Geneva-Sana
The United Nations has warned that the number of major forest fires around the world will rise sharply in the coming decades due to global warming, pointing out that governments are not prepared for the devastation and human losses that will result from this.
The French press agency quoted a report of the United Nations Environment Program as saying that the probability of forest fires in the coming years is likely to increase, similar to those that broke out in Australia in 2019 and 2020, the United States, Brazil and others, at rates ranging between 9.41 percent by 2030 and by 20.33 percent by 2050, noting that “even the most ambitious efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will not prevent an increase in the frequency of extreme fires.”
The report, compiled by 50 leading experts, called for a rethinking of how to tackle the problem of global warming and the resulting natural disasters.
In turn, the director of the United Nations Environment Program, Inger Andersen, considered that "current governments' responses to forest fires often cause money to be put in the wrong places, as investment is made in managing fires once they start rather than prevention and risk reduction."
The report stressed the need to reduce the risk of severe fires by preparing for them before they break out.
For his part, Peter Moore, an expert in forest fire management at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, "FAO" and one of the authors of the report, explained that "fires are not a good thing, and the impact on people socially, health and psychologically is enormous and long-term."
It is noteworthy that heat waves, drought conditions and low soil moisture contributed to the outbreak of early fires in the western United States, Australia and the Mediterranean basin during the past three years.
