As the world’s eyes turn to Brazil for the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30), Austin-based Texas Impact/Texas Interfaith Power & Light is sending dispatches from the conference to the Chronicle.
In early November, the Texas House State Affairs Committee held the latest in an ongoing series of hearings in response to the devastating wildfires in the Texas Panhandle of February-March, 2024. Republican Rep. Ken King of Canadian, whose district was severely affected by the fires, is leading a strong policy effort to address response to and mitigation of future fires in his region and the state of Texas. As he and other policymakers have observed, the record-breaking nature of the 2024 fires, coupled with increasing frequency and severity of both fires and conducive drought conditions, make policy changes an urgent priority if we hope to get in front of the next disastrous event.
This week, I attended a meeting at the COP30 conference in Brazil, focused on the increase in global wildfire risk, and potential responses. The program was very poignant, given the record-breaking “fogo selvagem” (wildfire) experience throughout Brazil in 2024. The meeting opened with several ministry experts, firefighters, and affected local leaders describing the impact of the fires, and recommending ways forward to both respond to and mitigate future fires.
Parallel is too weak a word to describe the experience. I felt like I was in one of our Texas hearings, simply substituting Portuguese for English, Brazilian ministry officials for Texas state officials, and Indigenous people from the Amazon Basin for Panhandle ranchers. The narrative was the same—record fires, record loss, community recovery, concern over conditions that make such events more likely in the future, and ways for the wisdom of the community to combine with technical expertise and public policy to mitigate future events.
This is one of the great values of the United Nation’s COP effort. At the 8th International Wildland Fire Conference in 2023, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations launched the Global Fire Management Hub to research and recommend solutions to wildfire risk from the community to the international level. The meeting in Brazil at COP 30 was another milestone in the development of this crucial collaboration.
Texas, my home state, is not alone. My fellow citizens in the Texas Panhandle, and indeed my parents and two sisters who lost their homes in the 2011 Bastrop fires in Central Texas, have much to teach and much to learn from people around the world about their common peril. We need not live in silos, trying to solve problems by ourselves. The real work, from the local to the global level, embarked upon by the FAO Hub, can be combined to the benefit of all parties with intentional communication and collaboration. Every language has a word for wildfire. We just need to learn each others’ languages and get to work.
About Texas Impact
Texas Impact exists to put faith into action. We equip faith leaders and their congregations with the information, opportunities, and outreach tools to educate their communities and engage with lawmakers on pressing public policy issues. We are an interfaith group that works together on issues that impact the most vulnerable people in our communities. We help people live out their faith in the public square, moving the faith community from charity to justice.
