PORTUGAL: 25 Percent of Forests Lost in Five Years

By Mario de Queiroz Reprint | | Print |

Mario de Queiroz

LISBON, Jul 29 2005 (IPS) - While Portugal is already facing its worst drought in three centuries, the environmental outlook was made even bleaker this week by a stunning announcement: almost 25 percent of the country’s forest cover has been lost to fire in the past five years.

The Department of Forestry reported Thursday that in the last half decade, fire has destroyed 820,000 hectares of what used to be a total of 3.4 million hectares of forested area, in this southern European country with a total territory of 89,000 square kilometres.

Over half of the destruction took place in the fatal months of July and August 2003, when an entire 424,000 hectares of trees were lost in what went down in history as the worst forest fires to hit the European continent in the last 50 years.

This year, another 40,000 hectares of forest have been lost to fire so far.

The main tree species affected are pine, eucalyptus and cork oak. In addition to the obvious environmental impact, the forest fires have also taken a heavy economic toll, since southern Portugal is home to 82 percent of the world’s cork oak trees, and the country accounts for 67 percent of international trade in the tree’s bark, which is the raw material for cork.

Secretary of State for the Environment Humberto Rosa reported Monday that the drought and this year’s forest fires have already cost the country 1.5 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) of 130 billion euros (around 156 billion dollars).

This alarming situation led European Union (EU) Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development Mariann Fischer Boel to visit Portugal last weekend.

Fischer Boel confirmed that the farming and livestock sectors are facing extreme difficulties, particularly in the southern Portuguese region of Alentejo.

She remarked that although she had read a great many figures and reports and had heard that the situation was grave, "I was now able to see with my own eyes that the situation is really very serious."

During Fischer Boel’s visit, the region’s farmers requested aid through the EU Solidarity Fund – set up in 2002 to provide financial support in the event of major natural, technological and environmental disasters within the bloc – as a means of offsetting the losses provoked by the ongoing drought.

It has been estimated that at least 60 percent of the crops that would normally be harvested in 2006 will be lost due to the severe shortage of water.

While this request has yet to be addressed, the European Commission adopted a decision on Thursday authorising Portugal to advance the payment of a number of subsidies and the fixed grant known as the Single Farm Payment allocated through the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). The decision was taken "to alleviate the situation of Portuguese farmers hit by the drought in certain areas."

In the coming days, Portugal’s 10.2 million people will be receiving a postcard from the government through the mail, asking them to save water. In some parts of southern Portugal, water reserves have dipped to a mere 20 percent of capacity, which is considered the bare minimum to meet the population’s most urgent needs.

A full 80 percent of the country is currently facing conditions of "extreme drought", while the remaining 20 percent is classified as in a state of "serious drought". In 21 municipalities, there have been regular interruptions in water supply since mid-July.

Rural areas are confronting an especially daunting situation, with experts predicting critical shortages of water for human consumption in August, along with frequent power outages, due to the effects of the drought on the country’s hydroelectric plants.

Farmers in Alentejo, where temperatures currently range between 37 and 41 degrees, have called on the government to declare a state of emergency in the region.

But according to the influential Lisbon newspaper Público, the government of socialist Prime Minister José Sócrates will be hard-pressed to meet this demand, despite the fact that it is fully merited, because the state coffers have been virtually sucked dry by the drastic economic crisis provoked by the drought nationwide.

In the meantime, the continued hot, dry weather has made forest fires one of the biggest threats facing the country’s authorities with the approach of August, traditionally the hottest month of the northern summer.

Even President Jorge Sampaio (who is the head of state, while the prime minister is the head of government in the Portuguese political system) has become personally involved in the efforts to fight forest fires.

Sampaio set out on Friday to visit the rural communities of Pampilhosa da Serra, Alvaiazere, Figueiró dos Vinhos, Pedrogao Grande, Serta, Ferreira do Zêzere and Ourem, all in central Portugal, which are most heavily affected by fires.

At the end of his visit to the region, he planned to meet at the Ferreira do Zêzere air force base with federal government authorities, local governors and mayors, the press and the general public to raise awareness of the urgent need for fire prevention efforts.

The importance of educating the public about strategies to prevent forest fires was highlighted in a pilot project aimed at demonstrating both the environmental and economic benefits of prevention efforts.

David Catarino, the mayor of Ourem, is an enthusiastic supporter of the initiative headed up by forestry engineer Pedro Cortes, one of the founders and directors of the Geoterra firm, which carried out the project.

"The costs of a tragedy are always higher than the investment it would take to prevent it," noted Catarino.

He pointed to a study by the Federation of Forestry Producers "which shows very clearly that every euro invested in prevention is returned in double or triple the same amount in profits."

Cortes and the other members of Geoterra have been travelling around the country since 1994 attempting to convince local authorities of the advantages of forest fire prevention.

However, due to the sluggish bureaucracy of the EU, it was only in 2003 that a community directive was passed to allow local governments to intervene on private land, without or without the authorisation of the owners, for the purpose of protecting forests from fire.

The pilot project study, carried out in communities in central Portugal, revealed that the cost of weeding a hectare of forest is a one-time expenditure of 1,500 euros (1,800 dollars) plus 250 euros (300 dollars) annually for maintenance, while the loss incurred when a hectare of forest is burned down is between 10 and 20 times greater.

The main obstacle to putting these measures into practice, the study notes, is that "there are increasingly fewer people interested in obtaining the benefits of the trees," and as a result, "they leave their lands in poor condition."

According to Cortes, negligence towards forested areas is the main reason for the massive threat now posed by forest fires. "There are areas where the brush growing between the trees is two metres high, because they haven’t been weeded in 30 years, and it takes almost nothing for a tiny spark to turn into a giant ball of fire."