Region Archives: International

©BC Wildfire Service

When wildfires began raging across France and Spain last month, the European Union sent aircraft and firefighters from nine other countries. The Pacific Northwest, where fires have forced tens of thousands to evacuate, has landed help from Australia and New Zealand. Wildland firefighters have increasingly shared resources across borders, sending personnel and equipment to help in severe fire seasons. The trend is driven partly by climate change worsening wildfires, experts say. But now, wildfire seasons are becoming so bad they are stressing governments’ ability to share resources when they’re needed most. “There’s more international cooperation happening, but it’s a double-edged sword because there’s more competition,” said Cordy Tymstra, a wildfire scientist and consultant in Canada. Just in the last month, out-of-control fires have torn through multiple countries and regions that typically send help to each other, he said. “There’s only so many resources, and the level of resourcing hasn’t risen commensurate with the need.”

FRANCE — The megafire in Gironde, southwest France, has been “contained” since July 30, but foresters are still prohibited from entering the heart of their plots that were ravaged by the flames. It is too dangerous: With lingering smoke and a still-hot ground, the passage of a vehicle could rekindle the embers. As with the nearby fire in Landiras in 2022, they will probably have to wait for the fall rains before the fire can be officially declared extinguished. A race against time will then begin to fell all the burned trees as quickly as possible before the appearance of the destructive bark beetle and in the hope of selling the timber for the best possible price, depending on the extent of the burn. …The most damaged parts could be turned into heating pellets, while the preserved sections could be used for pallets, the paper industry or as timber. [to access the full story a Le Monde subscription is required]

©Pia Scanlon, DPIRD, WA.

A town with an idyllic setting and grape-stuffed vineyards that roll up into sheer Western Cape mountains, Stellenbosch in South Africa has been known as the City of Oaks for almost 350 years. It is a title living on borrowed time. Thousands of the towering English oaks and other urban trees that once lined the town’s streets and homesteads are long gone. Swathes of those still standing are marked for death, their fate written like braille in the form of scores of tiny holes — no thicker than a dot left by a ballpoint pen ­— beneath the bark. They are calling cards left by the polyphagous shot-hole borer, an invasive species of beetle laying siege to tree populations across South Africa and beyond. It’s a bug no bigger than a sesame seed but its ecological and economic impact is titanic and growing ever larger globally, measured in many millions of trees and billions of dollars.

FSC is the only forestry certification organization in the world to receive Esri’s Special Achievement in GIS Award this year, a distinction shared with just 0.05% of Esri’s global user base.  This recognition places FSC alongside global organizations operating at the cutting edge of GIS innovation in fields ranging from public health to water resources. Jack Dangermond, Founder and President of FSC’s strategic technology partner, Esri, presented the award. “For me, these people are heroes…they’ve done something extraordinary, and [we] can learn from them,” he said. Unlike some of the other awards that recognized work on a single project, FSC’s was granted for technology use and integration across the entire certification process. FSC is re-imagining how GIS can support a geospatially enabled journey that delivers verifiable integrity, regulatory compliance, and measurable impact at scale. 

Summer 2026 has brought one of Spain’s most severe wildfire seasons. The fires are clearly multi‑factor: they reflect increased drought, complex governance issues mixed with atomised land ownership, compounded by an emptying territory and the lack of profitability of forest activities. Spanish experts insist that forests must be valued differently: not only for the wood they produce, but for their capacity to protect watersheds and reduce erosion, to capture carbon and buffer extreme weather, and to safeguard biodiversity. In other words, for their ecosystem services. Prevention is cheaper than restoration. For the Netherlands this offers a warning about climate‑driven risks and an opportunity to build joint resilience, not only in fighting fires together, but to rethink ecosystem services under the CAP. …For the Netherlands, and for [the forestry ministry], Spain’s situation is a warning is that climate driven risks in forest and rural landscapes can escalate quickly when prevention and management lag behind. 

