Forest fires for the climate: why we have to fight fire with fire

The annual fire season starts earlier and earlier.

In the Mediterranean region, California or even in Siberia - the fires are becoming more and more extreme and are razing huge areas of forest to the ground.

The tropics have also been on fire again and again in recent years, clouds of smoke shrouded the Amazon.

Once the fires have started, they can hardly be dealt with using conventional firefighting methods.

The United Nations Environment Program warns that extreme wildfires could even increase drastically in the future.

The fires are a side effect of climate change.

The associated periods of drought in particular make the landscapes susceptible to fires.

Conversely, these record amounts of carbon dioxide are released because the greenhouse gas bound in trees and plants is released again.

How can this vicious circle be broken?

In addition to global warming, land use factors also increase the flammability of forests.

Due to urbanization, there is now bush and forest development where pastoralism was practiced.

This increases the risk of violent fires.

In the landscapes, due to declining maintenance, tons of dry undergrowth accumulates, which acts as a fire accelerant when a fire breaks out.

Fire economists are of the opinion: You have to burn this undergrowth with controlled fires regularly and rid the forest of it.

That's how our ancestors did it.

But the centuries-old fire culture has been lost with urbanization.

Fighting fire with fire - what do you think of that?

And isn't that a burden on the climate?

In this episode of »Klimabericht«, our podcast on the climate crisis, we talk about forest fires.

This time the guest is Hilmar Schmundt from the SPIEGEL science department.