The Ministry of Ecological Transition has included the Guardian Project (Green Urban Actions for Resilient fire Defense of the Interface Area) as a reference initiative in its National Strategy to Combat Desertification. This installation, co-financed by the EU, was activated a little over a month ago and seeks to increase resilience against forest fires in the Parc Natural del Túria.
The City Councils of Riba-roja and Paterna, Hidraqua, Cetaqua, Medi XXI, the Polytechnic University of Valencia and the University of Valencia; are the partner entities of this project
The National Strategy to Combat Desertification (ENLD), approved in June 2022, involves updating the 2008 National Action Program against Desertification. This strategy establishes a new framework for policies and initiatives related to desertification in Spain, which includes reference projects that have been carried out to improve the governance of the fight against desertification and promote land management that prevents its degradation.
The Guardian Project, which concluded a few months ago in order to increase resilience against fires through reclaimed water in various urban-forest interface areas of Riba-roja del Túria and Paterna, is one of the initiatives that appear as a reference in this document. An infrastructure that has been executed with the support of the European Union and the different partners that have collaborated in this financing and have carried out the technical development of this initiative, such as: the Riba-roja and Paterna City Councils, Hidraqua, Cetaqua , Medi XXI, the Polytechnic University of Valencia and the University of Valencia.
As highlighted in this document: “Europe finds itself in a new context of forest fires as a consequence of climate change, with a growing risk of the occurrence of extreme events with potentially fatal damage, especially in areas where forest and residential uses converge. , that is, the urban-forest interfaces. The Guardian project proposes an innovative forest fire management strategy through different preventive measures, which aim to improve the water status of the system and reduce the fuel load.”