El Niño is back with a vengeance. A mammoth patch of warm water is growing in the Pacific Ocean, and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is [predicting a] “very strong” event by the end of the year. [It] is on track to become the strongest in at least 150 years. For the Amazon rainforest, the timing could hardly be worse. El Niño events, which happen roughly once every two to seven years, upset weather patterns around the globe. For the Amazon basin, they typically trigger severe droughts. The most recent El Niño, which formed in June 2023 … dried out large sections … helping to fuel the worst fire season in more than two decades. …“If this next El Niño really is as strong as we think it will be, it might result in things like huge wildfires in the Amazon, spreading across areas that were unimaginable before,” says Bernardo Flores, at the Juruá Institute in Manaus, Brazil. 

As the Southern Europe heats up, countries are spending billions on firefighting efforts. But wildfire experts say a greater emphasis on preventative measures is needed to stop this year’s disaster from becoming a regular occurrence. “[Scientists] totally agree that we pretty much know what we need to do, but we’re massively lagging behind,” says Stefan Doerr, a geographer at Swansea University. …“First of all, we have to stop climate change,” says Alexander Held, a wildfire specialist at the European Forest Institute. “But we can’t do this in the short term.” Instead, he says it is vital to modify the land to cut back on the accumulation of fuel. One strategy is to thin highly flammable vegetation by reintroducing grazing livestock, cutting back growth, or even using prescribed burning… Making landscapes wetter can also suppress fires. …Introducing strips of more fire-resilient deciduous trees, for example, is an option.

©Wiki

WALES — This summer has been extremely hot. In Wales we have experienced several record-breaking heatwaves, with deadly results. Around 2,700 people in England and Wales have died due to the heatwaves, with an average of 440 people dying a day during the peak of June’s extreme heat. Meanwhile, water shortages have led to widespread hose-pipe bans, and a drought status came into effect across all of  Wales. We have also witnessed wildfires across the UK, and some major incidents in both north and south Wales. Although some forest fires are caused by human activities – such as discarded cigarettes, campfires, and arson – these fires are more likely to catch and spread widely due to plants and bracken that have been dried out during heatwaves. This summer paints a worrying picture of what our future may look like, as temperatures continue to rise. It is a particularly sobering thought that this is likely to be one of the coolest summers of the rest of our lives.

©Wiki – Thomas Schoch

Australia’s buildings are made largely from plantation timber, not native forest wood. That simple fact is missing from a claim now circulating that logging native forests is good for the climate. Native forests store vast amounts of carbon, and protecting them is recognised as being crucial for tackling climate change, along with the deep cuts needed in fossil fuel emissions. Yet, some native forest logging industry lobbyists have claimed that logging native forests is good for the climate and a superior climate solution to forest protection. Is this true? Should we be logging more native forests to stop climate change? The science is clear that the answer to this question is no. …Why does native forest logging generate large amounts of carbon emissions? There are several key reasons. …The bottom line is that logging native forests is not good for the climate because it generates large amounts of emissions. 

Rob de Fégely

AUSTRALIA — The forester who advised successive Australian governments on forest policy for eight years has argued that a country cannot stop making the wood it uses without importing the environmental cost along with the timber. That is according to Rob de Fégely, whose column ran in the Australian Financial Review on Thursday, twelve days before the Senate votes on whether to disallow the Improved Native Forest Management method behind the Great Koala National Park. “Ending native forest harvesting is not environmental leadership,” de Fégely wrote. …“The demand does not disappear,” de Fégely wrote of what follows when a country stops making its own wood, an effect economists call leakage, which moves the harvest rather than ending it. Australia already runs a wood trade deficit, buying $6.9 billion in wood products a year and selling $2.8 billion. …“Harvesting changes forests, but it does not destroy them,” de Fégely wrote.

