Panel 1.8. Commons aflame: Collective fire management

Integrated Fire Management (IFM or sustainable fire management) has been identified by the international fire community as a suitable interdisciplinary approach to address the problem of more extreme wildfires spreading across the globe. IFM includes actions aimed at reducing the extent and severity of undesired wildfires while maximizing the positive impacts of fire on biodiversity, ecosystem services and human wellbeing.

The FIRE-ADAPT has set up a network of scientists and practitioners from the Mediterranean Basin, the UK and Latin America to expand the knowledge of IFM in tropical and subtropical regions. The project partners are working on a set of outcomes on IFM such as 1) handbooks for assessing the impacts of prescribed burns on biodiversity and C dynamics, 2) databases on IFM practices, 3) modelling solutions for assessing the impacts of IFM on vegetation health and Carbon fluxes under climate change conditions, 4) Rapid Assessment Booklet for Policymakers and media, 5) guidelines for IFM capacity building for practitioners, and 6) virtual exhibition to raise awareness about IFM to the general public.

These results can be relevant for the international fire community, as IFM is identified as a potential solution to reduce the negative impacts of wildfires. Particularly interesting for researchers and practitioners working in regions where fire suppression efforts are increasingly unsafe and ineffective, and the response systems are overwhelmed due to the shift of fire regimes to more extreme events.

This paper situates dominant fire suppression practices within historical colonial regimes of environmental governance. Across much of the colonial and neocolonial world, the use of fire in landscapes by smallholders has been widely suppressed, a practice that remains pervasive today. In regions such as the Americas, Africa, Asia, Australia, and Europe, centuries of fire suppression have led to severe ecological and cultural consequences. Ecologically, fire suppression disrupts landscapes, altering plant ecologies and contributing to more extreme wildfires. Culturally, the suppression of fire destabilizes smallholder livelihoods, as fire is an essential element of many land management systems. This paper traces the origins of fire suppression to Europe during the industrial revolution, where it emerged alongside a suite of land use restrictions. These restrictions were driven by tensions between the priorities of capitalist states and the livelihoods of rural land users. Land use policies made smallholder livelihoods increasingly untenable, justified by perceptions of smallholders as economically unproductive. European authorities extended these policies to colonial contexts, where they applied to populations that relied on fire for landscape management. The paper argues that understanding fire suppression and its consequences within its colonial history has important implications for sustainable fire governance, environmental justice, and climate resilience.

Changing commons and their implications for fire management in Northern Ghana’s savanna landscapes
Commons of Northern Ghana’s savanna landscapes have undergone significant changes due to factors such as climate change, land use changes, land privatisation, resource governance and livelihoods. These changes have affected traditional burning practices, leading to tensions among herders, hunters and farmers. Drawing on institutional perspective (n = 10) and local resource users (n=56) and using in-depth interviews, we analysed how changes in commons affect fire management in the West Gonja Municipal of Ghana’s Savannah Region. The results indicate that agricultural expansion into the commons, which herders and hunters also lay claim by burning to regenerate fresh grasses for cattle or drive game for hunting has destroyed many farm produce and threatened food security, particularly during the dry season. Additionally, the communal system of fighting fire with fire is eroding due to the implementation of local fire suppression policies and the introduction of herbicides and tractor services as alternatives to burning for clearing lands for agricultural activities. Recognising that fire plays a significant role in shaping the composition and function of savanna landscapes, this study argues that it is important to establish an appropriate land use system and acknowledge the significance of controlled burning in the West Gonja Municipal.

