Heidi Kingstone is a journalist and author covering human rights issues, conflict and politics. Her most recent book is “Genocide: Personal Stories, Big Questions.” Slavery is alive and thriving, and it’s wrapped inside shiny chocolate bars that promise to be “fair trade,” “child-labor free” and “sustainable.” In West Africa, which produces more than 60 percent of the world’s cocoa, over 1.5 million children still work under hazardous conditions. Kids, some as young as five, use machetes to crack pods open in their hands, carry loads that weigh more than they do and spray toxic pesticides without protection. Meanwhile, of the roughly 2 million metric tons of cocoa the Ivory Coast produces each year, between 20 percent and 30 percent is grown illegally in protected forests. And satellite data from Global Forest Watch shows an increase in deforestation across key cocoa-growing regions as farmers, desperate for income, push deeper into forest reserves. The bitter truth is that despite decades of pledges, certification schemes and packaging glowing with virtue — of forests saved, farmers empowered and consciences soothed — most chocolate companies have failed to eradicate exploitation from their supply chains. Today, many cocoa farmers in the Ivory Coast and Ghana still earn less than a dollar a day, well below the poverty line. According to a 2024 report by the International Cocoa Initiative, the average farmer earns only 40 percent of a living wage. Put starkly, as the global chocolate market swells close to a $150 billion a year in 2025, the average farmer now receives less than 6 percent of the value of a single chocolate bar, whereas in the 1970s they received more than 50 percent. Then there’s the use of child labor, which is essentially woven into the fabric of this economy, where we have been sold the illusion of progress. From the 2001 Harkin-Engel Protocol — a voluntary agreement to end child labor by the world’s chocolate giants — to today’s glossy environmental, social and governance (ESG) reports, every initiative has promised progress and delivered delay. In 2007, the industry quietly redefined “public certification,” shifting it from a commitment to consumer labeling to a vague pledge to compile statistics on labor conditions. It missed the original 2010 deadline to eliminate child labor, as well as a new target to reduce it by 70 percent by 2020. And that year, a study by the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center found that hazardous child labor in cocoa production increased from 2008 to 2019. “We covered a story about a ship carrying trafficked children,” recalled journalist Humphrey Hawksley, who first exposed the issue in the BBC documentary called Slavery: A Global Investigation. “The chocolate companies refused to comment and spoke as one industry. That was their rule. Even now, none of them is slave-free,” he added. As it stands, many of the more than 1.5 million West African children working in cocoa production are trafficked from neighboring Burkina Faso and Mali. Traffickers lure them with false promises or outright abduction, offering children as young as 10 either bicycles or small sums to travel to the Ivory Coast. There, they are sold to farmers for as little as $34 each. And once on these farms, they are trapped. They work up to 14 hours a day, sleep in windowless sheds with no clean water or toilets, and most never see the inside of a classroom. Last but not least, we come to deforestation: Since its independence, more than 90 percent of the Ivory Coast’s forests have disappeared due to cocoa farming. In 2024, deforestation accelerated despite corporate commitments to halt it by 2025, as declining soil fertility and stagnant prices pushed farmers farther into the forest to plant new cocoa trees. But as Reuters Correspondent for West and Central Africa Ange Aboa described them, such labels are “the biggest scam of the century!” | Lena Klimkeit/Picture Alliance via Getty Images Certification labels like “Rainforest Alliance” and “Fairtrade” are supposed to prevent this. But as Reuters Correspondent for West and Central Africa Ange Aboa described them, such labels are “the biggest scam of the century!” Complicit in all of this are the financiers and investors who profit. For example, Norway’s sovereign wealth fund is the world’s largest investor, and Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM) is