Forest Fires in Mediterranean Europe: Building Up to the Courts?

Mediterranean Europe is the most affected European region by forest fires. Despite this worrisome fact, the total burn area in 2020 was the fifth-lowest total in the last four decades (p. 114). This decrease, along the historical (and mutating) relation of this region with forest fires, seems to clash with a narrative attributing a rising frequency of fires to climate change that seeks to mobilize the states so that they adopt a more pro-active approach. In this context, competing visions of different stakeholders do not only shape the creation and understanding of current fire regimes, for they also influence how (and against whom/what) affected communities funnel their grievances and how institutions respond. The political ecology of stakeholders and possible victims is also determined in relation to the content and limits established by EU law and policy. Along these lines, the latter implicitly frame how novel climate change litigation strategically resorts to fires and, moreover, delimits which tools courts can use to address them.

This webinar explores how the dynamics around forest governance, the position of different stakeholders, and the role of the states and of the EU in adopting prevention, mitigation and adaptation measures that consider the needs of affected communities are translated into cutting-edge litigation. To do so, this webinar addresses these entangled problematics through an interdisciplinary perspective (environmental justice, litigation and policymaking)”.

This seminar will take place in a digital format,  please register here to attend.

Programme:

15:30 Introduction by Xavier Farré Fabregat (Brussels School of Governance VUB)

15:45 Forest fires and EU law and policy. Where are we at? By Annalisa Savaresi (University of Eastern Finland)

16:05 The political ecology of forest fires – an example from Catalonia (Spain) Iago Otero (University of Lausanne)

16:25 Concluding remarks by Liliana Lizarazo Rodriguez

16:45 Q&A, moderated by Liliana Lizarazo Rodríguez, Principal investigator of the ERC Curiae Virides Research Project (Brussels School of Governance (VUB) and University of Antwerp)

Organized by: ERC Curiae Virides Research Project (BSoG/VUB – Belgium)