Thanks to public funding from the "Mutualiser Exploitation forestiére et DFCI" project carried out between 2017 and 2019, a fire road network was built in the south of the Provence region (Alps-French Riviera; France).
DFCI roads (pistes de Défens des Forêts Contre les Incendies) seem to play, in addition to the role of fire protection, also a leverage role in sustainable local economic forestry development, since they constitute an alternative penetration of the local massifs for deforestation works.
An example of what has been said are the two biomass plants recently built in the region, which define a unique opportunity for the local economic development of the wood industry.
However, it must be taken into account that the DFCI roads are, always and above all, works for fire protection and must therefore be kept in operating conditions for the summer season.
In a context like this, where biomass power plants can create pressure on the wood resource, and where there is no strategic regulation of practices, there is a great risk of seeing the excessive exploitation of the most accessible areas and the consequent deterioration of the DFCI roads.
This would have the effect of further increasing the population's already significant distrust of these industrial-scale energy projects, which however have great potential for the sustainable development of the region.