Global wildfires are intensifying, prompting “wildfire diplomacy” where nations share emergency resources like firefighters and aircraft. This cooperation, exemplified by US-Canada efforts and the EU mechanism, builds trust and facilitates immediate response. However, this assistance largely neglects crucial long-term recovery phases, including contamination testing, housing reconstruction, and public health. The article argues that effective wildfire diplomacy must extend beyond emergency aid to encompass prevention, shared resilience, and comprehensive post-fire recovery standards. This includes joint investment in forecasting, cross-border smoke protocols, and integrating Indigenous knowledge, ensuring communities can rebuild safely and sustainably.

PARIS — History keeps repeating itself in the smoldering forests of southwest France, now ash-covered and charred. Devastated by previous blazes in 2022 and 1949, when 82 people died, the largest human-made woodland in Western Europe has again been ravaged by wildfires which burned an area four times the size of Paris. The forests of Les Landes — covering 10,000 square kilometers (3,860 square miles) — were created in the 19th century for timber and resin production. They comprise endless rows of pines in neat, close lines, which works against them in a wildfire, with flames jumping easily from one tree to another. …President Emmanuel Macron said a different kind of forest should be replanted. …Single-species forests of conifers are drier than mixed forests of broadleaf trees and conifers, favoring flames. …In Les Landes, that layered structure does not exist.

SWITZERLAND — Forest trees can help contain heavy metals in polluted soils. But which tree species should be selected for this purpose? A study led by the Swiss Federal Research Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) investigated how seven different Central European tree species respond to metal-contaminated soils. All seven Central European tree species tested showed a similar ability to stabilise heavy metals in contaminated soil. Tree species with low nutrient needs keep excess metals out of their stems and foliage, making the production of uncontaminated timber possible. Selecting suitable tree species could bring abandoned land back into productive use while also safely confining the soil pollutants. …One promising solution is phytostabilisation— using plants to reduce the spread of pollutants into the environment. Trees are particularly well suited because of their long lifespans and extensive root systems.

SHENZHEN, China — Twenty-one Pacific Rim economies have signed a joint pledge to intensify the fight against illegal timber, with forestry ministers closing two days of talks in Shenzhen on commitments running from enforcement to wood in construction. That is according to the joint statement issued through APEC after the sixth Ministerial Meeting on Forestry, the first ecological ministerial China has hosted in 15 years. “Strengthen efforts to combat illegal logging and associated trade,” the ministers wrote first among eight aspirations, pledging to promote trade in legally harvested products and to write forest governance into wider economic plans. The statement also commits economies to strengthen the Experts Group on Illegal Logging and Associated Trade, known as EGILAT, which runs policy dialogue and training across the region’s enforcement agencies.

Inter IKEA Group has intensified oversight of its Romanian timber supply chain, choosing to strengthen supplier verification processes instead of withdrawing from one of its most challenging sourcing markets. The move comes as allegations concerning timber harvested from old-growth forests continue to attract attention. Ulf Johansson, Head of Raw Materials at Inter IKEA Group, said stronger monitoring provides a more effective response than ending procurement from Romania altogether. …According to Johansson, every supplier’s sourcing plan is reviewed annually to verify where timber originates and how it has been obtained. The company requires all wood used in IKEA products to carry certification from the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). Suppliers must also comply with the company’s mandatory IWAY MUST sourcing standard, which establishes requirements for responsible material procurement. …That position has been challenged by Greenpeace who published a report alleging that suppliers had harvested timber from forests with high biodiversity value.

With France and Spain struggling to contain raging wildfires, and others from Germany to Greece on high alert, Europe is discussing how to stop this happening again next year. …Addressing the root causes of wildfires, such as increasingly frequent heat waves, will require long-term policies. But there are ways to reduce the risk in the short term, said Tammouz Eñaut Helou, secretary-general of the French forest owners’ association UCFF. This includes raising awareness about how to prepare for outbreaks of fire and “maintaining access through forests to allow firefighters to operate more effectively during interventions”. …Environmentalists say it’s the entire structure of our forests that needs to be rethought. “The fires … are spreading through timber plantations. These monocultures are more than twice as likely to burn as natural forests,” the director of UK environmental group Earthsight, Samuel Lawson, said on Sunday. …Helou, representing the planters of such forests, disagrees.

