EASAC Wildfire Experts Meet EU Commissioner Roswall

News & Academies' activities

The EU Commissioner for Environment, Water Resilience and a Competitive Circular Economy Jessika Roswall met an EASAC delegation of wildfires experts together with EASAC President Wim van Saarloos and Executive Director Georg Bërveniku-Brunner on 10 October for an exchange on the EASAC report “Changing Wildfires - Policy Options for a Fire-Literate and Fire-Adapted Europe”.

We very much appreciated the Commissioner’s interest in the topic, and discussed inter alia linkages to the water resilience strategy and to the new European Bauhaus. During the exchange, Cathelijne Stoof outlined the main findings from our report, with the main conclusion that Europe has a choice to either continue to strengthen reactive policies or integrate policies that support fire adaptation and fire literacy.

EASAC representatives also addressed priorities to restore peatlands, to incorporate wildfire risk into tree planting initiatives and to strengthen fire literacy (e.g. knowledge on health risks from wildfires smoke). Important insights were also shared by Tiago Oliveira (AGIF – Portugal) on pioneering an Integrated Fire Management System for Portugal. We look forward to a continued dialogue with the commissioner, as Europe unfolds the pathway towards Integrated Fire Management, as signatory of G7 Kananaskis Wildfire Charter and inspired by FAO/UNEP, OECD and World Bank recent reports.