Posted at 1:06 am. Updated at 05:00
Be inspired by floodplains
“For land use planning, wildfires will become a priority,” believes Danielle Pilette, a professor at UQAM and a specialist in urban planning and governance issues. She says Quebec needs to take inspiration from its work on floodplains, where rules have been tightened in recent years to address the growing risk of flooding in certain regions. “The government will have no choice but to create very specific government guidelines and support research in this area,” she specifies. “We have to think about it now. adaptation measures [aux changements climatiques]“It has to be long-term and not in a hurry,” adds Evelyne Thiffault, forest engineer and professor in the Wood and Forest Sciences department at Université Laval.
A matter of will… and cost
Merlin Voghel, a lawyer at the Center Québécois de l’environnement, also believes that Quebec should adopt rules that are adapted to the risks of forest fires. “The government would have the power to do this; The question is rather whether he has the will to do so. If Quebec has tightened rules on floodplains and even imposed building bans in certain cases, he says it’s because of the high cost of flooding, which is borne by taxpayers. “We’ll see if that will embolden the government to act [face aux risques d’incendie de forêt]. Still, Me Voghel acknowledges that the challenges would be numerous, and wonders, for example, whether we would go so far as to halt some land development in the regions most at risk from wildfires.
Growing Fires
At the Canadian level, Quebec is generally not the province hardest hit by wildfires. As Yan Boulanger, a researcher at Natural Resources Canada, recalled on Twitter on Wednesday, global warming is more pronounced in western and northern Canada, where the risk of fire is also higher. However, “each degree of temperature rise in the boreal forest triples the size of the fires,” he explained. Although the province is generally less vulnerable than the west, stronger warming in northern Quebec will inevitably have an impact on wildfires. Without adaptation measures, scientists also assume that the death toll from fires will increase in the future.
ILLUSTRATION SUPPLIED BY THE GOVERNMENT OF CANADA
Increasingly high costs
Between 1970 and 2009, an average of $537 million per year was spent fighting wildfires across Canada. A 2016 study by Canadian researchers published in the journal PLOS One predicted that these costs could increase to $1.4 billion per year by the end of the century due to global warming. According to Natural Resources Canada, the number of evacuations is also trending upwards. In the 28-year period between 1980 and 2007, just over 209,000 people were evacuated to the country; That number grew to over 365,000 over the next 14 years. In eight out of ten cases, these evacuations were due to the risk of forest fires.
“We are ready”
“We can hope that this year has been a pretty strong lightning strike,” says Evelyne Thiffault, who hopes Quebec’s government will take climate change adaptation seriously. “From a research perspective, we are ready, we have the knowledge, we need to put it into practice now,” she adds. According to the forest engineer, this is a good time to think about it, especially as Quebec could take inspiration from other regions affected by such events, notably British Columbia, California and even Australia, for best practices in dealing with wildfires.
Check forest management
Specifically, according to Evelyne Thiffault, Quebec needs to review forest management around communities by ensuring there are more fire-resistant tree species and reducing the amount of fuel in the forest by clearing the forest to clear it. “We can also build moats and review the way we manage vegetation in cities,” she adds. As an example, Ms Thiffault cites Australia, where building codes mandate the use of non-combustible materials in risk areas. “They’re really thinking about it in British Columbia right now,” she notes. For his part, Merlin Voghel points out that the government could seize the opportunity as it is in the process of reviewing its land use planning orientations. “We need to change our approach and take action,” he says.
Learn more
162 Of the 162 fires currently active in Quebec, 148 are in the intensive protection zone, where the Société de Protection des Forêts Contre Le Feu (SOPFEU) intervenes systematically, unlike in the northern zone.
Source: SOPFEU