Crofters, smallholder upland farmers in the Scottish Highlands and Islands, use fire to maintain common grazing areas for livestock, a practice known as muirburn or falasgair in Gaelic. Archival records show that pastoral fire use has been practiced by peasant farmers in Scotland since at least the Medieval period. Yet fire use has varied with political, ecological, economic, and social context, and has certainly changed in living memory. Based on research interviews with crofters in Sutherland, Skye, and Lochaber, I explore some of the challenges that crofters face in maintaining controlled, collective, fire use on common grazing areas in the 21st century. These include high fuel loads due to declining stocking levels (especially of cattle), decline and aging of the crofting population, the inflexibility of 21st century life and work, risk to plantations and other assets in the landscape, and poor public awareness of the distinction between controlled burning and wildfire. Alongside these drivers, the national muirburn regulations have recently been revised in ways that could make much fire use by crofters illegal. In the context of a changing climate, we need to ask whether wildfire risk might be exacerbated by the loss of controlled burning and the fire knowledge held by crofters. If so, could well-managed muirburn, or alternative fuel management techniques like grazing by cattle, be better supported?

This study explores the social life of forest fire legislation in the Uttarakhand Himalaya through the lens of Lefebvre’s spatial triad of conceived, perceived, and lived spaces. Colonial-era forest fire legislation in India is maintained to impose a specific ecological and territorial order in political forests. However, the laws in criminalising fire use frequently conflict with the lived experiences of indigenous communities, which employ fire in controlled and nuanced ways as part of their traditional land management practices. To these communities, the legislation often seems disconnected from their socio-cultural and ecological needs. At the local level, the implementation of these laws is further complicated by state agencies navigating rural democratic politics, where enforcement is often undermined by local political actors seeking to protect their constituencies from the legal consequences. This creates a complex landscape in which the conceived space of legislation diverges sharply from both the lived space of indigenous practices and the perceived space of local governance.

This study also investigates how disaster events, such as large-scale uncontrolled forest fires, disrupt these spatial dynamics, temporarily reinforcing the power and presence of legal norms. The state’s regulatory framework may prevail during such moments, but this dominance is typically short-lived, revealing the enduring disconnection between legal prescriptions and lived realities. By examining the interaction of these spaces, this study aims to provide a nuanced understanding of how forest fire legislation functions within the sociopolitical and environmental context of the Uttarakhand Himalaya, shedding light on the tensions and negotiations that shape the social reality of law in this region.

Wildland fire management emerges in Treaty #3 territory near the end of colonial administration and increasingly takes on characteristics of modernity following World War 2 as the State exerts increasing control over fire on the landscape. While wildland fire management in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries mainly focused on regulation and criminalization of Indigenous fire technologies, following World War 2 the use of modern technologies for surveillance and suppression of wildland fire become increasingly effective. Fire sciences also emerge in this period and an iron triangle of the state, industry and knowledge production become the dominant conceptual framing of human relations with fire favouring industrial and settler values of fire suppression. The outcome, as we now know, is a fire prone landscape, more susceptible to catastrophic fire at a time when fire frequency and intensity are increasing due to anthropogenic climate change. However, new approaches in Canada call for a whole of society approach to respond to the increased frequency and intensity of wildland fire. This has opened opportunities for a new fire science and management that includes Indigenous science, ways of thinking about and being in relation to fire. More than the instrumental use of Indigenous knowledges and technologies of fire this will require a decolonial process. A decolonial process includes, as a first step, an excavation of colonial history of wildland fire and how science and management become hegemonic during the period of modernity. In this paper, we trace the process by which western wildland fire science and management emerge in Treaty #3 territory and repress Anishinaabe knowledges and technologies of fire. We then turn to recognize the ongoing Anishinaabe constitutionality of their relations with fire during the colonial and modern periods of wildland fire science and management. We conclude by introducing some on-going efforts of the territorial planning unit of Grand Council Treaty #3 to strengthen constitutive processes through which Anishinaabe in Treaty #3 territory can dream right relations with fire as part of a decolonial future.

Due to acute climate change impacts and historical land-use changes, wildfires are becoming more and more frequent and severe in the Mediterranean area, disrupting long-established socio-economic and ecological cycles. The Mediterranean agroforestry landscapes, historically and culturally shaped by traditional subsistence and labour activities, combining patches of forest, small agricultural plots, olive groves, vineyards and grazing fields are greatly affected by these wildfires. Through a human geography and political ecology lens, in this paper, I explore the interconnections between rural depopulation, altering agroforestry landscapes and wildfires in the Greek island of Evia, that was severely affected by wildfires in the summer of 2021. With almost 50.000 hectares of coniferous forest and agricultural land burnt, they were the most extended wildfires in the country, up until that moment, affecting life-sustaining activities and infrastructure.

