(Sabaudia, Italy, 12 – 15 May 2008)
organized by
FAO, the Corpo Forestale dello Stato, the Silva Mediterranea Working Group on Forest Fire and the EC Joint Research Centre in Ispra
The participants in the Workshop support all recommendations approved in the 4th Conference on Wildland Fire Management, held in 2007 in Sevilla, Spain, considering them as an essential basis for the Workshop recommendations. Of special importance from this Conference are the following recommendations for Europe, Southeast Europe, Mediterranean, North Africa and Caucasus:
1. The protection of the environment in Europe, the Mediterranean Basin and the Caucasus region cannot be effective without a Regional Strategy for Fire Management designed according to the distribution and intensity of the danger and developed in cooperation with the public and private stakeholders of the forest sector.
2. Priority is to be given to the prevention of fires caused as a consequence of the socio-economic changes in rural areas, and the promotion of the participation of the local population.
3. To include in this regional strategy the maintenance, improvement and enlarging of the European Forest Fire Information System.
4. Agencies and groups are encouraged to participate in the Fire Management Actions Alliance in support of their adoption of the Voluntary Guidelines for Fire Management.
All participants agree that forest fires cannot be considered in isolation from other land use sectors and rural and vegetation fires. For this reason, an integrated approach is necessary. Terms like forest fires, wildfires, wildland fires and others all have different including and excluding features. The Workshop dealt with fire in a broad sense, including all types of vegetation fires and interfaces.
The participants in the Workshop concluded their work with the following recommendations for the Mediterranean region:
I. Recommendations on Fire Prevention
1. Fire prevention actions, including participatory approaches like Community-Based Fire Management, should be stressed against an approach merely oriented toward fire suppression and should be integrated in forest and fire management planning.
2. The Fire Management Voluntary Guidelines, Principles and Strategic Actions are recommended as a useful instrument to develop new or adapt existing policy, legal, regulatory or other frameworks with an integrated approach.
3. Prevention strategies should be dynamic, evolving according to spatial, socio-economic and natural changes, and also adapted to different socio-economic and territorial contexts, taking into consideration all influencing factors:
a. forest value;
b. forest owners associations to promote;
c. administrative system;
d. territorial level for planning;
e. spatial and socio-economic dynamics; and
f. urban development.
4. A minimum of essential actions to be included in the management plans should be defined like:
a. Silviculture: fuel management and forest infrastructure for fire suppression (roads, water points, etc);
b. Social prevention: public awareness, local population participation, etc;
c. Spatial planning issues: urban planning, land management, etc.
5. Special attention should be given to the new territories at risk, such as the wildland-urban interfaces, where specific preventive measures should be considered.
6. Both public decision-makers and private enterprises should be informed that fire prevention should get a much higher priority given on one hand the benefits, and on the other the social, environmental and economic impacts of disastrous fires as well as the high cost of disaster relief. They should also be involved in developing preventive actions.
7. Prevention actions should be cross-sectoral; more coordination between the stakeholders (forest owners, civil protection, rural development, spatial planning, and forest services) is needed at national, European and Mediterranean level.
8. Legal aspects should be clarified and enhanced through the development of incentives and obligations concerning preventive actions (forest owners, building enterprises, municipalities, etc).
9. Prescribed burning should be an alternative technique, but carefully adapted to the different contexts (territorial patterns): rural abandoned areas, wildland urban interface, productive rural regions, etc.
10. Preventive actions have to be long term and permanent activities, although they are often not as visible as big suppression material, thus maybe receiving less political attention and consequently not receiving the same needed resources. Politicians from the Mediterranean should be made aware of the importance of fire prevention actions.
11. There is a need to make existing European Union funds for national, subregional and regional prevention measures (structural funds and rural development fund) better available for all Mediterranean countries, including non-EU countries.
12. The use of a European fund and the international cooperation implies the availability of comparable information for the evaluation and follow-up process and thus the need of indicators for monitoring prevention activities. For instance, it is important to know the investment distribution in each country for prevention and suppression measures.
