Sinaloa.- The forest fires advance in Sinaloa, coinciding with the important incidence suffered by the rest of the country.
The National Forestry Commission (Conafor) registered 1,497 forest fires in the Mexican Republic from January to March of the current year, a total of 39 thousand 829 hectares were affected; while in Sinaloa, the incidents increased from 2019 to 2021, going from 17 to 23 forest fires, at least officially.
During 2022, the most recent forest fire in the state originated in Sinaloa municipality, in the Sarabia community area, which managed to be suffocated by Civil Protection after four days of work, but destroying 15 hectares of forest.
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The researcher from the Institute of Geography (IGg) of the UNAM, Christoph Neger, told Debate that forest fire is a great challenge for the conservation of natural resources and for research on climate change. Added to this panorama is the classification that Greenpeace gave to Mexico, noting that the country is facing the worst fires in 10 years.
Incidence
With data from the National Forestry Commission, during 2019, Sinaloa officially registered 17 forest fires, by 2020, that number increased to 23, and during the last year another 23 events were reached. Meanwhile, from January to March 2022, six forest fires have been officially recorded in Sinaloa. At the national level, the trend is also upward.
Forest disasters have a greater incidence in temperate pine forests, which are located in the central zone of the country and around the entire Sierra Madre Occidental, Oriental and del Sur, commented researcher Christoph Neger.
In tropical areas, he explained that there are fewer catastrophes, but when they appear they can be more serious because many of the ecosystems are not adapted to fire.
However, in most ecosystems, forest fires cause enormous damagethey also generate economic losses and effects on rural communities that depend on the cultivation of the land to subsist, negative impacts on the health of people and even claim human lives.
Protection
Neger pointed out that in the polygons of the protected natural areas, it can be seen that the incidence is lower because there the communities apply prevention measures, which can be a strategy to conserve forests and jungles, as he considered.
“It is also important that local people participate to fight the fire, because they are the ones who can get there faster,” he said.
According to the interviews carried out as fieldwork with local residents, the UNAM researcher assured that there is interest in being volunteers to attend to a forest fire and, even, some people have tools that can be used for this task, however, he acknowledged that it is necessary for them to be trained to avoid putting their own lives at risk.
Public politics
environmental organization greenpeace pointed out that the firefighting has been deficient due to the lack of provisions in the three levels of government, he stated in his latest report. Likewise, he indicated that a public fire management policy is urgently needed that considers the new climatic conditions and the enormous biological and cultural wealth of Mexico.
Along with a series of environmental organizations, Greenpeace criticized this problem and pointed out that it has worsened in recent years due to global climate change and is even more acute in Mexico due to the dismantling of the environmental institutions responsible for designing, implementing, coordinating and evaluating climate change mitigation and adaptation actions, as well as forest issues.
Omission
The international organization pointed out that large surfaces in protected natural areas continue to lack essential actions to prevent fires, and there is no coordination between agricultural policies and fire management. Greenpeace recognizes the omission of municipal and state authorities of all partisan origins, due to the lack of forecasts for this dry season.
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At the national level, in 2020 there were 5,913 claims that affected 378,928 hectares, while in 2021 they increased to 7,337 and 660,735, respectively, according to the National Forestry Commission.
The Data
Climate change
The last seven years have been the hottest in recorded history in Mexico and there are greater droughts. According to Greenpeace, about 80 percent of the national territory has some degree of drought, as well as a growing number of fires. 13 percent of the national territory is in a very high risk condition; and 26 percent, at high risk of wildfire.
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