An assessment of the effects of forest-related policies upon wildland fires in the European Union

Recent communications from the European Commission (EC) seem to suggest that a new stage in relation with natural disaster prevention and management has begun. New perspectives stemming from the different policies that impinge upon this issue have been gradually incorporated. Complex structural causes that lay behind large wildland fires (LWF) call for the implementation of a number of diverse actions that are contained in different territorial policies. The present paper analyzes some public policies with great incidence on wildland fire management: spatial planning, agricultural and rural development policies, energy and environmental policy. By doing so it focuses on: i) identifying those cross-sectoral policy impacts that influence wildfire prevention and propagation, and ii) assessing the main strengths and weaknesses that these policies have for integrated wildland fire management (IWFM). The analysis of the impact of these policies has been undertaken at the European and Spanish levels, moving then down to the specific implementation problems offered by the case-study of El Solsonés in the Catalonian region. The vertical (appropriate territorial level of action) and horizontal (appropriate division of labour between public and private actors) dimensions of the subsidiarity principle are found of utmost importance for IWFM. The local level is where the most important opportunities for synergic actions emerge. However, intrinsic difficulties and procedural limitations linked to LWF seem to be impairing those actual measures which could positively attack the structural causes of fires.