Failure to curb global warming now could cost future generations of Canadians trillions of dollars in wildfire impacts alone, according to a new Simon Fraser University study.
A SFU researcher says the cost of climate change-driven wildfires in Canada could exceed $2 trillion cumulatively over the 21st century. The study is among the first to put a price tag on projected Canadian wildfire activity driven by climate change.
"Societal and economic costs of wildfire are highly dependent on the actions that we take to mitigate climate change right now," says Sian Kou-Giesbrecht, assistant professor of resource and environmental management and the study's lead author.
"If we keep global warming to 2 C or less, wildfire impacts and costs will be similar to what we've experienced over recent decades. But if we continue to rely on fossil fuels and move farther away from that target, we're going to end up with much, much higher costs."
Published in the journal Environmental Research, the modeling study calculated the direct cost of wildfire suppression, net timber yield loss, and nature-based recreation loss in Canada, as well as global societal costs of wildfire carbon emissions - changes in crop loss, damages caused by sea level rise, and declines in human health worldwide.
Representing the influence of fire weather, vegetation growth dynamics, suppression, and lightning and human ignitions, the projection model calculated costs under three possible global warming scenarios: If global temperature rise stays at 2 C or less, increases to 3-4 C, or increases to 4-5 C.
"In somewhat good climate news, we don't think we'll hit a rise of 4 or 5 C, largely because of green energy developments happening primarily outside of Canada. A global temperature rise between 3 and 4 C is a more realistic worst-case scenario," says Kou-Giesbrecht.
In that scenario, the study still tags the total annual cost of climate change-driven wildfire impacts at $43 billion at the end of the century and more than $2.1 trillion cumulatively over the 21st century.
Kou-Giesbrecht says these numbers are likely conservative, since the projection model did not include costs of wildfire-related health impacts, evacuations, infrastructure loss, or economic disruptions within Canada alone.
It also did not account for singular extreme events like Canada's record-breaking wildfires in 2023, which forced more than 200 communities to evacuate and exposed millions of Canadians to hazardous air pollutants.
Kou-Giesbrecht says immediate action to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and hold global temperature rise to 2 C is the only available path to mitigate economic and environmental consequences of wildfires in Canada.
SFU expert available
SIAN KOU-GIESBRECHT, assistant professor, School of Resource and Environmental Management
