The forest fire brigade tries to extinguish a burning peatland fire in Pekanbaru, Riau Province, Indonesia, in March. [Photo/Agencies]
Devastation caused by extreme weather offers a grim reminder of the growing risks from climate change
Sue Mark spent most of the summer trapped at her home in Western Canada. With major highways closed, she was unable to leave town to escape the smoke, haze and oppressive temperatures from record wildfires caused by an unprecedented heat wave.
The weather has been particularly extreme in many parts of the world this year, with record high temperatures recorded in North America and Europe and, in turn, more intense wildfires than ever before. Huge fires are burning in virtually every continent (except Antarctica) and the impact is enormous.
As July turned into August, the lush forests in the mountains of British Columbia, Canada's westernmost province, where the weather is generally temperate, were scorched. The small town of Lytton, in BC, recorded the country's highest-ever temperature: 49.6 C.
Shortly after, the town was razed by an out-of-control forest fire. The fire was fed by a deep layer of dryness that facilitated its spread. Towns were evacuated－in the case of the town of Lytton, near where Mark lives, in just 15 minutes. Meanwhile, haze was another problem.
It made it all the way down to Vancouver, 200 kilometers away. The fires continued into last month and are likely to burn further into this month, slowed down only by a delayed rainy season.
A helicopter prepares to make a water drop as smoke billows along the Fraser River Valley near Lytton, British Columbia, Canada, in July. [Photo/Agencies]
"People are exhausted because there's kind of been mentally no real break. It's been one worry right after the other," Mark said from her home in Kamloops, BC, a larger city deeper into the interior, early last month.
"There's been travel restrictions because of the fires. The people haven't been able to escape, so there's been no holidays.
"We were breathing smoke for almost eight weeks. It's not smoky anymore. We can finally, for the first time just this last week, we've been able to breathe fresh air and we can see across the valley."
South of the border, huge fires are also burning in the United States. The Caldor Fire in California destroyed more than 81,000 hectares of forests and forced the evacuation of tens of thousands, and, as the summer holiday was ending at the end of August, it rapidly approached Lake Tahoe, which was on alert. The entire Lake Tahoe Basin, a unique landscape, is being changed by the fires.
Meanwhile, the Dixie Fire, also in California, had grown to more than four times the size of Caldor. By Sept 13, it had grown to more than 388,500 hectares.
Wildfires in the Northern Hemisphere continued through last month, until rains helped bring them under control.
Unusually and intensely high temperatures this year also sparked wildfires in Turkey, Greece and Italy. Sicily, in the south of Italy, recorded a temperature of 48.8 C in mid-August.
Just as those fires began cooling off, the Southern Hemisphere has started lighting up.
The Amazon rainforest is getting destroyed bit by huge bit every year and the fire season there is just beginning because the seasons are reversed, with summer in the South just beginning as fall and winter begin in the North.
Last year more than 2,500 fires burned in the Brazilian Amazon alone, more than 41 percent in standing forest, a new trend. So far this year, more than 1,000 large fires have already burned and 2021 appears to be on track to be as bad as last year.
Battalion Chief Sergio Mora warns of a potential structural collapse as the Dixie Fire burns through downtown Greenville, California, in August. [Photo/Agencies]
Meanwhile, in the Asia-Pacific region, Indonesia and Malaysia are beginning to burn as well, with fires generally set intentionally in the peat lands that are cleared off to plant palms for the massive palm oil industry. Also beset by unusually high temperatures, the region lives in fear of a repeat of the devastating 2015 fire season that covered Indonesia, tracts of Malaysia and even Singapore with a layer of haze and smoke.
In the first quarter of this year, fires flared in 10 provinces in Indonesia but, in an unusual ray of hope, Indonesia is protecting its vast rainforests at a bigger rate than in the last three decades.
There is virtually no region of the world where wildfires are not a big problem that is getting bigger.
The United Nations said in a recent report that rising temperatures are increasing the likelihood of "compound extreme events".
Rising temperatures
Fires can be more difficult to predict than tropical storms or hurricanes. Instead of playing a role as rejuvenators of forests and savannas, the fires are turning into voracious monsters fed by rising temperatures globally.
Wholesale burning of the Amazon rainforest is a significant problem for the world. The rainforest accounts for about a quarter of all biodiversity in the world and is a major cog in the "biogeochemical functioning of the Earth system", said Ana Luiza Tunes, an environmental engineer and water management specialist in Brazil.
"The Amazon is of extreme social importance, not only for the indigenous people who live there but also for all Brazilians. We depend on its humidity, the possible cures for diseases that hide in its forests, its biodiversity and balance and its temperature regulation," Tunes said.
"The Amazon, and its drier margins, is the scene of intense human pressure on the forest through logging, deforestation and the expansion of the use of fire. The Amazon fire fronts are caused by the criminal actions of land grabbers and land explorers."
The rainforests in the Asia-Pacific region, mostly in Indonesia and Malaysia, are faring better. The government of Indonesia is taking steps to protect the nation's rainforests and fight climate change.
Experts like Arief Wijaya, climate, forests and ocean senior manager at the Indonesian arm of the World Resources Institute－a global research organization that seeks to promote practical solutions to protect nature and improve people's lives－sees a direct link between climate change and wildfires in Indonesia. And the same is true everywhere else.
