On 17 June 2025, G7 leaders adopted the Kananaskis Wildfire Charter—a landmark commitment to scale up wildfire prevention, preparedness and recovery. The Charter calls for nothing short of a transformation: a whole-of-society approach, stronger international co-operation, science-based risk reduction and the integration of climate adaptation into fire management. This includes sustainable forest management, nature-based solutions, Indigenous land practices such as cultural or controlled burning, and targeted fire risk reduction measures around communities, buildings and infrastructure.
The Charter couldn’t be concluded at a timelier moment.
Earlier this year, California was ravaged by devastating wildfires. The Palisades and Eaton Fires created record damages estimated at an unprecedented USD 165 billion.
But California is no longer the outlier. With increasing temperatures and longer dry spells, regions previously spared from wildfire risk are now grappling to adapt to new realities. In South Korea, fires this spring took authorities by surprise, taking the life of 32 people, destroying 5,000 buildings, and burning 104,000 hectares of forest land. At the same time, a wildfire in the United Kingdom burned nearly 30,000 hectares by early May, already setting a new annual record. Fires in Germany, the Netherlands and Argentina, confirm that the risk is growing across the globe.
OECD analysis has revealed that in the past 30 years, the duration of the fire weather season grew by 27%. In that same time period, climate change is estimated to have doubled the total forest area burned in the western United States. Similarly, climate change doubled the likelihood of the occurrence of the Korean fires this year and increased the likelihood of the Californian fire’s occurrence by 35%. Looking ahead, the picture is even more sobering. Under a moderate-emissions scenario the global burned area could rise by 19% by 2050 compared to 2000. In high-warming scenarios, the fire season could lengthen by over 40 days per year in some regions—stretching fire services and leaving ecosystems little time to recover.
Figure 1: Global likelihood of future extreme wildfire events under different climate scenarios
Note: Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) are greenhouse gas emission scenarios developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). RCP 2.6 reflects a strong mitigation scenario that keeps global warming under 2°C. in RCP 6.0 emissions rise moderately and increase warming to 3-4°C compared to pre-industrialisation.
Our report, Taming Wildfires in the Context of Climate Change, emphasises the importance of shifting from an overarching focus on strengthening emergency response to investing in long-term resilience. It advocates for grounding wildfire management in climate risk assessment, with a focus on:
- Improving forest and vegetation management to ensure healthy ecosystems, which are more resilient to wildfire ignition and spread;
- Adapting the built environment through forward-looking land-use decisions and the design and application of building codes that improve fire resistance
- Improving wildfire risk assessments, notably by integrating climate change models;
- Ensuring a whole of government approach to managing wildfires, which means integrating it in the investments and organisation of all relevant government and non-government actors.
Figure 2: Reducing the risk of extreme wildfires through prevention measures
In our work we demonstrate how some countries are advancing in the implementation of these good practice principles. Portugal, for example, has balanced funding between emergency response and wildfire prevention. Through its Agency for the Integrated Management of Rural Fires (AGIF) it is promoting the adoption of wildfire prevention measures across all government agencies.
Our report also demonstrates that these examples are still few and far between. More countries need to adopt such forward-looking integrated approaches to ensure that the next wildfire causes less disruption and trauma to their communities, ecosystems and economies.
As the world begins to implement the Charter, the OECD stands ready to support this shared mission.
Find out more about our work and explore our country case studies (Greece, Portugal and the United States) here.
And stay tune for our forthcoming in-depth work on the topic in Portugal.