a shareholder in 9,000 corporations, including Nestlé, Mondelez, Hershey, Barry Callebaut and Lindt — all part of the direct chocolate cluster. NBIM also has shares in McDonald’s, Starbucks, Unilever, the Dunkin’ parent company and Tim Hortons — the indirect high-volume buyer cluster. “The richest families in cocoa — the Marses, the Ferreros, the Cargills, the Jacobs — are billionaires thanks to the exploitation of the poorest children on earth,” said journalist and human rights campaigner Fernando Morales-de la Cruz, the founder of Cacao for Change. “And countries like Norway, which claim to be ethical, profit from slavery and child labor.” The problem is, few are asking who picks the cocoa. And though the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, which was adopted last year, requires large companies to address human rights and environmental abuses in their supply chains, critics say the directive’s weaknesses, loopholes, and delayed enforcement will blunt its impact. However, all of this could still be fixed. Currently, a metric ton of cocoa sells for about $5,000 on world markets, but Morales-de la Cruz estimates that a fair farm-gate price would be around $7,500 per metric ton. To that end, he advocates for binding international trade standards that enforce living incomes and transparent pricing, modeled on the World Trade Organization’s compliance mechanisms. “Human rights should be as binding in trade as tariffs,” he insisted. The solution isn’t to buy more “ethical” bars but to demand accountability and support legislation that makes exploitation unprofitable. “We can’t shop our way to justice,” he said. So, as the trees in the Ivory Coast’s forests fall, the profits in Europe and North America continue to soar. And two decades after the industry vowed to end child labor, the cocoa supply chain remains one of the world’s most exploitative and least accountable. Moreover, the European Parliament’s vote on the Omnibus simplification package last month laid bare the corporate control and moral blindness still present in EU policymaking, all behind talk of “cutting red tape.” “Yet Europe’s media and EU-funded NGOs stay silent, talking of competitiveness and green transitions, while ignoring the children who harvest its cocoa, coffee and cotton,” said Morales-de la Cruz. “Europe cannot claim to defend human rights while profiting from exploitation.” However, until the industry pays a fair price and governments enforce real accountability, every bar of chocolate remains an unpaid moral debt.

BRUSSELS — The European Union’s environment ministers struck a deal watering down a proposed 2040 target for cutting planet-warming emissions and set a new 2035 climate plan. Following marathon negotiations all day Tuesday and into Wednesday morning, ministers unanimously approved the bloc’s long-overdue climate plan, rescuing the EU from the international embarrassment of showing up empty handed this month’s COP30 summit. The plan, which is a requirement under the Paris Agreement, sets a new goal to slash EU emissions between 66.25 percent and 72.5 percent below 1990 levels until 2035. That plan is not legally binding but sets the direction of EU climate policy for the coming five years. The range is similar to an informal statement that the EU presented at a climate summit in New York in September. Ministers also adopted a legally-binding target for cutting emissions in the EU by 85 percent by 2040. The deal mandates that another 5 percent reduction be achieved by outsourcing pollution cuts abroad through the purchase of international carbon credits. On top of that, governments would be allowed to use credits to outsource another 5 percentage points of their national emissions reduction goals. Ministers also backed a wide-ranging review clause that allows the EU to adjust its 2040 target in the future if climate policy proves to have negative impacts on the EU’s economy. The deal also foresees a one-year delay to the implementation of the EU’s new carbon market for heating and car emissions, which is set to start in 2027. Hungary, Slovakia and Poland did not support the 2040 deal, while Bulgaria and Belgium abstained. The rest of the EU27 countries backed it. Lawmakers in the European Parliament now have to agree on their own position on the 2040 climate target and negotiate with the Council of the EU before the target becomes law. 

