First-World Flames

It’s not any comfort. Wildfires hurt Bordeaux just like Chamoli. Humanity’s in this together

Visuals of wildfires raging through Europe make for complicated viewing in India. Their firefighting seems to have next-level money, science, and technology. They have well-funded agencies like EFFIS, which tracks everything by satellite, in near real time. The terrain’s also very different. Forests in the Bordeaux and Valencia regions, for example, are easily accessed by dense road networks. In the Himalayas, by contrast, fires burn on steep slopes at altitudes, often with limited road access. But none of the differences seems to be making a difference. When an aircraft facing a ginormous blaze, looks like a ‘toy’, does having many more of it really help? Sure, to evacuate people. Not to stop the fire.

It’s a reminder, if anybody still needed one, that the climate crisis is an equal opportunity villain. Those who have fewer resources to adapt to natural catastrophes, often grouped together as the Global South, do look more vulnerable. But being rich is no protection. Europe, incidentally, is the fastest-warming continent today. Its temperatures are rising by approx 0.56°C per decade since the mid-1990s, compared to Asia’s 0.46°C. A saner world would buckle up on climate action cooperation. Instead, this is a movement on the back foot. One analysis finds there have been 45 policy reversals, across different jurisdictions, in just the past year. Even EU, so long a climate action leader, has been weakening mitigation measures. Will the wildfires stop the backsliding?

Himalayan forests have even started catching fire out of season. Too many parts of Uttarakhand, Kashmir, and Himachal Pradesh saw flames this winter, instead of snow. Of course, their smoke reaches us long, long before wildfires do. It’s fair warning that, somewhere, a larger system is burning out of control. At around 200,000 people, France has seen its largest peacetime evacuation. When authorities announce ‘containment’, and allow people to return home, there is no real relief. Because the fire is still haunting the continent, opening new fronts. 

One factor that’s getting a lot of attention these days is the damage from fast-growing and monocultural tree plantations. Researchers like Suzanne Simard, of Finding the Mother Tree fame, are slowly, too slowly, persuading policymakers that leaving primary and old-growth forests intact is essential, for ecosystem resilience. And to step away from the brink, where, because of various disturbances, almost all the world’s major forests now emit more carbon dioxide than they absorb. Fire was with earth long before us. But we seem hellbent on burning this relationship to ashes.

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