13. Existing regional networks like the FAO Silva Mediterranea, the Regional South-East European Wildland Fire Network and the European Forest Fire Information (EFFIS) network, should be considered when developing new international cooperation activities.
II. Recommendations on information systems
14. Harmonization of terminology on fire management should be promoted. A common, agreed terminology is important also as the basis for the fire database and should be supported with related trainings. An example of a piece of effort in this direction is the handbook of terms used in fire-fighting, written in six languages in the context of the Fire-4 project.
15. Harmonized and flexible information systems are important, both at regional and national level.
16. The European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) could be used beneficially also in Mediterranean non-EU countries. The inclusion of these countries should start by the definition of the national point of contacts, in order to establish a communication channel between the EFFIS and the national systems.
17. Detailed databases on fires, consistent with the EU/Mediterranean system, should be developed at national level also in non-EU Mediterranean countries, as well as national fire danger rating systems. The EFFIS fire database and fire danger forecast should be considered as the core scheme to be used as reference in this respect.
18. The EFFIS fire danger indices should be adapted also to Southern Mediterranean countries, taking into account the different range of climatic conditions. The adaptation would require some time and fire data will have to be available.
19. Fuel maps are regarded as highly important tools. They should be built both at regional and local level following consistent methodologies.
20. National Forest Inventories are important, but for some countries are lacking information on fires. The mapping of fire perimeters and their recording in a specific fire cadastre is considered important in some Mediterranean areas.
21. Investigations on fire causes are needed, also accompanied by spatial analysis that would allow identifying and grouping of the risk areas in order to further support the investigation process.
22. It is important to establish international protocols for border fires in order to facilitate common investigation on fire causes. Some common training/capacity building initiatives such as seminars are needed in order to exchange experiences and keep the services updated on moderns systems of investigation which are continuously evolving.
23. More attention should go to fire economics to study overall impacts of fires and the effectiveness of fire management.
III. Recommendations related to fire suppression
24. It is necessary to harmonize the existing and future agreements within the Mediterranean. The work already done by international organizations must be taken into account, e.g. the template for international agreements as those available on the FAO and Global Fire Monitoring Centre homepages. Templates for bilateral agreements in place should also be taken into consideration.
25. Co-operation initiatives should be encouraged between Northern and Southern Mediterranean countries.
26. Operational rooms in different countries should use harmonized procedures and technical tools.
27. Application of Incident Command Systems (ICS) must be used for co-operation on wild fire-fighting.
28. Fire Management training (including aerial and ground fighting) should be standardized.
29. In order to prevent injuries and save the lives of fire-fighters, technical reports on suppression activities should include detailed information on accidents and near-miss experiences. This is already applied, on a voluntary basis, by the Aviation (e.g. Aviation Safety Reporting System) and since 2005, by the International Association of Fire Chiefes.
30. Individual protection equipment should be designed accordingly with the different tasks assigned to fire-fighters. Thanks to an enhanced exchange of experiences, such equipment should be standardized and its use strongly encouraged, also avoiding disparity of treatment in case of international fire-suppression interventions.
31. Civil infrastructure and settlement planning in rural and forest areas should take into account not only the obvious risk of fire (thus, a low presence of inflammable vegetation and the availability of proper safety equipment are required), but also the possible future need of fire-suppression interventions (thus, a good accessibility to men and vehicles).
32. Knowledge transfer should be encouraged especially among neighbouring countries and meetings to share national experiences and lessons learnt should be organized.
33. Use of backfires should be considered and authorized, especially in areas which are difficult to access and where there is a limitation of water to extinguish fire. It may also be considered under certain conditions in the presence of infrastructures and for the sake of the safety of fire fighters.
IV. Recommendations actions to be started at short term
34. To share updated information between countries on structural prevention issues (e.g. area of proper protected forest, area of fuel managed each year, techniques used for fuel management, ton of biomass utilization for energy, pasture or others), and accountability.
35. To implement a common awareness campaign at the Mediterranean basin addressed not only to the local population but also to all people visiting the Region for vacation during the fire season (tourists).
36. To develop and implement an harmonized methodology for training programs on fire management issues.
