Wildfires have played a critical role in shaping our environment. Iconic tree species, such as the giant sequoia, even depend on fire for their regeneration. However, the role of fire is changing rapidly. Globally, wildfires have become a major factor causing deforestation and forest degradation. A potentially vicious cycle of climate change and fire is emerging. Available data shows a trend of increasing frequency and intensity of uncontrolled fires adversely affecting biodiversity, ecological services, human well-being and livelihoods and national economies. Recent fire seasons have been catastrophic with fatalities and dramatic consequences on people’s health from smoke and haze as exemplified by the damage caused by wildfire incidences in Brazil, Canada, Chile, Greece, India, Indonesia, Portugal, Russia, South Africa, Sweden and the United States in 2017 and 2018. These modern-day fires are now largely anthropogenic, with lightning caused fires becoming almost outliers in comparison. Although land use policies and management practices have focused on decreasing the global land area burnt every year, success has been mixed at best. Against this background, the Program on Forests (PROFOR) housed at the World Bank and the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO) jointly convened a Global Expert Workshop on Fire and Climate Change in Vienna, Austria, on 2-4 July 2018, with the aim of improving the understanding of the complex interrelations between wildfire, climate and land management and identifying urgently required response strategies and actions. The initiative will inform a forthcoming World Bank policy paper on forest fire management strategies. The three-day expert workshop organized under the thematic lead of IUFRO’s Working Party on “Forest Fires” brought together 32 scientists and governmental experts from around the globe and World Bank representatives who jointly discussed the complex fire-climate change-landscape restoration nexus. The work presented here brings together state-of-the-art scientific information on wildfire as discussed by the experts in the workshop, providing guidance for decision makers on policy and investments to better cope with, and adapt to, an increasingly fire-prone landscape.
