Forests as Living Public Infrastructure: Evidence Requirements for Mediterranean Wildfire Risk Governance, Restoration and Carbon Accounting

Climate change and wildfire are often treated as separate policy problems, although their costs and ecological consequences converge in fire-prone landscapes. This critical integrative review examines the evidence requirements that connect Mediterranean wildfire-risk governance, restoration, biomass use, carbon accounting, ecosystem services, public procurement and professional capacity. A purposive, theme-based synthesis combines peer-reviewed research, international standards, European Union assessments and audit reports, and Greek implementation documents; Greece is used as a policy case within a wider Mediterranean evidence base. Building on the living- and green-infrastructure literature, this review treats forests as living public infrastructure: dynamic systems whose public functions depend on maintenance, ecological limits and repeated verification. It distinguishes evidence synthesis from policy recommendation and evaluates recurrent shortcuts such as unmaintained fuel continuity, tree planting without diagnosis, carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) claims without credible baselines or permanence strategies, and monitoring platforms without field validation. The resulting framework links risk diagnosis, prioritised intervention, field measurement, integrity gates and public audit. Its scientific contribution is to specify a common evidence chain through which prevention, restoration and climate claims can be compared and tested rather than accepted as activity counts or communication outputs.