As one of its concluding outcomes, participants from 73 countries elaborated a conference declaration accompanied by a statement as annex to the declaration.

The declaration emphasises the promotion of international efforts for addressing vegetation fires often being of trans-boundary nature. Traditional expertise and advanced fire science and mechanisms for exchange of expertise between countries are named. The development of regional programmes and /or resource centres for capacity building (including training) are seen as highly important and will need support by countries and international organizations. Also bilateral agreements and multilateral exchange instruments are seen as crucial and need to be supported.

The participants emphasise the importance of international cooperation and effective response mechanisms, the enhanced exchange of information, better access to technical and scientific expertise, increased efforts in data collection and monitoring, including early warning, and strengthening of (local) education efforts and capacity building by involving local actors.

Conference website
Conference material

Many of these recommendations are in line with observations made in the FRISK-GO project. Some were tested using targeted case studies for wildfire but also other relevant forest disturbances. Examples that were implemented during FRISK-GO include exchanges of experts, training events and the establishment of trans-boundary expert networks. One case study was provided by the Global Fire Monitoring Center, being a FRISK-GO partner, illustrating successful cooperation and international exchange between fire experts of south-west and north-west Europe.

A future operational European Forest Risk Facility could thus be a valuable contribution to support the expressed recommendations from the IWF-6 Conference. It could do so not only for wildfire but also other disturbances which affect European forests and facilitate the exchange of expertise and know-how to other world regions.
The main FRISK-GO outputs are found in our media center.