Smart-Solutions for Wildfire Risk Prevention: Bottom-Up Initiatives Meet Top-Down Policies Under EU Green Deal

Abstract

Wildfire risk prevention through fuel management generally lack of economic sustainability. In marginal areas of southern Europe, this limits fire prevention programs to reach the critical mass of interventions required to modify landscape flammability, the fire regime and its impacts.This study investigates key fuel management initiatives for wildfire risk prevention in southern EU countries. We compared local approaches through bottom-up selection of 38 initiatives, which we analysed systematically through a set of criteria: sustainability, cost-benefit ratio, synergies and inter-sectoral cooperation, integration between strategic prevention planning and multiple land governance goals (e.g. civil protection, biodiversity conservation), innovation and knowledge transfer, and adaptive approach.We summarized lessons learned from the most innovative initiatives, by identifying solutions and models for building sustainable fuel management at the landscape scale, under integrated wildfire management principles. We came to define “smart-solutions” for wildfire prevention. These make a synergistic use of private, public and European resources to activate value chains that valorise the products, and take advantage of by-products and services generated by fuel management activities and their positive externalities on ecosystem services. These mechanisms catalyse the interest of multiple stakeholders (economic actors, private consortium, land and fire management agencies) improving the cost-efficiency of landscape fuel management.We contend that the EU Green Deal offers the political backing and enabling framework (mainstreaming of EU strategies and funding opportunities) to boost the replication of the smart-solution model for wildfire risk prevention, but multi-actor and cross-sectoral cooperation between stakeholders will be a critical asset for the local implementation.

Keywords: wildfire risk prevention, fire resistant and resilient landscapes, fire smart, Fuel management, EU Green Deal, bioeconomy