BRUSSELS — European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has pledged to adjust key green laws to secure support for a new climate target.  In a letter to national leaders circulated on Monday, von der Leyen outlined plans to change the EU’s carbon pricing and existing climate targets for forests, among others.  The Commission president’s unusual intervention comes days before leaders are set to debate the EU’s new overarching emissions-reduction target for 2040 at their European Council summit. Governments have been unable to agree on the new target, with several EU countries expressing concern about the economic impact of the bloc’s new and existing climate measures. Leaders will discuss the link between competitiveness and climate on Thursday in Brussels.  In her letter, von der Leyen defends the upcoming target, insists that Europe’s future competitiveness requires a decarbonized economy — and hints that this means leaving some sectors behind.  “If a robust, resilient, sustainable and innovative economy is our goal, then dogmatically clinging to our existing business models, whatever their past successes, is not the solution,” she writes. “For the EU’s economy to take its rightful place in the global economy, we must be among those who are driving the response to the challenges of our time.”  Those challenges include “the scientific reality that we are increasingly putting our prosperity and our social models at risk, while our communities risk becoming uninhabitable,” she adds, while warning that the EU cannot afford complacency given China’s accelerating dominance in clean technologies and raw materials.  Yet von der Leyen also offers several key concessions to leaders, acknowledging that “no one should be able to submit our economic and social fabric to so much tension that it breaks down.”  GREEN DEAL TWEAKS Her Commission has proposed slashing the bloc’s planet-warming emissions by up to 90 percent below 1990 levels by 2040, albeit allowing countries to outsource up to 3 percentage points of this goal by purchasing carbon credits from other nations rather than achieving these reductions with domestic measures.  In her letter, von der Leyen opens the door to an increase in credit use, writing: “Part of the target — 3% in the Commission’s proposal, which ministers will further discuss — can be reached with high-quality international credits. Our domestic target … can be lower than 90%, as long as this is compensated by similar … reductions outside of the EU.”  She also responded to a key demand from governments to adjust the bloc’s new carbon price on transport and heating, plans that were controversial from the beginning as they are expected to lead to higher fuel bills for most consumers.  On Tuesday, she writes, the EU’s climate chief Wopke Hoekstra will announce specific tweaks to the measure, addressing “concerns of too high or volatile prices.” The Commission is looking at a “more robust price stabilisation system” as well as options to provide additional support for households to cope with the increased bills.  On Tuesday, she writes, the EU’s climate chief Wopke Hoekstra will announce specific tweaks to the measure, addressing “concerns of too high or volatile prices.” | Christophe Petit-Tesson/EPA Von der Leyen also said she shared some governments’ concerns about the carbon price the EU currently imposes on heavy-polluting industries such as steel, and promised a “realistic and feasible” future trajectory, without providing details.  She then pointed to upcoming changes in the EU’s targets for how much carbon dioxide is absorbed by forests and soils, known as LULUCF. Several governments have described the current goals as unrealistic, with some pointing to increased wildfires and others to the needs of their forestry industry.  “Already we can see the challenges that several of you are facing …. We are working on pragmatic solutions to alleviate these challenges, within the existing LULUCF Regulation,” von der Leyen writes.  Carbon markets and the LULUCF rules, together with national emissions targets, are the core sub-targets of the bloc’s climate framework.  The letter also reiterates already announced tweaks and plans, such as an accelerated review of the bloc’s combustion engine phaseout, and contains a lengthy annex outlining all the upcoming announcements.

BRUSSELS — The European Union is suffering its worst wildfire season on record, surpassing 1 million hectares burned on Thursday. Fires have burned 1,016,000 hectares — an area larger than Cyprus or around a third of the size of Belgium — since January, data from the bloc’s European Forest Fire Information System analyzed by POLITICO shows. This is the first time the EU hits the 1 million hectare milestone since EFFIS started keeping records in 2006. The previous worst wildfire season, in 2017, clocked just below 988,000 hectares. Nearly two-thirds of losses occurred since Aug. 5, when EFFIS showed only 380,000 hectares burned. The vast majority of the fires have occurred in the Iberian Peninsula. Spain accounts for more than 400,000 hectares burned, while in much-smaller Portugal, flames have consumed more than 270,000 hectares — or 3 percent of the country’s entire territory. In Spain, where records stretch back to the 1960s, this year is the worst fire season since 1994, according to government data. Both countries have endured searing heat in recent weeks, desiccating forests and turning the peninsula into a tinderbox. Climate change is exacerbating wildfire risk, bringing more frequent and intense heat waves and droughts. But scientists say that the main driver of the catastrophic fires in Spain and Portugal is an overabundance of flammable vegetation on abandoned land and authorities’ failure to take preventive measures. Spain’s special prosecutor for environmental issues this week opened an investigation into the lack of fire prevention plans. Wildfires also release large amounts of planet-warming carbon dioxide, with the EU on track for a potential new record for fire-related pollution as well, EFFIS data shows.

