by Mirna Inés Fernández (Third World Network) & Yannick Tatin (M.Sc. in Tropical Biodiversity and Ecosystems)
Devastating forest fires are occurring every year with more intensity and causing major biodiversity loss. They are intensified by climate change, with major corporate interests like the agrobusiness and palm oil sectors behind the land use changes that lead to intensified fires in wildfire-prone ecosystems. Between 2025 and 2026, most of the regions experienced increasing fires.
Most central African countries feature prominently in global burned-area estimates with fires occurring in savannas, grasslands and open woodlands, alongside forest burning. In Asia; India, Nepal and Indonesia witnessed massive fires that affected air quality, with smoke and fine-particle pollution extending across South East Asia. Half of the critically endangered orangutan’s population is directly impacted by fires. In South America, Brazil and Bolivia suffered severe fire impacts including exceptional emissions in the Amazonian and Pantanal–Chiquitano regions.
Developed countries are also impacted. North America experienced extensive forest fires while the EU recorded its highest burned area since 2006. Portugal and Spain have been particularly affected since 2025. Australia was not spared by fires either. Prolonged, severe heatwaves and the cessation of Indigenous fire practices over generations combined with the Super El Niño event have led to huge uncontrollable bushfires across the country.
Discussions at the CBD can, and increasingly must, address forest fires:
- Refining the Monitoring Framework: As many targets still lack explicit operational metrics, there is an opportunity to include tools to track fire frequency, severity and resource allocation to fire prevention, mitigation and suppression
- Leveraging synergies with the FAO: By embedding the FAO's integrated fire management approach into national reporting, promoting access to specialized technical resources to build fire-resilient ecosystems.
- Financing fire resilience: Funding mechanisms, such as the Global Environment Facility (GEF), can explicitly prioritize "fire-smart" landscape management rather than treating fire fighting as an emergency response isolated from conservation funding.
- Addressing forest fires prevention and management approaches in the biodiversity and climate discussions: Including the update to the CBD Voluntary guidelines for the design and effective implementation of EbA & Eco-DRR.
- In National Biodiversity Finance Plans (NBFPs): Nations highly vulnerable to fires can structure domestic finance frameworks to channel funds to community-based volunteer fire brigades that can cover vital supplies like protective gear, field communications, portable oxygen, and logistical support.
- Redirecting harmful subsidies: To tackle target 18 and free up domestic funding, nations are tracking and repurposing harmful subsidies. Shifting financial support away from industrial monoculture plantations (which dry out landscapes) allows governments to reallocate public spending toward immediate, localized forest-defense resources.
Forest fires, once seasonal natural events, are now becoming anthropic recurrent phenomena, accelerating biodiversity loss across the globe.The CBD can, and must, address this issue by developing sharper monitoring indicators, leveraging synergies with the FAO, and including it in the biodiversity and climate discussions. Funding fire resilience, fire-smart landscapes and frontline fire brigades remains essential to both prevent and respond efficiently to this global challenge.