Expert warns that deadly combination of heavy winter rains and new farming techniques has turned the countryside into a tinderbox

Hala Kilani
Daily Star staff

Forest fires will be “disastrous” this year, with an increased number expected and no plan of action in place to combat them, the director of the Association for Forest Development and Conservation said Monday.
Mounir Bou Ghanem was speaking a day after more than 100 fires broke out in different parts of the country, including Batroun and Seer in the North, Jib Jineen in the Bekaa, Shhim in Iqlim al-Kharroub and
Tyre, Sarafand, Bint Jbeil, Naameh, Nabatieh and Doueir in the South.
“These fires are nothing compared to the ones we’re going to be having in August, September and October when the green cover will be completely dry,” Bou Ghanem warned.
One of the few environmental experts in the country working on the issue of forest fires, Bou Ghanem blamed this year’s especially poor outlook on heavy rain over the winter, which he said brought about an unusually dense green cover.
“With drought hitting the increased number of shrubs, we’ll have more fires,” he said. “This is a typical Mediterranean problem.”
Although newspaper reports blamed the weekend outbreak of fires on the high temperatures over the past two days, Bou Ghanem argued that heat was only a contributing factor to fires, not a cause.
The main causes of forest fires are farmers, who nowadays clear their land of grass and shrubs, collect them in one place and burn them to get rid of them, according to Bou Ghanem.
“With the state of close proximity that exists between forests and agricultural land in the country, this results in forest fires,” he said, adding that with the alteration of traditional farming practices, forest fires are more common.
“Farmers in the past used and burned the shrubs to produce energy, molasses and limestone,” he said. “Each farmer also had his own sheep, which used to graze and create natural fire breaks. All of this has changed now, which is why we’re witnessing more fires.”
But despite the increasing danger of fires, the government still lacks a plan, equipment, institutions and even the will
to fight this type of calamity, according to Bou Ghanem.
“We’ve been lobbying the Environment Ministry to allocate some of its resources to
fire fighting, but it’s been hopeless,” he said.
The Cabinet allocated LL2 billion for setting up observatories that detect fires, but “this is nonsense,” Bou Ghanem said: “Detection is important, but without it adequate intervention, it is useless.”
He called instead for an independent and specialized fire-fighting institution with an action plan and a wide range of equipment, from basic to highly sophisticated.
“This institution should have well-trained human resources who would be equipped with things as basic as helmets, uniforms and axes and
as sophisticated as four-wheel-drive vehicles and aerial support,” Bou Ghanem said.
He added that “the ‘who will do what factor’” in the event of forest fires should be specified, as currently both the army and Civil Defense respond to fires with no differentiation in duties.
“Now the situation is the following: Effective fighting of forest fires depends on whether Civil Defense and the army are on good terms or not, because when they’re on good terms they coordinate, and only when they coordinate do they work effectively,” Bou Ghanem said.
Meanwhile, politicians lack both awareness and foresight on the issue, he said, as they react to forest fires rather than work on devising an action plan.
“When summer comes, they start talking about it in Parliament, but with the first rain drops they forget about the whole issue,” Bou Ghanem said. “And if you ask any one of them about the cause of forest fires, he tells you it’s the result of garbage left behind by campers or picnickers, while this is not at all the real reason.”

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