BRUSSELS — Exhausted firefighters. Traumatized evacuees. Charred villages. Red horizons, all flames and smoke.  The dramatic images from wildfires tearing through Spain and Portugal year after year have become a mainstay of Europe’s increasingly blistering summers, a symbol of the devastation wreaked by climate change.  But while global warming fuels the flames, the Iberian Peninsula isn’t destined to turn into a fiery hellscape every year. Experts say that most of the damage is, in fact, preventable — if only authorities at regional, national and European levels would act.  “Climate change plays a role here, that’s for sure, but it’s not the main cause, and this cannot be used as an excuse for what governments must do in terms of prevention,” said Jordi Vendrell , director of the Pau Costa Foundation, a nonprofit focused on wildfire management.  This year’s fire season is already the worst on record. Across the European Union, blazes have consumed more than 1 million hectares so far this year — an area larger than Cyprus. Most of that land has burned over the past two weeks in the Iberian Peninsula, where at least six people have died. The scale of this year’s disaster has kicked off an unusual reckoning in both countries as to why Spanish and Portuguese citizens are exposed to such a deadly threat each year.  “My house, my neighbor’s house, my entire town of Castrocalbón has gone up in flames because our authorities are incompetent,” 74-year-old Josefina Vidal cried out at a protest in the central Spanish city of León on Monday. Across the border in Portugal on Tuesday, mourners at a firefighter’s funeral declared Prime Minister Luís Montenegro persona non grata.  Politicians on both sides of the border are keen to avoid being held responsible, and are taking pains to blame the fires on uncontrollable factors like climate change and arson, or past decisions taken by their political rivals. At best, the debate centers on firefighting resources.  Yet experts say that preventing destructive blazes is both simpler and cheaper than fighting them. And the conditions that create firestorms are largely due to how countries manage — or rather, don’t manage — their land. THE CLIMATE FACTOR That’s not to say climate change isn’t playing a role.  The global increase in temperatures, driven by the burning of fossil fuels, does not spark fires. But it creates conditions for flames to spread with ease: More intense and frequent heat waves — such as the searing heat Spain and Portugal endured in recent weeks — dry out soils and plants, rendering forests and land more flammable.  Scientists stress that while halting global warming is crucial to avoid even worse heat waves and droughts, governments must also urgently minimize the risk of climate-fueled disasters. The scale of this year’s disaster has kicked off an unusual reckoning in both countries as to why Spanish and Portuguese citizens are exposed to such a deadly threat each year. | Brais Lorenzo/EPA In the case of fires, that mostly means ensuring there’s less stuff for flames to feast on.  While climate change is ratcheting up fire risk, “the fires we’re seeing are the result of decades of rural exodus and the absence of forest management,” said Arantza Pérez Oleaga, vice dean of Spain’s Official College of Forestry Engineers.  LEAVING THE LAND As more and more farmers and shepherds migrated to cities in recent decades, uncontrolled vegetation took over the forests, meadows, orchards and cropland they once managed. An estimated 2.3 million hectares of Spanish land are now abandoned.  This provides abundant fuel for catastrophic wildfires. The amount of biomass in Spain has surged by 160 percent over the past 50 years, said Eduardo Rojas Briales, forest expert at the Polytechnic University of Valencia.  Halting land abandonment is the key to preventing fires, experts say. Yet currently, with the rural population aging and struggling to make a living, it’s a trend that’s expected to continue.  “We need a strong primary sector,” said Víctor Resco de Dios, forest engineering professor at the University of Lleida. Crops such as olive orchards “traditionally served as firebreaks,” he added. “Now we have the problem that with rural abandonment, crops are less common.”  The wild shrublands and young forests that sprang up in their place may look like land returning to its natural state. But Resco de Dios says that the romantic “Disney ecology” vision many Europeans have of untouched nature is not only a fantasy — it’s actively dangerous.  “We need to make people understand that cutting trees is not an ecological crime,” he said. “On the contrary … if we plant trees and then we forget about them, then we’re just planting the fires that we’ll have in 20 or 30 years from now.”  Forestry experts, scientists and even conservationists agree: Letting Europe’s nature grow wild, without active management, is fueling the devastating fires.  Prevention, they say, means creating diverse landscapes, felling trees to create fire breaks, and developing a rural policy that ensures farmers and shepherds can make a living.  Crucially, it also means letting some fires burn, as long as they don’t spin out of control — ending what experts call a counterproductive policy of extinguishing all flames. In the Mediterranean, “our landscapes, they burn in the past, they are burning in the present, and they must burn in the future,” Vendrell said .  