On 18 July 2022, the European Union (EU) announced that they will buy more firefighting planes to bolster its existing fleet. Prior to the announcement, the EU had a fleet consisting of 12 planes and a helicopter, according to Reuters.
Speaking to Reuters, EU Commissioner for Crisis Management Janez Lenarčič indicated that the EU was fully committed to assisting its member states throughout the current and future fire seasons, saying that “these planes will technically be bought by the member states but they will be 100% financed by the European Union.”
Southern Europe is currently in the middle of its typical June-September fire season, and though member states are responsible for the prevention and elimination of forest fires, with EU assistance only to be requested when back-up is needed, there have already been five requests for assistance: last year, amid the EU’s second-worst forest fire season on record, there were only nine, according to Reuters.
Already over half a million hectares of land have been burned, according to France24, eclipsing 2021’s total loss of the just over 470,000 hectares. During the EU’s worst forest fire season on record in 2017, over 1 million hectares were lost: many believe that the current season could break that record, further indicating the escalation of climate change’s effects on the bloc.
“We expect the worst to come – we aren’t even halfway into the fire season,” Jesús San Miguel of the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) told Agence France-Presse (AFP) earlier this week. “The situation is much worse than expected, even if we were expecting temperature anomalies with our long-term forecasts.”
As climate change worsens, deadly heatwaves and dry conditions will mean that fires will spread faster, last longer, and burn hotter, making it imperative that the EU continue to pursue forward-thinking measures such as purchasing more planes in preparation, rather than scrambling for them in the future during an immediate crisis.
Alongside the importance of the EU continuing to commit and follow-through on climate change agreements, as well as pressuring its allies to do the same, it is also important to acknowledge that it is the duty of states and supranational organizations like the EU to respond to climate change proactively, as well as in the moment.
As the effects of climate change continue to devastate the world, it is essential that policymakers acknowledge and respond to its effects. The citizens of the world must not suffer due to poor planning: a firefighting fleet that could handle a bad fire season 10 years ago will more likely than not, not be an adequate response to fire season in five years time and it’s important that the European Union has recognized this.