"The increase in climate change has resulted in more frequent El Nino conditions, which is a cause of forest fires. Indonesia has seen it happen more in recent years than before 2000. Before that, it used to occur every six or seven years. Now, it comes around every four or five years," Wijaya said.
The worst fire season on record in Indonesia was in 2015, when the fires proved to be catastrophic and led to a regionwide reckoning. Not only did Indonesia move to curb the practice of burning but neighbors Malaysia and Singapore, which are home to the headquarters of most of the companies that rely on burning to clear land, also took policy measures to limit the practice.
In the Amazon, there is plenty of evidence linking policies and climate change to wildfires, said Brian Enquist, a professor of macroecology and biodiversity at the University of Arizona in the US.
"We show that since 2001, drought and forest policy are the best predictors of fire and deforestation impacts on Amazonian biodiversity," he said.
His team analyzed the geographic range of about 15,000 plant and animal species in the Amazon Basin and found that between 2001 and 2015 some 64 percent were affected by fire. Since 2001, the total area affected by deforestation has steadily increased along with a steady rise in the number of species affected by the fire.
"At no point since 2001 has it stopped," Enquist said. "As a result, each year habitat for Amazon species has continued to shrink."
Policy responses can make a big difference in slowing the impact of fires and deforestation, or allowing it to get worse, Enquist said.
"Although drought is an important driver of total fire-impacted forest area in the Amazon, drought effects on biodiversity loss can likely be significantly mitigated by forest policies," Enquist said.
"If forest policies aimed at protecting forests are relaxed, we can expect a continued acceleration of habitat loss and increased impact on Amazonian biodiversity."
The good news, he said, is that a shift in policy regulation can have a significant impact, and "reduce the extent of deforestation, degradation and forest fires there".
Economic consequences
It is difficult to overestimate how broad the impacts of unchecked wildfires can be. Economically, they are devastating.
"A World Bank study on the 2015 Indonesian fires estimates the damage to be at $16 billion. The effects are quite wide-ranging as the resulting haze affected even the aviation industry, not to mention the immediate damage to local communities, public health across Southeast Asia and such," said Wijaya, from WRI Indonesia.
In Western Canada, Mark said the tourism industry has been hard hit and the provincial government "declared another state of emergency, piling on to the state of emergency in place to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic". The state of emergency in response to the fires was declared on July 20 and ended on Sept 14.
Ecologically, the fires are tragic.
"Since 2001, the impact of fires on biodiversity has continued to increase and has not stopped,"Enquist said.
Socially, they are just as damaging.
Farwiza Farhan, chairperson of the NGO Forest, Nature and Environment of Aceh in Aceh, Indonesia, said the 2015 fires in Sumatra and Kalimantan left an estimated 500,000 children with respiratory issues.
"Studies have shown that the cost to local economies amounts to as much as the profits from palm oil exports," Farhan said. And that does not consider other less quantifiable factors, such as loss of flora and fauna.
Things are just as bad in Latin America, where the Amazon burns every year. Perhaps the most noticeable impact there is on nature and biodiversity.
"Up to 85 percent of species listed as threatened in the Amazon may have lost a substantial portion of their habitat owing to deforestation and fires in the past two decades," said Enquist, the University of Arizona professor.
"As fires move closer to the heart of the Amazon Basin, which has greater levels of biodiversity, the impact of fires on biodiversity is expected to increase."
Rob de Laet, project manager at the Plan for a Bioeconomy for the Amazon initiative, said, "The Amazon, in my opinion, is already in a vicious dieback cycle, which humans can only stop with huge forest protection, reforestation (of old and secondary forest) projects on more than 10 million hectares of deforested land."
What is needed, he said, is a complete halt in clearing land for agriculture and stopping construction of all-weather through roads as well as putting an end to logging.
"The new commercial activity should be reforestation and forest protection paid by the world through carbon offset as well as agroforestry and bioeconomy projects," De Laet said.
There is little reason to think that things will get better but, for just about everyone who follows the issue, any real solution will have to be both long term and rooted in policy solutions. The good news is that there are multiple policy responses in most parts of the world to deal with climate change and the fires themselves.
China is taking very significant steps. President Xi Jinping has committed the country to being carbon neutral by 2060.
Countries such as Canada and the US are increasingly focusing on reducing their impact on climate change by curbing emissions.
In Indonesia, both Wijaya and Farhan point to the need to continue implementing policies to deal with the practice of burning to clear land for palm oil estates－a popular way of clearing the land of older trees.
"Strong leadership is needed to tackle this issue. Strict law enforcement in recent years has been proven to be effective in curbing the burning. Strong leadership from the national government is also needed as many local leaders are involved with the palm oil companies," Wijaya said.
Farhan said: "There's no simple solution, but conservation activists need to be embedded in local communities. We need to provide holistic solutions, to give locals a sense of responsibility over their lands and to handle economic pressures."
The question is whether they go far enough.
Sergio Heldin Cajica, Colombia, andDavid Hoin Hong Kong contributed to this story.
The writer is a freelance journalist for China Daily.
