Forest Fires Across Italian Regions and Implications for Climate Change: A Panel Data Analysis

Environmental and Resource Economics https://doi.org/10.1007/s10640-018-0279-z Forest Fires Across Italian Regions and Implications for Climate Change: A Panel Data Analysis Melania Michetti1 · Mehmet Pinar2 Accepted: 9 August 2018 © The Author(s) 2018 Abstract In this paper, we analyze the determinants of monthly variations in forest fire frequency and on the size of the area burnt for Italian regions between 2000 and 2011. We employ panel data techniques, which allow capturing the dynamics of fire danger due to changes in past climatic conditions, after accounting for regional fixed effects to control region-specific unobserved and time-invariant factors. Results highlight a significant heterogeneity of the effects of driving factors across the Italian peninsula and weather seasons. Climatic conditions also show lasting effects within the year. Using climate change projections for 2016–2035, we then obtain the projected forest fire frequency and total area burnt across the Italian peninsula for the same period. Climate change is expected to increase the number of forest fires across the whole peninsula, which is more evident for the central part of Italy. Even though most of annual increases in fire events relate to the summer period, intensifications in frequency during autumn become more evident in the southern Italy. We extend finally our analysis to investigate the contribution of socio-economic factors to fire regime and the role of education and the containment of fraudulent activity is also highlighted. Keywords Forest fires · Forestry · Climate change · Panel-data estimation JEL Classification C33 · Q23 · Q54 1 Introduction Forestland and trees offer vital services such as commercial and recreational uses, water and climate regulation services, and carbon sequestration activity. However, several forest disturbances undermine these service provisions. Compared to other factors (e.g., pests, B Mehmet Pinar Melania Michetti 1 Centro Euro-mediterraneo sui Cambiamenti Climatici (CMCC), Via Aldo Moro 44, 40127 Bologna, Italy 2 Business School, Edge Hill University, St Helens Road, Ormskirk L39 4QP, UK 123 M. Michetti, M. Pinar plant diseases, wind, and frost), fire often represents the most threatening disturbance for forestland and trees in the southern Europe and Mediterranean area [Pausas et al. (2008) for Mediterranean area; Miranda et al. (2008) for Southern Europe; Dimitrakopoulos et al. (2011) and Koutsias et al. (2013) for Greece; Costa et al. (2011) for Portugal]. Italy is not an exception being affected by relevant fire risk where it lists as the fourth country for importance on fire events in the Mediterranean area, after Portugal, Spain, and France (San-Miguel-Ayanz et al. 2017). Through the whole Italian peninsula, 7077 fire events were registered on average each year between 2000 and 2011 with around 76,350 hectare (ha) of area burnt annually on average. Forest fires in 2017 have been recorded as one of the worst one during the last 30 years for Italy as vast fire occurrences have taken place during summer, adding to the already important events in autumn. Ironically, in the same year, the National Italian Institute for Statistics (ISTAT) stopped recording official data on forest sector statistics. Furthermore, in 2017, the role of the Italian police force under civil law (Corpo Forestale dello Stato: CFS) on forest management, a department that works under the Ministry of Agricultural, Food and Forestry Policies Forest State Body of the Forestry Department, was reduced as a consequence of the Madia law (ddl Madia: 7/8/2015, n.124). This body was in charge of the recording of all fire events in the Italian peninsula; a task which is now taken over by a supranational institution (i.e., the Emergency Management Service of the European Forest Fire Information System). However, this supranational institution will only record large-scale fires (i.e., fires that results an area burnt over 30 ha), making the overall fire monitoring very hard. On the other hand, the causes of forest fires in Italy go beyond the contingency of this situation and are linked to the governance system and to the institutional arrangements in the management of forest resources, amongst other causes. There are key factors that explain the fire regime (intended as the frequency and intensity—area burnt—of the wildfire prevailing in an area over certain periods of time) and risk such as the region-specific factors (e.g., Martinez et al. 2009; Westerling et al. 2006, among others). For instance, institutional arrangements to manage forest resources may vary across different regions due to available resources to fight forest fires. Recent studies also highlight that the value of forest ecosystems vary across regions, which requires different territorial forest management programs (see e.g., Rodríguez y Silva et al. 2012). On the other hand, some regions may have more of drier, mature, and dead materials, which is therefore more flammable compared to other regions (e.g., Blasi et al. 2005; Bernetti 2005). In the same lines, different forest types may be more prone to fires and could be clustered more in certain regions making those regions more exposed to fire danger (see e.g., Fernandes et al. 2010). In short, there are certain regional characteristics that differ from one another, which may lead to higher exposure of some regions to forest fires than others. In this paper, we use panel-data estimation techniques to control for these region-specific factors in our analysis. A second group of factors that are found to be important for forest fires is the socioeconomic conditions and human attitudes. For instance, due to increased human pressure on forests, most populated or active areas (such as the areas that have higher levels of tourism) are found to be more prone to forest fires (Catry et al. 2007; Martinez et al. 2009). Similarly, regions that have economic hardship (e.g., regions with high poverty or unemployment) are also associated with higher levels of forest fires (see e.g., Prestemon and Butry 2005; Torres Curth et al. 2012), which may be due to lower resources available to monitor forests. On the other hand, agriculture activities and land management to renovate livestock pastures also play an important role in forest fire ignition risk (see e.g., Moreira et al. 2009). Over the last years, the relevance of socio-economic factors and human pressure has been identified by 123 Forest Fires Across Italian Regions and Implications for… the literature (see e.g., Ganteaume et al. 2013 for a review of socio-economic factors that are found to be important for fire ignition risk), which will be also examined in this paper. Finally, physical and weather elements are undeniably recognized as major determinants of the exposure to fire risk and spread of fire (Pausas 2004; Westerling et al. 2006; Pausas and Bradstock 2007; Pausas and Fernández-Muñoz 2012; Pausas and Pau (...truncated)