In recent years, this column has repeatedly highlighted global climate change as the foremost global threat. The Mediterranean Basin faces significant danger from this phenomenon, primarily the risk of shifting the scorching arid and extremely hot climate zone from Africa to the north, settling within the basin. Consequently, the region experiences an environmental threat, breaking historical temperature records and leading to devastating forest fires due to extreme dryness.
Since 2007, scientists and researchers, particularly from leading Europe and Mediterranean countries, have closely monitored this shift in the Mediterranean. Numerous ecological concerns arise from the rising sea temperature, including the spread of harmful algae impacting living organisms and the occurrence of large forest fires.
The protection and survival of the vegetation, land and sea creatures in the Mediterranean are directly related to the prevention of temperature rise in land and seawater owing to global climate change. The year 2007 was such a breaking point. While the number of forest fires in the Mediterranean between 1997 and 2006 stood at 6,000, this figure suddenly increased to 10,500 in 2007. While the size of the area exposed to forest fires per week in the Mediterranean between 2006 and 2021 climbed from 5,000 hectares to 100,000 hectares; in 2022 the same figure suddenly jumped to 346,000 hectares.
In my previous articles, I stated that this picture and the threat of fire negatively affect the preferences of tourists who consider the Mediterranean a top tourism destination. Another threat aspect of the matter is that, while the period when fires seriously intensified until 2022 was limited to mid-June to the end of September, a serious escalation was observed, especially in 2021 and 2022, with the serious risk of drought increasing its impact in the Mediterranean.
In 2022, the forest fire season suddenly started escalating exponentially even in early April and presented a situation that continued until mid-October. Moreover, while the forest area lost to forest fires in August in the 2008 - 2021 period in all European Union (EU) member countries was 189,000 hectares, it is really frightening that the same loss jumped to 659 thousand hectares in August 2022.
The Fire Weather Index data, which is regularly monitored by the EU's eye in space, via the Copernicus observation satellite, shows that the south of France, Germany and Switzerland, Bulgaria and Romania, and even a part of Slovenia, Serbia, Croatia, Slovakia, and also Portugal, Spain, Greece and a large part of Türkiye are faced with fire threats with the red and orange alarm levels because of climate change. The islands, which are tourism hotspots in the Mediterranean, stand out as areas at the most risk.
The danger of wildfires because of climate change in such a wide area requires the EU to establish a giant firefighting air fleet to be available for use by all countries under threat. Otherwise, sectors that provide significant added value to the economies of countries, such as agricultural production, forest products, tourism, transport and aviation, may face much greater threats in the coming period.
The European Travel Commission (ETC) data indicate that tourist interest in the Mediterranean region has decreased by 10% for the June-November period over the last two years. When questions were posed to tourists, they indicated extreme heat, forest fires and drought influenced their decisions. On the contrary, there is an increased interest in the Black Sea coast, Northern Europe, and Scandinavian countries. Around 7.6% of tourists openly expressed their discomfort with extreme weather changes and negative weather-related events. There is an endless benefit for a respected and important tourism destination in the world like Türkiye to follow such developments carefully.
