This year, forest fires have already burned more than 2,000 km² in Portugal

Portugal is the sad champion of burnt area in Europe over the last eighteen years, announces the headline of the daily Público. this Tuesday, August 19. In this ranking established by the European Forest Fire Information System (Effis), which provides an estimate of the burned area through the analysis of ground temperatures obtained by satellite, the country is even “far ahead of Greece, which occupies second place.”

The newspaper reports that 2.35% of Portugal's land area (216,214 hectares) will have burned by 2025. In absolute terms, the country is second only to neighboring Spain, where the flames are estimated to have destroyed more than 344,000 hectares. Given the country's larger size, however, this represents only 0.68% of its land area.

And the trend is old, Público points out:

“On average, over the past eighteen years (2006-2024), 1.05% of Portugal's approximately 92,000 ^km2 territory has burned. This is almost three times more than the 0.38% of Greece's land area that was destroyed on average by forest fires over the same period.”

In his editorial, the newspaper's director, David Pontes, deplores this Tuesday a Portuguese territory "very disorganized, without a coherent policy for the exploitation of forest resources." He also calls for "collective responsibility" to ensure that the issue of climate change is not taken off the agenda:

“Firefighters, airplanes, water, coordination, weather conditions—all these topics are topical these days, but they shouldn't make us forget the bigger picture. In Spain, Pedro Sánchez [the Socialist Prime Minister] has proposed a 'pact for the climate emergency' […]. Portugal should follow his example.”