ScienceWildfire prevention requires ‘nature-based solutions’: Land ‘treating us’ the way we treat it

Carys Garland welcomes Alexander Held, a senior expert with the Resilience Programme for Integrated Fire Management. Held says Europe’s worsening wildfire crisis is revealing the limits of a system centered on emergency suppression instead of long-term resilience. He argues that the European Union has made major progress in coordinating firefighting efforts. Yet, in his view, it still mostly intervenes after fires have already become uncontrollable, rather than preventing the conditions that allow them to escalate.