The State agreement on the climate emergency proposed by Pedro Sánchez reminds us of the conclusions of a joint commission of both legislative chambers, Congress and Senate, which between 2008 and 2011 studied what climate change had in store for us.
How sad we all felt this summer as we learned of the increasingly devastating and impressive impact of the fires in our country: in just two weeks of August, more than 358,000 hectares were burned, raising the annual balance to more than 400,000 hectares, an unprecedented figure that positions it as the year with the worst records. In the last month alone there were 130 fires, which devastated an area equivalent, as President Pedro Sánchez graphically explained, to almost six times the size of the island of Ibiza.
This disaster was not only limited to Castilla y León and Galicia, but also hit Catalonia, Madrid, Andalusia, Castilla-La Mancha and Extremadura. The toll is tragic: in addition to the destruction and the thousands of evacuations, four people lost their lives fighting the flames.
To understand the reason for so many fires, the scientific diagnosis is clear: the combination of extreme temperatures, the dryness of the terrain and the accumulation of plant fuel created an "explosive scenario". The last four August have been the hottest in our history (59 temperature records broken this year alone), and in the last five years, heat-related deaths in Spain have increased by 17%. Extreme weather events have caused 32,000 million euros in material losses and the death of more than 20,000 people in our country. The consensus among scientists is absolute: if it used to happen once every 500 years when the necessary climatic conditions were in place, this 'perfect storm' for the spread of fire, with climate change we already know that what happened this summer will happen at least once every 15 years.
Faced with this dramatic reality, the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, has proposed a State Pact to deal with the Climate Emergency. It is a hackneyed phrase, but true: "sixth-generation fires are not extinguished in summer, they are extinguished in winter and autumn", and this underlines the need for a paradigm shift, for preventive and coordinated action that transcends the risk seasons. This pact seeks a transversal agreement involving all administrations and civil society. It is undoubtedly a necessary, positive and responsible agreement, which aims to align local, island, autonomous and state administrations so that they all join forces and coordinate their efforts throughout the year.
Among the ten commitments proposed by Pedro Sánchez are the creation of permanent funds with national and regional resources for reconstruction and prevention, the increase and maintenance of technical and human resources (firefighters, brigade members, forest agents) throughout the year, improved coordination through a State Agency for Civil Protection and Emergencies, and progress towards forest management adapted to the 21st century. It is on this last point that we find examples of good practices such as those carried out in the Canary Islands, which have appeared in the national media to explain why, after several summers with terrible fires, this hot summer has not seen any major blazes.
Personally, reading the proposals of the Climate Pact has reminded me of the work we did in the Congress of Deputies (and in fact I personally coordinated), in the ninth legislature, between 2008 and 2011. Because climate change is a phenomenon that we have been working on for many years, a phenomenon that has occupied and concerned us since the first United Nations Conferences of the Parties where the world was beginning to talk about the ozone layer and the danger of global warming.
In those years (2008-2011) I chaired what was called the Joint Congressional-Senate Commission for the study of climate change. 30 deputies and 30 senators made up a committee that for three years and in 48 sessions learned and wanted to understand what we were dealing with through the appearances of Nobel Prize winners, academic experts, heads of the United Nations, the European Commission, businessmen, trade unions, university professors from all over Europe... a whole three years' work, a conscientious and methodical work of 60 parliamentarians who, even with different criteria, were able to reach agreements.
The commission concluded with a final report with a hundred or so proposals. With these and some personal observations, a few years later, in 2017, I published a monograph entitled 'Curbing climate change. A contribution and 101 proposals'. The current Secretary of State for the Environment, the spearhead of the current government against climate change, Hugo Morán, gave me the honour of writing the prologue to the book.
Rereading it hours after learning about the proposals of the Pact of State has been exciting for me: in 2011, that is, 14 years ago, the aforementioned mixed committee of the Spanish Parliament specifically set up to study climate change (since 2012 this country has not had a joint committee between Congress and the Senate on climate issues) called for Spain to have, and I quote, "a comprehensive and agreed strategy to combat climate change whose repercussions are already being felt in our territory". Furthermore," the text of the conclusions stated, "it is a citizen's responsibility that involves both individual and collective commitment, and therefore requires a broad social consensus that makes a collective response possible through the different representative agents of our society".
This is precisely the basis of the demand for Pedro Sánchez's Climate Pact. Because in the measures proposed in 2025 there is a lot of overlap with what was warned through 100 recommendations fourteen years ago. I am only going to reproduce one of the main ones: "It is recommended that the Government make climate change policies a basic axis of economic, energy, industrial, infrastructure, agricultural, forestry, waste and water management, trade and international policies".
That said, and given the exponential worsening of the conditions to which we are all exposed to climate change (the aggressiveness of the DANAs, the explosiveness and speed with which hectares of forests and fields are burning, the harshness of the days with extreme heat alerts...) the State Pact against the Climate Emergency should be the object of civic and collaborative reflection. Because if we want to set an example to the world and make it a livable place, we must start by agreeing in our country (to set an example) what should later become a Global Pact.
While it is true that this is something that is attempted year after year by the United Nations in the aforementioned COPs, the tension that our planet is experiencing today places us before another utopia: neither Trump (USA), nor Putin (Russia), nor Xi Jingping (China) seem to have the slightest interest in taking bold measures to prevent the already tremendous impact caused by global warming from continuing to grow.
Next week I will talk to you about this very issue from an African perspective, which you have read about on many occasions. It is the African paradox in the face of the climate crisis: those who pollute the least suffer the most from the onslaught of climate change. And as Canarians this should concern us, because our circumstances link us geographically and climatically to what is happening in West Africa.
This summer has seen a steady stream of scientific studies and information published that put figures and give substance to the climate emergency in Africa. Together, they are impressive. What is happening has direct and indirect consequences in a large number of areas: health, agriculture, security, obviously the economy... everything.
P.S: These lines serve as an expression of respect for those who collaborated in the elaboration of the work that inspired this article, in the memory of all the conversations, even discussions and confrontation of opinions that we had during those days. Values that, unfortunately, I do not perceive in today's parliamentary work.