Javier Albisu |
Brussels (EFE)
“What we clearly see when we look at the trends is that the first fire season starts now, much earlier in the year, and that it lasts much longer,” explains the European Commissioner for Crisis Management, Janez Lenarcic (Ljubljana, 1967), in an interview with the European Writing of Agencies, which includes the Spanish EFE.
That is why the European Commission and the Member States have redoubled their efforts. Of 13 devices in 2022, the year with the greatest drought in the EU since records exist and the second worst forest fire season in its history, after that of the year 2000, the community club will now have 28 vehicles in its joint strategic reserve RESCUE: 10 medium, 14 light amphibious aircraft and 4 medium helicopters.
Rescue, to help when disaster overwhelms countries
ResCUE is a solidarity mechanism that is co-financed by the European Commission and that works as the last resort that Member States activate when they find themselves overwhelmed by a calamity that they cannot face with national means, although it is open to requests from all countries of the world and it has been used both in fires in Chile and in earthquakes in Syria.
Slovenian by birth and a career diplomat, Lenarcic explains himself at the EU Emergency Response Coordination Center, the “heart” of community civil protection that has been operating for a decade and that in recent years has seen how petitions assistance have multiplied by five, essentially because of climate change.
“Global warming is a fact. Its negative impact on the climate is a fact. And one of the symptoms of this is the increase in the frequency and intensity of climate-related extreme weather events,” says the commissioner.
His department started the European legislature with a total budget of 1,200 million euros, an item to which an additional 2,000 million was added to respond to the Covid pandemic and which has been watered with 75 million annual reinforcements, a financial endowment that Lenarcic believes that it will increase in the coming years because the weather forecasts are stubborn and alarming.
“It’s not going to be cheap. But it will be much, much cheaper than if we carry on as usual,” says Lenarcic, who throughout an hour of talk insists several times on how necessary it is to respond diligently when a disaster occurs as well as to prevent and prepare before they strike. the alarms.
The EU calls for reducing carbon dioxide emissions
And the first element of prevention involves reducing carbon dioxide emissions so that the EU reaches climate neutrality in 2050.
“If we don’t reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it will be even worse than it has been so far. It is obvious ”, reasons the commissioner.
The second aspect to reinforce is preparation, because “there are changes that are already irreversible”, such as extreme episodes that used to take place once a century and now occur every two or three years, be they floods, fires or droughts.
“Obviously, there are certain things that we can no longer prevent, such as heat waves, droughts and floods. But we can mitigate the impact,” he points out.
In the case of the floods -the last registered in the Italian region of Emilia Romagna, where torrential rains have left at least 15 dead and 23,067 people evacuated-, Brussels offers coordination with experts in water management from the Twenty-seven and suggests measures of physical adaptation.
“There are ways to prevent or mitigate the damage that comes after heavy rains. One of the old practices is to build dikes. This is still useful and necessary when you have rivers flowing through urban areas,” says Lenarcic.
At a time when voices advocating “pausing” the green agenda are increasing, with the future Nature Restoration Act in the spotlight, the Crisis Management Commissioner is clear: the transition will not be cheap and it will not it can fall on the most vulnerable citizens or regions. But it is essential.
“It is important to ensure a just transition, but the transition has to happen, otherwise the whole world will be worse off, to the point where some parts of our continent and some parts of the rest of the planet will simply become uninhabitable,” he concludes.