa Foundation recommends restoring traditional activities such as animal grazing, along with forest harvesting and prescribed burning, to combat the increasingly intense wildfire situation. Photo courtesy Pau Costa Foundation. 34
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OCTOBER - DECEMBER 2021