PREVENTION PARADOX Yet political debates about fire management tend to focus on fighting the flames when the land is already burning. In Spain, for example, conservative-led regions and the left-wing central government spent the past week trading blame over firefighting resources.  Experts say that preventing destructive blazes is both simpler and cheaper than fighting them. | Pereira Da Silva/EPA But governments more readily invest in firefighting equipment than prevention. Spain’s firefighting budget is double that of its prevention spending, even though preventing fires is much cheaper than fighting them.  “If we want firefighters to be able to stop a fire, of course, they have to have the means,” said Resco de Dios. “But … they cannot do their job, even if they have all the resources in the world, because the landscapes that we have do not allow them to work.”  Still, the task governments are facing isn’t easy, or cheap. Halting land abandonment will take significant long-term investment in rural communities, said Pérez Oleaga.  Stimulating demand for material such as wood is essential, she added. “There is a reason why there are fewer fires in places like Soria or the Basque Country,” where “the forests are pruned and managed because you still have sawmills and other businesses that make a living from the forests.” The Spanish environment ministry, which also oversees policies related to demographic change, did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for Portugal’s environment ministry blamed the fires on extreme weather, but said that the country was planning to invest €246 million a year until 2050 in measures to boost forestry industries and land management.  There are signs that fire prevention is getting more attention amid growing frustration over how authorities handle the fires. On Thursday, Spain’s special prosecutor for environmental issues opened an investigation into the lack of forest management plans in connection with the fires.  But all experts interviewed acknowledged that politicians have few incentives to take preventive action, given that the results are often not visible for years or decades after the next election.  “For a politician, the calculation is simple,” said Pérez Oleaga. “You can take a picture next to the firefighting plane you bought with EU funds, but you don’t get to have a ribbon-cutting ceremony when you use public cash to clean up a forest.”

BRUSSELS — Man-made climate change made the July heatwave that blanketed Norway, Sweden and Finland 10 times more likely and 2 degrees Celsius hotter, according to a scientific report published Thursday. “However, this is likely an underestimate,” said the researchers from the World Weather Attribution, a group of climate scientists that draft rapid analyses showing climate change’s role in extreme weather events.  The findings, which used peer-reviewed methods and models to compare the recent heatwave to the pre-industrial revolution world, come after the Nordic countries spent two weeks in mid-July grappling with abnormally hot temperatures for the region. Healthcare and social services were strained, with some hospitals canceling surgeries and struggling to keep their buildings cool. It was also peak holiday season, leaving healthcare facilities operating with reduced staffing. “This heatwave was relentless,” said Clair Barnes, researcher at the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London, and one of the authors of the analysis. “Two weeks of temperatures above 30°C in this region is unusual and, of course, highly concerning.” The heat blast upended the region’s ecosystems. Reindeer fled from the countryside into cities, searching for water and escaping unexpected insects. The analysis noted that such changing migration patterns affect people’s livelihoods, such as Sámi reindeer herders. “I watched a reindeer stay in the same patch of shade for three days straight without grazing, a quiet sign of the strain the heat was causing,” recalled Maja Vahlberg, a climate consultant at Swedish Red Cross. Dry conditions also increased the risk of fires. And as climate change accelerates, the situation will only deteriorate further, the researchers warned: “Similar heatwaves are now estimated to be twice as likely as they were in 2018,” they said. “We definitely expect more of these events in the future and we also expect them to become more intense,” said Erik Kjellström, professor in climatology at the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute, who also worked on the study. The Nordic heatwave illustrates how pervasive climate change is becoming across Europe, spreading hot weather beyond areas built to accommodate it. “This heatwave was a stark reminder of the threat of climate change in cold-climate countries that aren’t normally considered vulnerable,” Vahlberg said. “Our infrastructure was not built to withstand these extreme temperatures, and our aging population is increasingly susceptible to dangerous heat.” Climate consultant at Swedish Red Cross Maja Vahlberg said that the Nordic heatwave “was a stark reminder of the threat of climate change in cold-climate countries that aren’t normally considered vulnerable.” | Jouni Porsanger/Lehtikuva/AFP via Getty Images HOT EUROPE