Despite a highly fragmented property system, comprising of several different forms and sizes of forest and land property (communal, public, associations, privately owned forests, agricultural plots etc), the burnt areas used to function largely as commons grounds, where beekeepers, resin cultivators, shepherds, farmers and recreational mushroom hunters seasonally accessed the forest and agricultural land, harvesting and at the same time ‘taking care’ of the landscape. Those mosaic landscapes, when preserved and worked, used to affect fire behavior in different ways and at the same time offered a certain kind of fire management knowledge to the local people. Following ethnographic fieldwork of 9 months in the area and 68 semi-structured interviews with forest producers, farmers, shepherds, fire and forest services actors, in this paper I explore local narratives on two interrelated topics: 1) how the loss of subsistence/multi-job lifestyles affects and is affected by fires and 2) how co-existence with fire is changing, related to: land use changes, rural desertification and forest re-wilding (in the absence of humans and traditional activities).

Elinor Ostrom discussed several types of resource management: open access, commons, private property, and government control. Here, I discuss how fire has been applied or managed within these different systems, specifically, the use of fire to manage fire. A useful distinction is between those who are immersed in nature, immersed in the ecosystems they are managing, and those who are not. Those who are immersed in nature, especially characteristic of commons ownership, tend to manage fire in ways that are based on experience, i.e., flexible, small-scale, and generally speaking successful at reducing the likelihood of catastrophic fire. Open access systems have no management to speak of, yet there is surprisingly little evidence for harmful effects of anthropogenic fire in such systems. Possibly this reflects that the use of fire in such systems also tends to be small-scale, because those engaging in open access do so for only short periods of time and only over part of the territory. In contrast, governments and sometimes private property owners are separated from the resources they attempt to manage. This has tended to lead to policy that is founded upon theory, based on scientific understanding or misunderstanding, with often unfortunate effects. These points are illustrated and elaborated upon with examples from the rich history of fire in California. The recent increase in catastrophic fires in central and northern California reflects the fact that governments and NGO’s that are not immersed in nature, and do not understand fire ecology, are the main drivers of fire policy.

Fire is an essential tool in tropical subsistence agriculture but results in escaped fires when not adequately controlled. Specifically, the southern Peruvian Andes has a long history of anthropogenic fires, which have shaped the natural landscape over millennia. While the ecological role of fire is increasingly examined, research on how humans interact with fire is almost nonexistent in this region, and the government response is limited to fire suppression and burning prohibition. This research evaluated two Quechua communities and their collaborating external actors in the following aspects: (1) local perspectives on current and recent changes in community-based fire management; and (2) perceptions of key actors (farmers, firefighters, researchers, nonprofit organizations, protected areas, and government agents) of the role of fire and fire management strategies. Targeting three wildfire seasons (2021 to 2023), I employed participant observation, Q methodology, semi-structured interviews, and participatory methods. Over the past decade, both communities have adapted their responses to escaped fire incidents through collective learning and the incorporation of firefighting brigades, sanctions, and land use restrictions, often in collaboration with external actors. I also found different viewpoints among key actors on the role of fire ranging from emphasizing the negative impacts of fire on ecosystem services to acknowledging some benefits of fire on rural wellbeing. Regarding key actor viewpoints on fire management, they ranged from top-down fire suppression to community-based fire management. Participatory research methodologies were instrumental in facilitating dialogue and reflection on fire management and governance strategies among community members and external actors. This research underscores the importance of collaboration and community engagement in developing effective fire management practices tailored to local contexts.

