In recent years, wildfires have intensified in various South American countries amid an increase in extreme weather events linked to climate change. In 2024 alone, more than 346,000 fire hotspots were detected across the continent, while in Argentine Patagonia, fires in 2026 destroyed more than 60,000 hectares in areas of Chubut, Río Negro, and Neuquén.
In response to this situation, the partnership between Fundación Alimentaris and the BASE Initiative, coordinated by Fundación Avina, is promoting a line of work aimed at understanding and highlighting the link between climate change and wildfires in Argentine Patagonia. As part of this process, a study was conducted to analyze how climatic conditions in the region have changed and how these changes are increasing the risk of forest fires.
The results show that Patagonia has been undergoing a persistent shift in its climate regime since approximately 2006/2007. This shift does not refer to a temporary fluctuation, but rather indicates that weather conditions now favor more severe, recurrent, and difficult-to-control fires, with rising temperatures, reduced precipitation, more frequent heat waves, and longer fire seasons.
In this new climate context, fires have ceased to be exceptional events and have become a recurring risk affecting communities, territories, and local economies. However, much of the prevention, preparedness, and response strategies continue to operate under climate assumptions from decades ago. Added to this is the circulation of misinformation, the proliferation of unofficial channels, and the difficulties in coordinating reliable messages during emergency situations.
In this context, on May 21, the workshop “From Evidence to Action: Communicating wildfires in a novel climate scenario in Northern Patagonia” was held in Lago Puelo, serving as a space for dialogue and exchange among media outlets, influential communicators, civil society, academia, and local stakeholders.
Strengthening how information is constructed, circulated, and connected has become a strategic necessity in a context where the risk of wildfires has structurally increased. The workshop began with the recognition that many of the responses, lessons learned, and experiences regarding wildfires already exist in the region, and that building links between science, communication, and local stakeholders is now a necessary condition for addressing increasingly complex scenarios.
The workshop also featured the participation of the news agency InnContext, which facilitated spaces for reflection on how to build more collaborative and sustained relationships between the media and civil society by promoting coverage that addresses fires beyond the exclusively reactive logic of the emergency.
Likewise, the AcercAR Civil Association, composed of local actors from the Comarca Andina who work directly on community processes related to fires and emergencies, supported the collective development of proposals aimed at improving the circulation of useful and reliable information, strengthening local coordination, and establishing concrete mechanisms for community coordination.
As part of the agreements, a coordination community will be promoted through thematic WhatsApp channels, aimed at strengthening organized exchange among actors involved in communication, prevention, emergencies, and local work in the Comarca Andina. The platform will seek to facilitate the circulation of reliable information, content verification, the exchange of sources, and community coordination in the face of critical situations.
Building on this first meeting, the initiative will seek to continue growing through new partnerships among local stakeholders, strengthening ties and collective capacities in the face of increasingly complex wildfire scenarios in Northern Patagonia.
Photos: © Marcos Huisman, 2026
