The participants of 33 countries attending FAO "Meeting on Public Policies Affecting Forest Fires" held in Rome, Italy, in October 1998 identified numerous global fire issues:
• Declining forest health
• Wildland/urban interface: loss of many homes
• Fire damage to tropical forests
• Forest damage from unregulated burning for agricultural and forest clearing purposes
• Global health impacts from wildfire smoke
• Numerous fatalities to firefighters and others as a result of wildfires
• Wildfire disruption of air and sea transportation due to reduced visibility
• Escalating costs of fire suppression and resource damage
• Increased contribution of combustion gases to global climate change
• Need to link sustainable land use policies and practices with emergency preparedness measures to reduce negative impacts of wildfires
• Need for community involvement and private sector involvement in developing sustainable land use practices and fire management programmes
• Need for a quantitative fire database in fire-prone countries
• Role of fire in managing fire-adapted ecosystems
It was clear at the Rome meeting that most of these issues and opportunities could be resolved through the development of public policies that provided concise guidance and direction. Actions to be taken were considered by Ministers responsible for forestry at their meeting in Rome in March 1999.
It was also recognized at the Rome meeting that a fire statistics database was essential in providing managers with a system of comparing fire season severity over time as a means of projecting future trends. Simard (1997) listed numerous ways that fire statistics can serve many purposes, organizations, and communities:
• international commitments (global biomass burning inventories, carbon budget, biodiversity conventions);
• national interests (criteria and indicators, sustainable forest management, the national forest strategy, public health and safety, biodiversity, atmospheric emissions);
• land management agencies (fire and sustainable forestry, landscape management, ecosystem management, wildlife management, watershed management);
• fire management agencies (fire planning, operations, suppression, prevention, prescribed fire, budgeting, audit and evaluation);
• fire science (fire history, the fire environment, fire management, fire ecology, fire economics, global climate change, and fire);
• political leaders ( fire management policies, appropriate levels of fire management);
• general public (health and safety, management of forests);
• media.