While the situation has slightly cooled in the Nordics, Southern Europe is still baking. “And we can say with confidence that climate change has intensified those weather conditions,” Barnes said. A heatwave is currently sweeping through France and Spain, with temperatures reaching into the mid-40 Cs. Heat warnings were also issued in Germany, Italy, the U.K., Albania and Montenegro this week. In both France and Spain, national meteorological institutes said the heatwave will last at least through this week and possibly into next week. “Heatwaves have always happened, there will always be heatwaves, but all of the temperatures are just getting higher, so the chances of reaching these potentially dangerous temperatures are just ratcheting up as the world warms,” Barnes said. Additionally, most southern European countries, including Portugal, Spain, Greece, the Balkans and Turkey, are also battling wildfires. Two people died in Spain, including one firefighter, while thousands had to be evacuated across the country. In Greece, three people died and blazes are threatening the country’s third-largest city, Patras, west of Athens, forcing thousands to evacuate. In Albania, roughly 50 fires have been recorded over the past few days, with the most intense blazes hitting the southern region of Gramsh, where one elderly man died. Meanwhile, fires claimed at least 17 lives in Turkey last month. And in France last week, the country experienced its worst fire since 1949, according to national authorities. With climate change drying out the landscape, these blazes are only becoming harder to contain. According to the European Forest Fires Information System, more than twice as much area has burned thus far in 2025 as last year over the same period. The EU’s fire danger forecast for the coming days is bleak. It predicts “extreme to very extreme conditions across the entire continent,” citing numerous southern, central and eastern countries.  And in a sign of the changing patterns, it also notes that “high anomalies” can be expected “in Sweden, parts of Norway, and eastern Finland.”

In March, Cyprus boasted that it was better prepared than ever to tackle the earth-scorching wildfires that now rage across southern Europe with alarming frequency. The government had 11 planes ready to go. The firefighting corps was up 27 percent. There were 25 new fire engines available. It wasn’t enough. When a massive blaze began in the south of the island earlier this month, the government’s early warning system didn’t go off. An update, planned for 2024, had been delayed. Locals then complained that the evacuation strategy was unclear, and wildfire specialists said the country waited too long to request EU assistance. The result was devastating. The fire, the country’s worst in two decades, hit Limassol, Cyprus’s second-biggest city. An elderly couple was found dead in their car.  Within days, the government faced a barrage of questions, such as why hadn’t the warning system worked, and why was the response so disjointed? Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides has had few answers, only an apology amid a swirl of calls for accountability and resignations.  “At a critical moment like this, the government did not respond as it should have. … I apologize,” he said on national TV. Officials would investigate, he vowed, and “improve the weaknesses of the system.” While the Cypriot government has denied it was ill-prepared — pointing to the new resources, staff upgrades and updated protocols — its struggles are emblematic of the situation now engulfing southern Europe.  Right now, wildfires are raging in Portugal, Spain, the south of France, Sardinia, Greece, Bulgaria, Albania, North Macedonia and Turkey. More than twice the area has already burned this year compared to the same period last year, which was a record-breaking fire season, according to the EU’s Joint Research Center. Climate change is only making the situation worse. Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides has had few answers, only an apology amid a swirl of calls for accountability and resignations. | Kimmo Brandt/EPA The risk of more fires breaking out remains high, the center added. And governments still aren’t ready, specialists warn.  WHAT WENT WRONG In part, the situation in Cyprus is beyond the government’s control.  The country has been experiencing increased temperatures for three consecutive years, accompanied by continuous drought conditions that have significantly depleted its water reserves. That makes firefighting particularly difficult, said Savvas Iezekiel, head of the Cyprus forestry department. “Nobody was ready for this fire,” he said, “but we did what we could.” Yet other elements, such as the early warning system, were directly within the government’s remit.  Since 2022, Cyprus has been planning an update of that system to comply with EU law, aiming to complete it by 2024. But that never happened.  