Forest fires raise calls for new climate policies in Turkey

 

Forest fires raise calls for new climate policies in Turkey

 

The blazes highlight climate change policies in Turkey, one of six nations that has not ratified the Paris Agreement.

 

BY DIEGO CUPOLO

August 6, 2021 3:54 pm

https://www.politico.eu/article/turkey-forest-fire-climate-change-policy/

 

ISTANBUL — Blazing forest fires and record heat waves across the eastern Mediterranean are casting a harsh light on the region’s vulnerability to the effects of global warming and raising pressure on Turkey to change its climate policies.

 

In Turkey, crews worked over the last week to bring nearly 200 forest fires under control in 44 provinces that caused at least eight deaths; firefighters were battling about a dozen active blazes Friday.

 

"The fires that happened this year never happened in our history," Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan told reporters in a televised interview Wednesday.

 

Concentrated in the nation’s southwestern coastal provinces, the fast-spreading fires have been defined by news footage of farmers rushing their livestock away from encroaching flames, tourists fleeing resort areas by boat and the partial burning of a coal-fired power plant in the Muğla district.

 

The Erdoğan administration has come under fire over what some viewed as a lack of preparedness; the government admitted it lacked a usable fleet of water-dropping planes. Several climate experts are now calling on state officials to not only improve future mitigation efforts, but also to reassess what they call inadequate climate change policies.

 

The increasing occurrence and severity of natural disasters — such as the forest fires, heat waves, flash floods and extended droughts all witnessed in Turkey in recent months and which scientists are increasingly comfortable in linking to climate change — are putting pressure on the Turkish government to change its approach toward environmental issues.

 

“They will change because they have to change now,” said Levent Kurnaz, director of Istanbul’s Boğaziçi University Climate Change and Policies Research Center. “They have seen how serious this issue is and how much harm can come out of these problems in the future, as well.”

 

Turkey is one of only six nations — including Iran, Iraq and Libya — that have yet to ratify the 2015 Paris climate agreement, which signals a nation’s commitment to reduce carbon emissions in an effort to keep global temperatures from rising above 2 degrees above preindustrial levels this century.

 

It's also the only member of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) not to ratify the agreement. Turkey argues it was unfairly categorized as a “developed economy” in the convention protocols, which denies it funding to reduce emissions allotted to developing countries such as Brazil, China and Saudi Arabia. The government won't sign up to the Paris deal unless Turkey is treated as a developing country.

 

“Turkey believes it must be one of the countries that have not contributed to the current state of the climate emergency, so it doesn’t want to be part of the countries that contribute to the pool funds of the agreement, but instead wants to benefit from the agreement,” said Ersin Tek, executive director for Greenpeace Mediterranean.

 

The Turkish government has put forth its own climate action plans which aim to curb greenhouse gas emissions by at least 21 percent before 2030, while increasing the share of renewable energy sources feeding its electrical grid. Though fossil fuels made up 87 percent of Turkey’s energy mix in 2018, according to a Climate Transparency report, the nation’s carbon emissions have slightly fallen in the last three years.

 

In 2019, Turkey accounted for 1.9 percent of global CO2 emissions, according to the European Commission’s Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research. Yet climate experts note the Turkish government continues to incentivize the mining and use of highly polluting coal through the nation’s 2010-2023 Climate Change Strategy. Turkey’s Environment and Urban Development Ministry did not respond to requests for comment.

 

Preparing for climate change

Faced with broiling temperatures that exacerbate droughts and turn naturally occurring forest fires into severe blazes, environmental campaigners and Turkish opposition members are increasingly calling for more comprehensive disaster mitigation and prevention strategies.

 

Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, head of the leading opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), accused Erdoğan of lacking a “master plan” against forest fires, adding: “We need to start preparing our country for new climate crises immediately. Our country is in the midst of a climate and water crisis.”

 

Some critics complain that most Ankara politicians have no real climate change policies and fail to take worsening environmental trends seriously.

 

“As long as the government and the opposition do not create proper policies and do not define this crisis for what it is, a climate crisis, we will continue to see such mismanagement and such catastrophes,” said Emine Özkan, a spokesperson for Turkey’s Green Party.

 

In cooperation with the United Nations Development Programme and the European Union, the Turkish government has pursued a number of pilot programs seeking to improve climate adaptation and resiliency.

 

But there's still a reluctance to link the fires to climate change. One high-profile pro-government Turkish columnist suggested the blazes were intentionally started by supporters of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an insurgent militant group at war with the Turkish state since the 1980s, without mentioning possible links to climate change or forestry management policies.

 

Events were further politicized when the Turkish president’s communications director, Fahrettin Altun, claimed in an August 2 statement that online campaigns seeking to direct international relief aid to Turkey as a result of the fires were attempting to portray the state as “helpless.”

 

Sea snot precedent

As Erdoğan and his opponents continue to exchange blame over the slow response in containing the fires, campaigners hope that the catastrophe could spur new policies to better mitigate future natural disasters.

 

“Be ready for any surprise,” said Önder Algedik, a mechanical engineer and independent climate consultant. “The government can suddenly change its position and take action.”

 

Algedik noted that calls for action over a severe late-spring algae bloom in Turkey’s Marmara Sea, referred to as “sea snot,” were initially met with resistance from Ankara. He said Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) first rejected proposals by opposition parties to address the issue, but eventually established a commission to remove surface-level sea snot in a large-scale clean-up effort.

 

“People are panicking, people feel very frustrated … but if we can provide proper solutions, people will feel motivated and it will create hope,” Algedik said. “Instead of disaster propaganda, we need solution-based policies that save the working class and nature.”

 

Among possible solutions, climate expert Kurnaz said Ankara should move to quickly ratify the Paris Agreement, reduce carbon emissions and begin implementing policies focused on adaptation rather than mitigation. With Turkey’s average spring 2021 temperature 1.2 degrees above average temperatures recorded between 1981 and 2010, Kurnaz said the nation is likely to experience more drought and significant shifts in weather patterns.

 

By 2100, Kurnaz said Turkey’s southern regions are expected to have the same climate as Cairo or Basra, Iraq, “so it’s going to be basically desert if we don’t do anything.” Within the same timeline, Turkey’s northern regions are projected to take on the climate currently seen along its Mediterranean coast, Kurnaz added.

 

Addressing such changes poses a challenge to all nations, Greenpeace Mediterranean’s Tek said, though Turkey can move now to reduce dependency on coal and decrease carbon emissions locally.

 

“Those forest fires may end soon but the fires will continue in our cars, in coal power plants, in plastic production, so if we don’t fight to stop all of those fires, there will be no planet to live on,” Tek said.