Integrated management of forest transformation is strategic

"The integrated management of forest transformation is critical to Portugal" and it is "a silent reform we’ve been undertaking a continuous and demanding task", said Prime Minister António Costa after visiting initiatives to prevent wildland fires in Mação, which, he said "is an excellent example".

António Costa also said that "one of the most innovative projects under the RRF is creating integrated landscape management areas", but "this challenge does not end in 2026, with the end of the RRF money. It is a decade-long challenge" on which the "Government, local government, owners, producers, populations, all of us as a team must continue to work with the aim of transforming forests". 

"When we say it is a decade-long challenge, will we leave it to tomorrow? No, we need to speed things up today because the more we do today, the quicker we will complete what we can only achieve at the end", he said, adding that if the structural forest transformation only begins in the 2030s, it will only be complete "in 2060 or thereabouts."

But 2if we start now, we will begin to see results in 2030 and we will have even more results in 2040. Therefore, we cannot waste any time." And if "it is very important to have the means to fight fires, preventing their risk is much more important" and the "best way to do so is by transforming the landscape, forests, the territory".

The Prime Minister likewise noted that "we are living a time of major risk. Every year, the risk of wildland fires increases with climate change. As such, everything we do is too little. We need to continue investing in prevention and avoiding the first spark igniting. "To avoid having fires in Mação, there is this hard work that must be done".

After visiting the strips to manage fuels in Mação municipality, together with the Ministers of Home Affairs, José Luís Carneiro, and the Environment and Climate Action, Duarte Cordeiro, António Costa praised the municipality’s intervention, stressing that the creation of these strips allows to "set up areas of discontinuity where, in the event of a fire, those fighting it can operate".

Mação municipality also takes part in the Integrated Landscape Management Areas, Programme under the Recovery and Resilience Facility, which aims at the common management of agro-forestry spaces.

Currently, around 75% of the Mação owners to not reside in the municipality and their properties are left unkept, as the income they receive from them doesn’t pay for their upkeep.

The collective management of these properties, through the integrated landscape management areas programme offers income to owners, the municipality, and the country.