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<p>A consensus is emerging that restoring the fire-adapted forest ecology through nature-based solutions (NBS), such as prioritizing fire-resistant vegetation, promoting less fire-prone forests, enabling grazing by herbivores in areas facing land abandonment, prescribed burns, and restricted or risk-adapted development in wildlands, can reduce the risk of extreme wildfires. This paradigm shift away from fire suppression towards a fire loss-prevention strategy is urgently needed. The question is whether risk financing strategies, especially insurance, can untap the potential for promoting NBS, for example, by providing protection in case of damages from livestock grazing or prescribed burns, or by giving discounts to forest owners and homeowners that pursue ecological fire-prevention measures. Additionally, insurers can provide (parametric) policies that repair ecological damage, for example, for coral reefs after extreme storms, or policies that transfer the construction or liability risk of NBS. Since wildfire mitigation is to a large extent collective, another potential policy option to support NBS is community-based insurance strategies. This presentation will explore the opportunities and constraints for public and private insurers to support NBS for wildfire risk management. It reflects on-going research in three recently funded Horizon Europe projects: (<em>Cross sector dialogue for wildfire risk management</em> (FireLogue), <em>Building a safe haven for climate extremes</em> (The HuT), and <em>Nature for insurance and insurance for nature</em> (NATURANCE).</p>

Pyrosilviculture and understory fuel management to reduce forest stand and landscape flammability represent loss-making interventions from an economic point of view. Consequently, prevention is carried out above all on public property and with public funds (e.g. Rural Development Programs), while the interest of the private individual for prevention interventions on aggregated areas is limited. These shortcomings do not allow to reach the distribution and the quantity of treated surface necessary to modify the fire regime and its impacts. To solve this problem, we need initiatives that catalyse the interests of multiple stakeholders (economic actors, bodies responsible for territorial management and research, fire-fighter agencies) towards common goals. Moreover, we need to improve the cost-efficiency ratio of prevention through value-chains of products and services generated by preventive measures (e.g. payments for positive externalities and ecosystem services). Within the European project PREVAIL (PREVention Action Increases Large fire response preparedness) we analysed collaborative processes in the Mediterranean Basin between private and public actors that developed 'smart solutions'. Different sources of funding, including non-specific funds for prevention, offer additional economic resources to support preventive value-chains (e.g. RDP funds for agro-pastoral and forestry development, LIFE funds for habitat conservation, private investments, PES mechanisms). This paper analyses the key elements that characterise smart solutions for wildfire risk prevention in Southern EU: sustainability, cost-benefit ratio, synergies between sources of financing, inter-sectoral cooperation and integration between strategic prevention planning and multiple land governance objectives, innovation and knowledge transfer, and adaptive approach. A selection of solutions documented by the PREVAIL project and replicable in other contests will be presented and discussed.