The year 2023 has been declared the year with the highest temperatures registered by the World Meteorological Organization. In this context of increasing temperatures, Latin America has experienced during the southern summer a period of heat waves and devastating forest and rural fires that have devastated communities and ecosystems, particularly in Chile and Colombia.
To learn more about this situation, understand its causes and explore how to deal with it, our colleague Mariana Estrada Ávila from UN Climate Change (UNFCCC) spoke with Francesco Gaetani, regional science coordinator at the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).
UNEP: What are the causes of the heat waves faced by various countries in Latin America?
Francesco Gaetani: Here there are two key factors that are impacting large areas of Latin America, a global climate crisis and a warming of the global atmosphere that adds to a phenomenon that is the El Niño oscillation. And the two factors together are creating a big problem in terms of droughts, in terms of rainfall patterns and distribution, and therefore conditions that are much more favorable for large fires to develop throughout the region.
UNEP: A recent report estimates a 30% increase in forest fires in the coming years globally, what is the reason for this estimate?
Francesco Gaetani: The vast majority of forest fires are fires that They are generated from an uncontrolled fire of human origin, which, when coming into contact with a natural ecosystem, spreads and is the cause of these large fires. So, here we have several sectors that must be considered: territorial planning, changes in land use and cover, and the increase in deforestation that seriously increases the risk of forest fires.
Fires and heat waves in Latin America 2024 | UN Climate Change
recommendations
UNEP: How to cope with this situation?
Francesco Gaetani: Regarding the management of the territory, the role of local and central governments in the management and control of those activities that can potentially be the cause of fires is very important. All of this, clearly in a normal climate situation, does not cause a number of fires or fires of exceptional size, but in a condition of climate change and with a projection into the future, where this climate change is going to have a much stronger impact over the region, there is great potential for an increase in fires in rural and forest areas.
The role of indigenous communities, rural and non-rural communities that live in areas that have exposure to fire risk is also fundamental, since They are communities that take care of their territory, who know their territory, who have deep knowledge of the ancestral agronomic techniques that have always been used. There are very interesting examples in the region where central governments and local governments work hand in hand with local communities so that there is capacity at the local level to respond and prevent fires.
UNEP: Do advances in new technologies improve fire preparedness and response?
Francesco Gaetani: A lot can be done in the preparation phase. The use of early warning systems based on weather models and forecast models is key.
Almost all countries in the Latin American region have access to and run very sophisticated, very precise models themselves, with which they can feed early warning systems that within two or three days identify those areas that are most likely going to be areas where forest fires or rural fires could break out.
And that is essential, because in a situation where there are not many resources or intervention capacity to deal with fires, attention can be concentrated on these areas so that intervention in the event of fires is as rapid as possible. Early warning is really the most important issue so that fires do not later become megafires that are not controllable.
