Panel 1.8. Commons aflame: Collective fire management
co-Chairs: Kate Schreckenberg1 and Abigail R. Croker2
1King's College London , 2currently at the Centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College London and, from Nov 2024, at the Centre for BioComplexity, Princeton University
There is growing concern about wildfires and the way in which they endanger life and property and contribute to greenhouse gas emissions. In turn, climate change exacerbates the hot, dry and windy conditions in which fires can ignite and spread. Yet we need to distinguish clearly the conflagrations which dominate media headlines from small-scale livelihood-based fires and cultural burning. Indeed, policies aimed at suppressing all fires may inadvertently create the high fuel loads that can turn fires into unmanageable disasters. There is increasing recognition that traditional systems of burning may not just be good for sustaining livelihoods but also help to avoid dangerous wildfires.
In this panel we invite presentations relating to the use of fire to manage fire. This is a collective action problem where healthy and resilient landscapes result from decisions (more or less coordinated) taken by diverse land managers across space and over time. We welcome contributions examining fire policy and management at multiple scales from the local to the global, including those documenting the loss of traditional fire management systems and associated knowledge (e.g. as a result of government suppression of fires, or when changing socio-economic contexts no longer favour fire-based livelihoods) and/or examples of their restoration.
