Presentation at COP 27 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt by Antonio Louro, Vice-Mayor of the Municipality of Mação and President of the Mação Landowners Association, and Steven Hartman, Executive Director of the BRIDGES Coalition and Co-PI of the FÔLEGO sub-project “Ice and Fire.”

This presentation took place at COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh on 11 November 2022, in an official side event co-organized by Future Earth and Colorado State University in partnership with the BRIDGES Sustainability Science Coalition. The side event addressed “Wildfire increase, a challenge for Earth system and societies.”

Description of the side event

Climate and land use changes affect frequency, distribution and intensity of wildfires, which impact ecosystems, societies, weather and climate. Wildfires also provide ecosystem services and nutrients to marine biota. Here we discuss fire risk from a natural and social science view.

Presentation contributed by the BRIDGES coalition

In the municipality of Mação, Portugal, collaborative multi-stakeholder efforts joining local government, the landowners association and both academic and non-academic knowledge communities are taking an innovative approach to social-ecological planning and land management to address the persistent and worsening problems of devastating wildfires in the central region of Portugal. This presentation provides an introduction to the problem and current efforts to find effective solutions through a well coordinated transdisciplinary approach that is proactive nut reactive.

The presentation was produced by the “Ice & Fire” sub-project of FÔLEGO (producer Ines Camara), as funded by the EEA & Norway Fund, a collaboration of Academia de Produtores Culturais and the University of Iceland in partnership with the BRIDGES Coalition in UNESCO’s Management of Social Transformations programme and the UNESCO Chair on Humanities and Cultural Integrated Landscape Management at the Polytechnic Institute of Tomar (IPT).