Disasters to Lobby for Change? Non-Governmental Organisations’ Mobilisation after the 2022 Wildfires Close to Bordeaux, France

‘Megafires’ are amongst the most visible and dramatic manifestations of climate change. Termed as such because of their extreme size, complexity, uncontrollability and/or impacts, their occurrence is only expected to increase with a warming climate and other human-induced changes such as landscape modification. If we approach disasters as symptoms of our presently unsustainable societies, what role, then, could megafires and disasters more broadly play in lobbying for change, i.e. a just socio-ecological transformation? This paper explores the question based on qualitative fieldwork carried out in spring 2025 in Gironde, the first region to ever be hit by a megafire in France. The fires destroyed ca. 30,000 ha of land and led to the evacuation of more than 50,000 people in the summer of 2022. Secondary data analysis and semi-structured interviews with government and non-governmental actors help uncover how diverse actors draw back on the fires to advance their interests, with which results. For instance, Oxfam France relies on the evacuations to make its advocacy on climate refugees more tangible, while the civil society collective « Stop Pétrole Bassin d’Arcachon » mobilises against oil drills that the French government welcomes on land barred by the 2022 fires. Many others join the debate, bringing in factors as varied as faulty emergency response, austerity policies or ill adapted forest management and land use planning. The paper details how non-governmental organisations broaden their thematic focus to issues of justice and equity across the so-called Global North and Global South, and how they draw on elements as diverse as the materiality of disaster impacts, (re-)politicised framings, but also the deeper imaginaries associated to forests, fire and a ‘burning world’.