This summer Portugal is once again approaching a time of high risk, essentially for forests and rural areas. Fires are a worrying recurrence and Ambiente Magazine went to listen to some experts.
Ana Sá, senior researcher of the Risk Management Working Line of CoLAB ForestWISE, says that the country is getting ready “at the speed permitted by the different actors and the complexity of the decision processes involved in fire management”, and that one cannot expect to correct in a few years a problem built over decades.
For 2023, she believes that “difficulties that might arise will be very much related to the occurrence of adverse meteorological conditions”, such as heat waves, strong winds, and droughts. The truth is that the culmination of these phenomena leads to increased problems in fire containment, “with possible environmental, social, and economic impacts.
