A million hectares of forests and vegetation transformed into ash. This is the budget of forest fires that devastated the European Union in 2025, making it the worst year of the last two decades. A large area as the whole of Basilicata went in smoke, following about 1,800 bonfires that marked a deep wound in the heart of the continent, from Spain to Greece, passing through the Balkans and Italy.
The data are alarming. Spain has lived its worst season of the last thirty years, exceeding five times the annual average. Portugal and Cyprus saw 3% and 2.3% of their national territory burn respectively. And Italy? It has distinguished itself for the highest number of large fires (over 30 hectares): 532, an average of almost two per day, with over half of a malicious origin. The most worrying figure, common to all countries, is not so much the number of bonfires, as their average extension in constant increase, with the increasingly frequent appearance of “mega-income” almost impossible to tame.
The consequences of this escalation go far beyond loss of trees. They mean natural habitats and biodiversity canceled, often within protected areas; Tens of thousands of evacuated people; billionaire damage to property and agriculture. To this is added an invisible but lethal enemy: smoking. CO2 emissions have reached 38 million tons only this year, while fine particulates such as PM2.5 causes about 1.5 million premature deaths per year in the world. This is thus triggered a vicious circle: the fires accelerate climate change, which in turn creates the perfect conditions for new and more intense bonfires.
But why is it happening? Climate change plays a key role. A study by World Weather Attribion ​​calculated that the probability has increased by about 40 times and the intensity of the weather conditions in favor of fires, such as drought and heat waves by 30%. However, it is not the only guilty. The abandonment of rural areas, which leads to an accumulation of dry vegetation and fuel, and the expansion of urban areas close to the woods make our territories extremely vulnerable.
The problem is that, while the risk increases, our approach remains firm to the past. We continue to invest almost everything on the active fight against fires, a reactive method that is proving to be bankruptcy in the face of the new power of the flames. The real urgency, underlines the WWF, is a change of mentality: moving from reaction to prevention. According to Eurostat data, European governments allocate on average just 0.5% of the budget for fire protection, a negligible figure that demonstrates a poor culture of prevention.
“We need urgent and coordinated action to stop the vicious circle, with a change of course that redirects the right investments in prevention by all countries to create more resilient landscapes and communities,” said Edoardo Nevola, forest manager of the WWF Italia in a statement. The solutions exist and are concrete, as indicated in a recent WWF and Birdlife document. It is a matter of protecting and restoring ecosystems such as wetlands, which work from natural cutting barriers; promote forest management closer to nature; support biological agro-stastoral practices that reduce the load of vegetable fuel; And above all, involve the local communities, forming them to become the first custodians of the territory. It is a paradigm change no longer postponable, to prevent the chronicle of a summer of fire from becoming our new, dramatic, normal.
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