The European Union is bracing itself for a difficult wildfire season, with hundreds of firefighters from different member states being deployed as the drought in southern European countries could become "the worst ever".
"Since 2017, we have witnessed the most intense forest fires ever seen in Europe and unfortunately we expect the 2022 forest fire season could follow this trend," said Maroš Šefčovič, the European Commission's vice-president for inter-institutional relations, today.
Climate change has increased the risk of fire, scientists say. Higher summer temperatures, coupled with the effects of more numerous and longer-lasting droughts make it easier for fires to spark and spread. The wildfire season itself has also become wider.
The drought that is felt across Portugal is more severe in the south.
António Pina, president of the Intermunicipal Community of the Algarve - AMAL, says that if next winter is the same as this one, according to data from the Algarve Hydrographic Region Administration (HRA) the water reserves in the Algarve region are enough for one year.
Aa meeting is scheduled for 15th of July with all the Algarve mayors attending, at AMAL's headquarters in Faro, where new measures to combat drought and the consequent lack of water will be presented.
António Pina, who is also mayor of Olhão, has assured that one of the measures that will be implemented in his municipality has to do with the irrigation of public green spaces, "90% of lawn spaces will disappear, to make way for more economical solutions from the water point of view", giving the example of the renovated Jardim Patrão Joaquim Lopes in the Olhão Riverside Zone, which is environmentally sustainable.
Saving water is everyone's responsibility: "People need to understand and I think they still haven't understood the problem, even with the awareness campaigns that have been carried out, namely in the media, human consumption in compared to 2019, it rose. We don't have more population, we have more or less the same number of tourists and we have 15 to 17% more consumption”, he warned.
The official also assured that for the moment there are no restrictions on public water supply, but the most certain thing is that there will be a "significant increase" in its cost, "we will have to implement the so-called normal consumption with normal tariffs, but above that value, has to be heavily taxed to discourage consumption".
When the question of whether to resort to capturing water through groundwater was raised, journalists were told that water is not plentiful and that what exists does not have the quality necessary for human consumption.
Sources https://www.euronews.com/ and https://www.algarvemarafado.com/
