Read more in the August 29 edition of Invert Insights.
The 2025 wildfire season has reinforced a clear reality: fire risk is no longer confined to a few dry months or regions. Wildfires are now a year-round, global phenomenon, intensified by rising temperatures, prolonged droughts, and increasingly volatile weather patterns. From Europe’s worst wildfire season on record to unprecedented smoke emissions in Canada, this year has underscored both the environmental and human costs of living in a warming world.
Europe is experiencing its most destructive wildfire season on record. By August, over 1 million hectares had burned, four times the long-term average. These fires released an estimated 37 million tonnes of CO₂, equivalent to the annual emissions of a mid-sized European nation such as Portugal or Sweden.
Southern Europe has been hardest hit. Spain and Portugal recorded unprecedented August emissions, while smoke plumes from these fires, combined with transatlantic smoke from Canadian wildfires, degraded air quality across the continent.
In North America, Canada’s early fire season was among the most intense ever observed. Between April and June, Canadian wildfires produced 108 megatonnes of carbon emissions, the second-highest on record after 2023. In Manitoba alone, emissions had already exceeded full-year totals from earlier seasons by late June. Smoke plumes traveled across the Atlantic, darkening skies in southern Europe and the Mediterranean.
Russia’s Far East also faced severe fire activity in April and May, the worst in nearly a decade. Fires burned more than a million hectares, with smoke spreading into China and Japan. These events confirm that boreal forests remain highly vulnerable to rising global temperatures.
Asia has also seen unusually destructive fire activity. In March, South Korea endured its most severe wildfire week on record. Over 100,000 hectares burned, 32 people died, and 5,000 buildings were destroyed. Carbon emissions during that single week were four times higher than the country’s typical annual totals. Climate attribution studies found that climate change more than doubled the likelihood of this disaster and increased its intensity by roughly 15%.
While Europe and North America dominate headlines, Africa carries the highest human exposure to wildfires globally.
A new study by the United Nations University found that between 2002 and 2021, human exposure to wildfires increased by 40% worldwide, with the vast majority of this exposure (85%) occurring in Africa, where smaller, fragmented fires intersect with densely populated landscapes. The health consequences are significant: wildfire smoke contributes to an estimated 1.5 million deaths annually, making it a major but often overlooked public health issue.
As threats from wildfires increase across the world, carbon financing mobilizes crucial resources to help mitigate fire dangers. Looking at fire mitigation at the carbon-project level, there are steps that can be taken to both prevent and combat forest fires. These projects generate incentives for people to manage their forests more sustainably and make the forests more resilient to climate change.
Using a real world example, Invert’s Bonos Jaguar Del Mayab IFM projects employ a few tactics to help the cause; The local ejidos who help steward the project set aside 25% of their carbon revenues to fund ongoing monitoring and cover the costs of fire protection programs.
In order to proactively prevent forest fires, forest roads are monitored and maintained throughout the ejido area to detect potential forest fires. Four-person crews patrol the project areas to respond to any fire outbreaks, and the roads are also used as access points in the event of a fire.
Looking at how to combat forest fires, funds generated from the sale of carbon credits are being used to hire and train fire brigades who are trained to respond quickly and efficiently when a fire begins, to hopefully stop the fire’s growth and becoming a major incident.
💡 By investing in carbon projects, communities gain both climate benefits and stronger natural defences against catastrophic wildfires. These projects create sustainable livelihoods and incentivize communities to protect forests rather than exploit them. In the long run, they reduce both greenhouse gas emissions and the financial costs of firefighting and disaster recovery.
💡 The increase in wildfires globally has many calling for stronger policies and resources. Many have highlighted that Canada is the only G7 country still without a national fire administration. Many jurisdictions have had to apply their own strict restrictions to help mitigate further spread of active fires. For example, in August, Nova Scotia announced a ban on hiking, camping, fishing, and the use of vehicles such as ATVs in the woods due to an elevated wildfire, causing mixed feelings for residents. Given the seriousness of the issue, a strong coordinated approach is needed regionally, nationally, and internationally. Supporting carbon projects that have a defined fire planning and mitigation component, as well as contingency funds, is one of the ways organizations can participate in these interventions.
