Brussels, 24/02/2015 (Agence Europe) - A report published by the European Court of Auditors (ECA) on Tuesday 24 February reveals that EU funding for preventing forest fires and restoring forests damaged by natural disasters and fire was not sufficiently well-managed. The Court has set out recommendations on how to improve the situation in the current 2014-2020 funding period.
The Court found that preventive action, which accounted for more than 80% of the €1.5 billion funding available for the period 2007-2013, was not adequately targeted. It noted that, while support from the European agricultural fund for rural development (EAFRD) for restoring forestry potential and introducing preventive actions - known as “Measure 226” - targeted forests at a medium to high risk of fire, there was no common EU definition or criteria to identify these forests. Selection procedures in the member states were deficient in various respects. Even though many of the measures reviewed - firebreaks, thinning and clearing - generally contributed to the objectives of the support, the auditors found cases which were not related to natural disasters or fire but pursued other economic or environmental objectives. They also found cases of forest roads, used for the economic exploitation of the forest, where the particular benefit for fire prevention was not apparent.
In the EU, the total area of forests and other wooded land amounts to approximately 180 million hectares, which constitutes roughly 42.4 % of the total EU land area and exceeds that used for agriculture. In the last 30 years, fires have burned down an average of 480,000 hectares of forest in the EU every year. (Lionel Changeur)