Moving from Early Warnings to Early Actions – Wildfire Edition
Isidora Xenaki, a Leeds at COP30 delegate, writes about one of the biggest threats facing Earth's forests - wildfires:
As COP30 convenes near the Amazon rainforest, delegates have been engaging in discussions concerning the protection of tropical forests and their vitality in regulating Earth’s climate.
Tropical forests’ importance extends from regulating global rainfall patterns to absorbing vast amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide and sustaining billions of people's livelihoods.
One of the largest threats forests face is the increasingly frequent and intense wildfires. Driven by increasing deforestation and global warming, wildfires have caused major concern as they disrupt and pollute water systems that ensure rainforest longevity. In 2024, the Amazon rainforest experienced the largest forested burned area of the last decade after prolonged periods of droughts. This fast forest degradation resulted to the overall release of 791 ± 86 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, biodiversity, and cultural loss. These disturbances have fuelled the urgency of early warning development and action plans within COP30 events.
Wildfire risk is most famously quantified and monitored by the metric of the Fire Weather Index. It is calculated by thresholds of air temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, and 24-hour rainfall accumulation, and it heavily depends on regional data availability.
One of the major topics during “Earth Information Day” on the first day of COP30 was the accessibility and democratisation of meteorological data from all UNFCCC nations. During this session, scientists from global institutions communicated the importance of atmospheric data sharing, especially from the countries located in the Southern Hemisphere, as they present the largest absence of remote climate information.
In this way, climate models will be able to provide a more precise and holistic representation of future climate evolution and prediction of extreme events, which would redirect climate finance decision making.
However, climate data not only needs to be accessible but also actionable. Despite the technologically advanced early warning systems, wildfires are increasingly affecting multiple and diverse ecosystems across tropical, temperate, and boreal Earth’s zone, resulting into biodiversity and livelihood loss. In the case of the 2024 fires in Viña del Mar, even though the residents received evacuation messages, the fires led to 134 deaths and covered forest, agricultural, and urban sectors.
The uniqueness of forests and communities surrounding then, marks the current wildfires as a global phenomenon that requires localized solutions. During the COP30 side event “From Fire to Water Vulnerability: Science and Policy Responses to Rising Risks in the Amazon”, the representatives communicated that in order to create fire-prepared communities, multilevel cooperation that connects scientific and technological findings, local action, and national policy is needed.
This collaboration requires embedding communities’ capacities and wisdom into governance frameworks and aligning local solutions with national climate commitments.
Amazonian Indigenous people from Peru talked at the COP30 Press Conference and shared how they developed a guide for fire early warnings, mitigation ecological management concerning wildfires. This Indigenous wisdom has maintained and restored parts of the world’s largest rainforest and if combined with inclusive governance, it can develop targeted National Determined Contributions (NDCs) that ensure ecosystems, climate, and financing resilience.
COP30 has addressed that climate decision making should include communities that are destined to protect. The case of wildfires management has demonstrates that climate - risk scientific analysis and data accessibility are effective when they are designed with communities and have clearly marked action plans for emergency socio-ecological hazards. The protection of forests and their communities is an obligation of all nations met by scientific and technological progress, responsible governance, and community-based education to achieve climate adaptation.
References
Bourgoin, C., Beuchle, R., Branco, A., Carreiras, J., Ceccherini, G., Oom, D., San-Miguel-Ayanz, J., Sedano, F., 2025. Extensive fire-driven degradation in 2024 marks worst Amazon forest disturbance in over two decades. https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-1823
Cordero, R.R., Feron, S., Damiani, A., Carrasco, J., Karas, C., Wang, C., Kraamwinkel, C.T., Beaulieu, A., 2024. Extreme fire weather in Chile driven by climate change and El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Sci Rep 14, 1974. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-52481-x
UNICEF (2024) Chile: Humanitarian Flash Report No. 2 (Wildfire) – 07 March 2024. [pdf] New York: United Nations Children’s Fund. Available at: https://www.unicef.org/media/153531/file/Chile-Humanitarian-Flash-Report-No.2-(Wildfire)-07-March-2024.pdf