Wildfires continue to impact people and landscapes across the U.S. and beyond - with no sign of letting up, and leaving devastation behind in many cases. However increasing "Good Fire," (prescribed or cultural burning) & more not only reduces the risks of catastrophic wildfires, but is a critical component to managing fire-adapted forests and grasslands across the U.S. Millions of acres of forestland and other natural lands are privately owned by individuals, families, small businesses, tribal nations and more. However, these landowners may not have the knowledge or confidence to conduct prescribed fires on their own, despite favorable laws. A nationwide network of outreach (Cooperative Extension) professionals work to promote good fires through outreach and training for these landowners and have successfully increased the adoption of good fire. Learn more about these programs that include extensive resources, curriculum, etc.. Programs include creating and supporting prescribed burn associations where landowner members can learn from their peers and have support for their burns. "Learn and Burn "learn and burn" events in which landowners learn in the classroom and then spend the afternoon conducting a burn. In addition to these outreach efforts, there are also consortiums that translate the science of prescribed burning for practitioners, policymakers, regulators and more. These consortiums then connect scientists to practitioners, so they can learn about additional questions and opportunities. Despite these resources, efforts and collaborations, there is still room for improvement, but many of these programs and resources could be adapted for other parts of the world.

Wildfire protection strategies (WPS) afford mitigation planners a diverse set of tools to reduce risk to households and communities before, during, and after a wildfire event. However, ex-post effectiveness of WPS are poorly understood. Since the 2003 Healthy Forests Restoration Act, Community Wildfire Protection Plans (CWPP) have become a standard planning and mitigation tool to prevent loss from wildfire events in the United States. Although efforts have been made to document CWPPs and analyze some key aspects of these documents, there remains limited insight into which how CWPPs are developed, which WPS these plans contain, and how effective they have been in preventing wildfire loss. There is also no generalizable, national effort to assess this, which leaves communities without evidence-based research to refine and improve existing and novel plans. This paper proposes an innovative approach to improving our understanding of WPS effectiveness by studying CWPPs at a national level over the full history of these plans. First we build upon the national-level CWPP database to achieve greater spatiotemporal coverage. Then we derive WPS variables from CWPPs using recent advances in natural language processing. Next we build a unique dataset to understand the development and effectiveness of WPS in CWPPS effectiveness by utilizing open source data on wildfire hazard, event characteristics, and environmental context. We then design a series of statistical models to assess CWPPs under various spatiotemporal and treatment effect specifications. Lastly we analyze how trends in CWPP policy and implementation responds to wildfire events and interact with the effectiveness inferred from our statistical models.

Our study uses a context-mechanism-outcome approach to highlight how trust diversity emerges in wildfire collaborative archetypes and how it impacts collaborative environmental, social and process outcomes. Using survey data from wildland collaboratives, we identify three distinct collaborative archetypes arising from landscape and property rights heterogeneity, stakeholder distributions and value diversity and collaborative mission orientations. We characterize four distinct trust types of these collaborative groups including affinitive trust, dispositional trust, rational trust and procedural trust. We find that collaborative process mechanisms such as trust types, development and maintenance differ across collaborative archetypes. We also find that the contexts and mechanisms differentially influence outcome achievement with partial achievement of social and environmental outcomes but substantial gains in process outcomes depending on trust diversity and archetype group. Ultimately, understanding the mechanisms of operation in different contexts can help guide improved decision-making, navigate conflict and create more equitable participation in collaborative wildfire management.

To mitigate the potential impacts of wildfire, communities across the United States (US) are increasingly engaging in collaborative wildfire planning. Planning involves identifying a set of goals or objectives, developing management strategies to get to that goal, and codifying the goals and objectives in a written document. This paper focuses on the goals and objectives codified in wildfire management plans as a mechanism to understand what communities value and therefore how they are managing their commons. However, there are tensions between having values tailored to match local context and values that reflect national policy priorities. On one hand, the concept of socio-ecological fit argues that governance structures are most effective when they match the scale and context of a specific socio-ecological system. In this perspective, values should match the specific types of wildfires that occur and the characteristics of the impacted communities in a particular place. Locally-determined values are also likely to incorporate local ecological knowledge gathered through extended time spent in a place. On the other hand, national governments have substantially more capacity than local communities. Their policy priorities are more likely to reflect the newest updates in science as well as growing concerns like climate change or environmental justice. Community-driven management may be slow to incorporate these changes, leading to slower adaptation of the system overall.