State of Wildfires Report: collaborative science driving impactful policy and action

The annual State of Wildfires is a community-led report produced by wildfire scientists from around 60 institutions worldwide, bringing together expertise to examine the most extreme wildfire events of the previous year. The report provides a rich and timely evidence base on where and why extreme fires occurred, how predictable these events were, and the role of climate change in shaping both recent impacts and future risk, drawing on local knowledge and expertise of those in the affected regions. However, turning this scientific knowledge into meaningful action requires deliberate engagement beyond the research community, which is the focus of this presentation.

Here, we look at the communication and knowledge dissemination strategy used for the most recent State of Wildfires 2024-25 release, which placed particular emphasis on policy relevance and real-world impact. Alongside the full scientific report, we developed targeted outputs including a Summary for Policymakers, executive summary, and direct engagement with decision-makers through UK Government teach-ins, Science Media Centre briefings, and national and international media interviews. The findings were also shared through workshops, COP events and pre-COP briefings with UK, Brazilian and international government representatives, helping to situate wildfire risk within wider climate, adaptation and finance discussions; which was particularly relevant as two of focus regions of the report were in Brazil.

A key message emerging from the report is that rapid and sustained reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions are essential to avoid escalating wildfire risk for generations to come. At the same time, several policy-relevant themes were highlighted, including land management, early-warning systems, carbon accounting and forest carbon projects, and the continued under-representation of wildfires within the Loss and Damage agenda and deforestation-reduction frameworks such as the Tropical Forest Finance Facility (TFFF). The dissemination process also created space to showcase impact-focused case studies, including work linking wildfire science to climate justice and climate finance discussions with firefighter groups, indigenous peoples and local communities in the Amazon and Pantanal—regions that experienced some of the most severe fires in 2024/25.

Overall, this work demonstrates how knowledge synthesis efforts like the State of Wildfires can act as a bridge between science, policy and action when communication is treated as a core part of the research process. Building on this years’ experience, we outline ideas for strengthening future dissemination, including adapting scientific outputs to better meet the needs of policymakers, practitioners and affected communities. We present this contribution as a foundation for further development and actively invite feedback on how to increase the reach, relevance and impact of future State of Wildfires reports.

For more information on the State of Wildfires project please visit: https://stateofwildfires.com/