Angelica Enciso L.
The newspaper La Jornada
Wednesday, July 24, 2024, p. 16
In the period from January 1 to July 18 of the last 26 years, 2024 presents a record of surface area affected by forest fires with 1 million 129 thousand hectares burned, reported the National Forestry Commission (Conafor). The area damaged by fires is increasing, since in 2021 there were 90.14 hectares on average for each fire and now there are 151 hectares, it indicates.
Last year at the same time, there were almost one million hectares burned, the agency reports. The record for the number of fires is still in 1998, when 14,299 occurred in the same period, while so far this year 7,438 forest fires have been recorded in 32 states.
Of the 1.129 million hectares affected so far, 94 percent corresponded to vegetation in the herbaceous and shrub layers and 6 percent to the tree layer. The entities with the most fires were the state of Mexico, Mexico City, Jalisco, Michoacán, Chihuahua, Puebla, Durango, Chiapas, Oaxaca and Veracruz, which represent 81 percent of the national total, it indicates.
The areas affected the most were Guerrero, Oaxaca, Chiapas, Jalisco, Chihuahua, Michoacán, Durango, Nayarit, Quintana Roo and Sinaloa, which represent 83 percent of the national total, he added.
This is happening in a context where climate change is increasing the vulnerability of the world’s forests to stressors such as pests and fires. The intensity and frequency of fires is increasing, even in previously unaffected areas, says the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in the report State of the World’s Forests 2024: Innovations in the forest sector towards a more sustainable future.
Fires in 2023 released an estimated 6,687 megatonnes of carbon dioxide globally, and in 2021, these fires reached a new high in carbon dioxide emissions, driven primarily by prolonged drought that increased fire severity and fuel consumption.
Climate change also makes forests more vulnerable to invasive species, insects, pests and diseases that threaten the growth and survival of trees.
