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.
More widespread and more dangerous fires
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 non-profit 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 senior scientist 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.”
There can also be a perception that because the value of property in African countries is not the same as in countries in Europe or North America, the damage is somehow less severe there. But the threat to life in Africa is far more severe, with around half (157,000 out of 339,000) of global deaths attributable to wildfire smoke annually taking place on the continent.
The fact that only 40 per cent of African nations have access to hazard early warning systems, which alert people to impending natural disasters, only enhances the threat posed by fires, as does the chaotic nature of housebuilding in many African cities.
“In African cities, there are extensive informal housing settlements and slums that are extremely fire prone – open fire heating and cooking, flimsy flammable construction,” says Val Charlton, a leading fire consultant based in South Africa.
“Here in Ghana, we have communities living in and around forest reserves that are extremely fire-prone,” adds Lucy Amissah, principal research scientist at Ghana’s Institute Of Industrial Research. “When the fires come, they just burn and burn, and cannot be suppressed.”
Firefighting aid programmes ‘shut down’
That does not mean, though, that authorities are powerless in addressing wildfires. Even if authorities have little hope of suppressing fires with huge fire-fighting teams, there is still much that can be done in fire prevention and management.
“When we say prevention, we mean fire education and awareness, enforcing laws around fires in the local area, and finding alternatives to the use of fire in agriculture,” Amissah says, adding that the construction of fire belts – cleared areas of land that prevent fires spreading – is also a key tool that can be used.
Much of the firefighting in African countries has been left to community groups, who make use of expertise passed down generations. Recent years have seen these groups lose prevelance as younger people grow more disinclined to carry out dangerous work like suppressing small-scale fires for free, Amissah says.
International aid agencies have therefore played an increasingly crucial role to ensure there is money to sustain local firefighting programmes, and also to introduce modern techniques to build on long-standing community expertise.
“The strongest systems we have could not have been funded without the help of international organisations,” says Amissah. “In Ghana, I can say on good authority that the best programmes we have had in firefighting have come at a time when there has been healthy funding from aid agencies.”
United States Agency for International Development (USAID) historically played a major role in rolling out fire prevention projects in Africa. Its partnership with the the United States Department of Agriculture, for example, established programmes with some 17 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa according to the USDA website. These programmes did everything from training local fire fighters, to developing national fire management plans, to promoting fire-safe livelihoods.
A spokesperson for the US State Department confirmed to The Independent that it had taken on international fire-fighting responsibilities following USAID’s closure in March – however, experts in the firefighting space in Africa have confirmed that fire programmes run in Africa have been widely gutted, after Elon Musk’s Doge shut down more than 80 per cent of USAID programmes earlier this year.
“Most of the aid programs run by USAID have been shut down,” says Val Charlton. “It’s a pity, because this kind of work takes persistence and long-term effort – and the [US agencies] were previously very committed to the long haul.”
The programmes supported by USAID were never particularly large or expensive – but they made a crucial difference in boosting fire-fighting capabilities. In Madagascar, for example, one of programmes that has been ended is USAID Harena, which sought to discourage slash-and-burn agricultural practices, which are often the cause of wildfires in the country.
“In most African countries, fires are managed by volunteer-led community-based fire management, which requires basic tools, leadership training, planning and capacity building,” continues Charlton. “To aid this in the era of climate change, you need a bottom-up approach that pays attention to different communities and landscapes. And USAID was doing exactly that.”
Firefighting lessons from Africa
In the US and EU, the current attitude is to fight more fires with more equipment and more aircraft. Vast sums are being spent on tools to deal with fires in the era of the climate crisis, with EU countries currently awaiting an order for 22 De Havilland “super scooper” water-carrying planes, worth €50 million (£43m) and due in 2026. In addition, Greece is purchasing 1,000 fire-fighting vehicles as part of a €2.1 billion natural disaster procurement programme. Meanwhile, California is spending nearly $300m on Lockheed Martin Firehawk helicopters while also retrofitting coastguard planes.
However, the ever-more extreme fires that countries are experiencing means that these tools are at risk of becoming redundant. “Aircraft cannot put out fires on their own,” says Charlton. “Often it’s a political decision to put planes in the sky, because it makes authorities look like they are doing something, even if its not really helping.”
Harifidy Rakoto Ratsimba, a researcher at the University of Antananarivo in Madagascar, believes that there are takeaways for rich nations from the fire management activities of African countries that the US is, somewhat ironically, slashing funding towards. Instead of what he calls an “outdated ‘zero fire’ policy”, more tactical adaptation and management-centred approaches seen in Africa should now also become the focus in the Global North.
“Our analysis points toward a shift in paradigm: fire must be addressed through integrated fire management rather than a suppression-only approach,” Ratsimba says. This could include everything from creating fire-resistant zones around homes, to better managing forests and vegetation, or changing building codes.
Fires are ultimately becoming more of a problem everywhere, and will require a significant rethink. Simply throwing millions at more fire-fighting equipment is unlikely to hit the mark any more, and smarter strategies will be needed – and funded – the world over in our new era of climate-driven blazes.
This article was produced as part of The Independent’s Rethinking Global Aid project