The government awarded the contract to a private firm, but other companies formally challenged the decision, causing the government to cancel the process in May 2024 and start over. Interior Minister Constantinos Ioannou said the authorities tried to fast-track the process, citing security concerns, but couldn’t meet the required legal threshold. “If something goes wrong, it does not necessarily mean that the political superior is responsible,” Ioannou told a local TV station. The government says it is now working to get the new system functioning by early next year. The updates, in theory, will allow the government to send local populations mass text messages with wildfire warnings, information and evacuation routes. They are also meant to let authorities better locate people who call emergency services.   But it wasn’t just the technology that fell short.  Locals complained that the evacuation strategy was confusing and delayed — something Ioannou denied. He argued the plans functioned effectively, noting that numerous villages were evacuated. The fire, the country’s worst in two decades, hit Limassol, Cyprus’s second-biggest city. | Katia Christodoulou/EPA Wildfire specialists said the government also moved too slowly to request EU aid, even though the European Commission and neighboring countries eventually sent planes. Notably, Cyprus is not part of the rescEU program, an EU initiative to stockpile and share disaster response resources. The country held out due to political differences between its previous president, Nicos Anastasiades, and its former EU commissioner in Brussels, Christos Stylianides, who created the program. And as the fire raged last week, Stylianides said it was high time for Cyprus to join the program. Others criticized the government’s refusal to accept help from the Turkish-occupied part of the island in the north.  More broadly, those studying firefighting policy say Cyprus hasn’t adequately implemented wildfire surveillance mechanisms. And a report from fire expert Gavriel Xanthopoulos — compiled in March but revealed on Wednesday — said the country needed better cooperation between its fire service and forestry department. “We ask for forgiveness if we were unable to respond to all incidents at the same time,” Nikos Logginos, who runs the Cyprus Fire Service, told local TV. “Our resources were not inexhaustible.” Government spokesman Konstantinos Letymbiotis denied the government had been negligent. “All the plans and all the protocols which had been drawn up were activated in unprecedented conditions,” he told local media. A POLITICAL CRISIS Politicians across the spectrum have pounced on the government in the wake of the fires. Stefanos Stefanou, the leader of the left-wing opposition Progressive Party of Working People, immediately called on the government to resign, arguing that it had failed to fulfill its responsibilities.  Annita Demetriou, the head of the center-right Democratic Rally, said an apology from the president was “not enough.”  President Christodoulides, a conservative politician who left the Democratic Rally in 2023 to run as an independent, has so far resisted calls for any heads to roll. But a government reshuffle is inevitable, according to Andreas Theophanous, a professor and president of the Cypriot Center for European and International Affairs. “I expect that it may take a few weeks, but we’ll have a general reshuffling of the government so that there will be a new beginning,” he said. Maria Panayiotou, Cyprus’s rural development and environment minister, also told POLITICO about steps the government has been taking to improve its wildfire protocol. | Olivier Hoslet/EPA For Cyprus, the stakes go far beyond politics. The costs of such climate change-enhanced disasters are enormous and rising — inaction could cost the country up to €18 billion by 2050 if it does nothing, according to an assessment from Theodoros Zachariadis, director of the Energy Environment and Water Research Centre at the Cyprus Institute. In the process, he added, food and electricity prices will rise, and labor productivity will decrease. Tourists will increasingly stay away.  On Wednesday, the government began its campaign to help people recover. Officials announced immediate financial aid for those who lost property or agricultural fields in the wildfires. They also allocated funds to restore key infrastructure. Maria Panayiotou, Cyprus’s rural development and environment minister, also told POLITICO about steps the government has been taking to improve its wildfire protocol.  The country’s Department of Forests now has its largest workforce in years, as well as additional fire protection equipment that the department has been requesting. The government is also taking new preventative steps, such as controlled grazing and burning, for the first time. Yet, Panayiotou conceded, “as the president of the Republic pointed out, we cannot be satisfied with the result.” All departments involved in firefighting are now preparing reports, due Friday, to assess what went wrong.   “These reports will be made public and will form the basis for the necessary institutional and operational improvements,” Panayiotou said. Those reports will land in a climate of exasperation. Floundering fire management is not a new issue in Cyprus. “Anger is growing among the people,” said Theophanous, the Cypriot Center for European and International Affairs president. And political parties, including the far-right, “are going to try to take advantage of it,” he added. Ultimately, he said, it’s a problem that stretches across years. “Successive governments,” he lamented, “have not done their homework.” Nektaria Stamouli reported from Athens and Louise Guillot reported from Brussels.