The forest is burning this summer because the heat wave hits hard, too often helped by the arsonists, but also because we are unprepared to face this scourge. We have a Ministry of the Sea, but no portfolio for the forest. And yet, it occupies almost a third of our territory, which ranks us, including Guyana, in third place in Europe behind Sweden and Finland. And it keeps growing. The forest should therefore be the focus of all our attention.
But the forest remains a poor relation of public policies. Evidenced by the constant reduction in the workforce of the National Forestry Office (ONF), with a thousand jobs cut during the previous five-year term. More than 5,000 over the past twenty years, there are only 8,000 agents left. At a time of climate peril, the forest is growing but the ONF is shrinking.
France has one of the very first fleets in Europe, with twelve canadairs and six Dash, the water bomber planes. But with some aircraft in maintenance or at the end of their life and too few pilots, it can no longer cope. When the planes based in Nîmes finally tumble into the sky, according to elected officials and professionals on the ground, it is often too late.
“The Canadairs, I take care of them”, had slipped with a wink Emmanuel Macron to a mayor during his visit to La Teste-de-Buch in Gironde, at the end of July. The head of state who yesterday tweeted the arrival of European reinforcements. But 58,000 hectares have already gone up in smoke, almost double last year. The various affected regions, just like the member countries of the Union, can no longer spend their time fighting over the few resources available.
We are entitled to ask ourselves why the government mobilization did not start at the height of the July fires. Christophe Béchu in charge of ecological transition and Marc Fesneau, in agriculture, seem to be discovering their ministries. Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, on her way to Gironde on Thursday, August 11, with her interior minister Gérald Darmanin, tried to erase the government’s feeling of hesitation in the face of fires at the level of those ravaging California.
It is a new emergency: we must protect the forest, an ecological heritage at the heart of the fight against global warming. The security of populations and more broadly, on a planetary scale, the survival of humanity are at stake.