Lori Daniels

Scientists have reacted with incredulity after Donald Trump accused Canada of “poisoning” the US’s air with smoke billowing from a slew of forest fires and threatened sanctions upon the country’s northern neighbor. The US president has said that he raised the issue of smoke wafting into the US from nearly 1,000 Canadian wildfires with Mark Carney, the country’s prime minister, at the weekend’s World Cup final. …Bernie Moreno, a Republican senator from Ohio, said he will introduce legislation to sanction Canada for the “atrocity” of not managing its forests properly. Such threats have been met with shock in Canada, where thousands of people have been evacuated from fires that have badly burned remote towns. …Attacking Canada over the fires is “unfounded, uninformed and even insensitive to people losing homes and fire fighters putting their lives on the line”, said Lori Daniels, an ecologist and wildfire expert at the University of British Columbia.

Ho Chi Minh City has just approved the Forest Product Management Program for the period 2026-2030, aiming to digitize the entire area of ​​production forests, trace the origin of forest products along the supply chain, and strengthen control over wood processing and trading activities to meet the increasingly stringent regulations of the international market. The Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee has just issued a decision approving the Forest Product Management Program in the city for the period 2026-2030, aiming to improve the effectiveness of state management, strengthen control of the forest product supply chain, conserve biodiversity, and support businesses in adapting to new requirements of the export market. According to the program, Ho Chi Minh City currently has more than 1,000 wood processing enterprises operating in industrial parks, export processing zones, and industrial clusters. The wood processing industry has made a positive contribution to economic growth, created jobs, increased export turnover, and promoted many supporting industries.

NEW ZEALAND — With El Nio forecast to bring drier, windier conditions and elevated fire danger across many parts of New Zealand this summer, maintaining a strong level of readiness will be particularly important. A new survey shows the forestry sector maintains New Zealand’s largest private landowner investment in wildfire preparedness and firefighting capability, with forest owners spending an average of $8.1 million on fire protection annually. The investment extends beyond emergency response, covering training, specialist equipment, vehicles, prevention activities and insurance. …New Zealand Forest Owners Association and New Zealand Farm Forestry Association Fire Committee Chair Sean McBride says the study demonstrates the significant investment forest owners make in capability and equipment to ensure wildfires can be detected and contained quickly year-on-year. …The survey found that the most damaging fires recorded by forest owners start outside forest boundaries, often spreading from grass or scrub into plantations.

Bridget Archer

AUSTRALIA– A coalition of conservationists, artists and forest industry figures has called for an end to old-growth logging in Tasmania but major environmental groups have distanced themselves from the “shared vision statement”, saying it does not go far enough. …The Forest Congress released a push to end the harvesting of old-growth trees while supporting a “responsible” forestry industry. “We agree that forests should be managed for all their values — ecological, cultural, social and economic — with the forest health as the foundation,” the statement says. …Sawmilling business Neville Smith Group is one of the signatories. …Four national environmental groups said the Forest Congress’s focus on old-growth forests was inadequate. …Tasmanian minister Bridget Archer said trees from old-growth forests made up only a small portion of what was harvested. She said the government remained a strong supporter of the forestry industry, and welcomed the process behind the Forest Congress initiative.

Related coverage in Pulse Tasmania: Rival groups back shared vision for Tasmania’s forests as old-growth logging targeted

Globally, nearly all of the worst years for forest fires on record have occurred since 2020. And fires are now the largest driver of forest loss around the world. Urgent and coordinated action is required to prevent further devastation, but with a number of factors fuelling the intensity of the fires – including climate change impacts and human activity – there is no one easy answer.   But here’s what we do know: responsible forest management helps mitigate fire risks and protects communities and ecosystems from wildfires’ devastating impacts. FSC’s core principles require that forest managers assess risks related to natural hazards, including wildfires, and that they implement activities that help mitigate those risks. In practice, these activities may look different in each country, depending on the environmental conditions, risks and characteristics of each region. FSC’s national forest stewardship standards for different countries account for these differences.