Balgarianovinite.com Europe cannot fight wildfires without its farmers
By Stoyan Tchoukanov, President of the EESC Section for Agriculture, Rural Development and the Environment (NAT)
Every summer, Europe watches the same tragedy unfold once again. People lose their lives. Families are forced to flee their homes. Firefighters risk everything. Ancient forests are reduced to ashes. Unique biodiversity is lost forever. Countless wild animals perish in the flames. Farmers stand helplessly as fires consume fields, livestock and livelihoods built over generations. When Europe loses farms to fire, it also weakens its ability to produce food, sustain rural communities and build climate resilience for the future.
And every summer, we ask the same question: How did this happen again?
The answer is uncomfortable. Europe has become very good at reacting to wildfires. It is still not good enough at preventing them.
The recent fires across France, Spain, Greece and other parts of Europe are not isolated tragedies. They are symptoms of a continent living with a new climate reality. Heatwaves are becoming more frequent, droughts more prolonged and fire seasons longer than ever before. Scientists have warned us for years. Today, the flames are confirming those warnings with devastating clarity.
Climate change is accelerating the wildfire crisis. But so too is the abandonment of Europe’s rural landscapes. Neither challenge can be ignored if we are serious about prevention. When fields are no longer cultivated, when grazing disappears and forests remain unmanaged, nature becomes increasingly vulnerable. Dry vegetation accumulates. Landscapes lose their natural firebreaks. A single spark can become an uncontrollable inferno.
For centuries, European farmers, livestock keepers and foresters have quietly performed one of the continent’s most important environmental services: they have managed the land.
Every flock grazing a hillside removes combustible vegetation. Every cultivated field interrupts the continuity of vegetation that allows fires to spread. Every actively managed forest becomes more resilient. This is not a new strategy designed in Brussels. It is the accumulated knowledge of generations who understood that caring for the land was also the best way to protect it. It is, quite simply, common sense. Yet European policy still spends far more money fighting fires than preventing them.
Encouragingly, this is beginning to change. The European Commission deserves credit for recognising that wildfire management must evolve. Its new integrated wildfire strategy moves beyond emergency response and places greater emphasis on prevention, preparedness and resilient landscapes. That is an important and necessary shift. But ambition must now be matched by investment.
This is precisely why the European Economic and Social Committee recently called for prevention to become the cornerstone of European wildfire policy. We proposed a dedicated European wildfire prevention fund, stronger support for active land management and greater recognition of the indispensable role played by farmers, foresters and rural communities.
Because prevention is not simply about buying more aircraft. It is about ensuring that someone is still living, farming and caring for Europe’s landscapes. Farmers are not simply food producers. They are the people who care for Europe’s landscapes. When farming becomes economically unsustainable, land is abandoned, natural firebreaks disappear and the conditions for catastrophic wildfires intensify.
Supporting farmers is therefore not only agricultural policy.
It is climate policy.
It is biodiversity policy.
It is civil protection policy.
It is food security policy.
Two years ago, the EESC brought together the voices of farmers across Europe in a short documentary explaining how climate change was already transforming their daily lives. They spoke about drought, crop failures, uncertainty and the growing struggle to produce food in an increasingly hostile climate. They spoke of the heartbreaking loss of livestock, fields and livelihoods. Today, those testimonies sound less like warnings and more like predictions that have already come true.
Europe’s farmers are among the first to experience the consequences of climate change. They should also be among the first partners in designing its solutions.
As another wildfire season unfolds, Europe should resist the temptation to measure success solely by the number of aircraft deployed or fires extinguished. The real measure of success is whether there are fewer catastrophic fires to fight next year. That depends not only on firefighters’ courage, but on political courage.
Europe will not solve the wildfire crisis simply by becoming better at fighting fires. It will solve it by becoming better at preventing them, through decisive action on the climate crisis and by investing in the farmers, foresters and rural communities who have cared for Europe’s landscapes for generations. Europe cannot fight wildfires without its farmers 2026 THE NEWS FROM BULGARIA – NEWS AGENCY 2009-2025 2026-08-04 15:54:07 Latest news World news Country news Most important news latest news most important latest of the day Justice Petar Nizamov Feathers Petar Nizamov- Feathers Justice bg iustitia.bg iustitia iusticia usticia investigation Burgas Bulgaria news news of the last hour news of the day news of today Bulgaria news The news from Bulgaria blitz news top news most important most commented latest news Boyko Borisov news weather coronavirus news news weather facebook youtube facebook instagram news today news of the last minutes news today today news news bg news leading news hot news bg news site for news all news news bg news of the last hour latest latest news bg news of today news today news today news of the last hour latest news today news bg news news 24 hours news vesti bg novini news world bird bg bivol bg bivol trud bg novini latest news today novinite bg news hello bulgaria political party coat of arms delyan peevski scandalous Bulgarian National Television Free Europe Television scandal exclusive live tv live right now tv tv online tv program bg live now tv news online tv online live court Burgas court Burgas district court Burgas court Burgas district court Burgas district court Burgas appellate court Burgas prosecutor Burgas prosecutor’s office Burgas district prosecutor’s office Burgas district prosecutor’s office Burgas district prosecutor’s office Burgas district prosecutor’s office Burgas district prosecutor’s office Burgas district prosecutor’s office Prosecutor General Ivan Geshev Prosecutor Geshev Tsatsarov Ministry of Internal Affairs Burgas ODMR Burgas ODPR Burgas police Burgas district police Burgas prosecutor Tsatsarov SGS cases Varna court chairman of the SGS court decisions on civil cases decisions on cases Plovdiv court decision of the court decisions cases Varna court criminal cases district district court decisions work in the court SGS chairman of the SGS judges Sofia court post judges Plovdiv court Plovdiv judges Plovdiv Supreme Court Inspectorate Supreme Court Supreme Judicial Council lawyer lawyer criminal cases lawyer civil cases lawyer marriage cases lawyer administrative criminal law criminal process civil law civil process administrative law constitutional law
