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ENHANCING RESILIENCE TO WILDFIRE DISASTERS:
FROM THE “WAR AGAINST FIRE” TO “COEXIST WITH FIRE”
FANTINA TEDIM AND VITTORIO LEONE
When the wind of change blows,
some build walls, while others build windmills
Chinese Proverb
INTRODUCTION
Wildfires are a societal and ecological issue of global concern (Smith, et al., 2016)
for their number, burned surfaces, suppression costs, and mainly because of the
escalating direct and cascading effects of very extreme events (e.g., Australia 1983,
1994, 2003 and 2009; Brazil 1998; Canada 2004 and 2016; China 1987; Greece 2007;
Indonesia 2015; Italy 2007; Israel 2010; México 1998; Portugal 2003; Russia 2010;
South Africa 1998 and 2000; Spain 2005; United States 1991, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2004,
2007, and 2013) which are labeled as mega-fires (Maditinos, & Vassiliadis, 2011;
Tedim, et al., 2013; Williams, & Hamilton, 2005; Williams, 2013; Williams, et al.,
2011), catastrophic fires (Cruz, et al., 2012; Shvidenko, et al., 2011; Xanthopoulos,
2007), or socially disastrous fires (Gill, & Cary, 2012). These extreme events are rising
in occurrence (Moritz, et al., 2014; Olson, & Bengston, 2015), mainly due to land
management practices, climate change, urban sprawl in risky areas, and paradoxically,
to suppression policies.
Mega-fires behave erratically and dangerously (Werth, et al., 2016) and, despite
growing wildfire budgets, improved coordination, better equipment and technology,
trained workforce, and predictive services, exceed all efforts at conventional control,
until there is a break in fuels or relief in weather (Williams, & Hamilton, 2005). Given
their behavior, complexity, incapacity to be controlled, and the characteristics of the
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affected areas, “mega-fires are not solely a fire management problem, they are a
societal problem” (Ryan, & Opperman, 2013: p. 208) and a political issue (Attiwill, &
Adams, 2013). However, even in extreme weather conditions wildfire disasters are not
an inevitability (Calkin, Cohen, Finney, & Thompson, 2014; Cohen, 2008).
The current policy of “war against fire” (Arno, & Allison-Bunnell, 2002; Carle,
2002; Omi, 2005; Pyne, 2013), the all-out suppression aimed at intervening on all
events, seems more and more inadequate to cope with the complexity of the
phenomenon in which ecological, social, economic, and cultural components
compound. Although the firefighting response and effectiveness has vastly improved
with staggering costs, year after year extreme wildfires events occur with heavy
damages and life toll, without evidence of a decreasing trend. Even more, the
inadequacy of the “war against fire” (or fire exclusion paradigm) to cope with the
incoming challenges and uncertainties imposed by climate change, demands a shift of
approach.
A wide body of scientific literature, and political strategies, have proposed new
directions for wildfire management entailing “more resilience and a less combative
relationship with nature” (Olson, & Bengston, 2015). Advocating a shift of paradigm
from the “war against fire” to “coexist with fire”, the aim of this chapter is to discuss
the concept of resilience, propose an operational framework to enhance wildfire
resilience in the context of disaster cycle, and to present an innovative conceptual
model to inform policy and practice inspired by the paradigm of “coexist with fire”.
THE PARADIGM SHIFT FROM THE “WAR AGAINST FIRE” TO “COEXIST WITH
FIRE”
The “war against fire” paradigm: a SWOT analysis
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The current paradigm generally matches wildfire threat, including mega-fires, with
huge suppression forces (Williams, & Hamilton, 2005), symptomatically acting on the
effects of the events and mitigating their consequences, but with scarce or no influence
on root-causes and on risk reduction, so resulting unfit in abating their number. This
paradigm of fire suppression and exclusion is grounded on a reactive apparatus of early
detection, and aggressive extinction, based on centralized government intervention,
military style organization, specialized fire crews and firefighting machinery (vehicles
and aircraft) owned or contracted, and pre-positioned investments (Lueck, & Yoder,
2015) (e.g., lookout towers; water points; fuel breaks; roads, and tracks; advanced
technology of detection, communication and weather forecast applied to danger
assessment), and passive measures (e.g., thinning, defensible spaces, clearing).
If wildfires are an enemy, addressing them by a “muscled attack” (Pacheco et al.,
2014) or “blunt response” (Guarque, 2014) is more politically expedient than
addressing the long-term fire prevention and management (FAO, 2011). The
suppression oriented model, emphasizing fire exclusion, is thus traditionally prevailing in
the political discourse, and welcome by the public opinion, due to its major politic
“profitability”, because it demonstrates that initiatives are taken (Plana Bach, 2004),
although without assessment about their costs and efficacy. Investments based on this
justification have a generally positive growth trend, mainly after large wildfire episodes
(Plana Bach, 2004). Pressure from the media and the public results in expenditures on
high-tech firefighting solutions, such as helicopters and air tankers, which emotionally
and psychologically resonate with the public opinion (Collins, et al., 2013; Collins,
2012). The suppression oriented model is usually inspired by an urban centric
perspective, where the traditional use of fire in management is excluded if not
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criminalized, so rejecting contribution and ability or specific knowledge and strategies
about fire prevention, use and suppression by local communities (FAO, 2011).
The suppression model is efficacious on low-medium intensity fires, but
unresponsive in case of large and extreme fires, where only firing techniques such as
suppression fire (Montiel, & Kraus, 2010) can be decisive. Not fully exploiting the
opportunities and results of fire science knowledge and information, it is moreover
obsolete and unfit to cope the trend toward larger and more damaging fires in a next
future, since “The wildfire threat will worsen, with no end in sight, as long as the
current approach to wildfire management continues. By always aggressively
suppressing fires now, we are transferring worsening fire risks into the future” (Olson,
& Bengston, 2015: p.5). Although it is a common statement that the model is not
sustainable (Olson, Bengston, Devaney, & Thompson, 2015; Tedim, Leone, &
Xanthopoulos, 2015), it fits the public demand for total suppression, driven by an often
irrational assessment of the wildfire risk.
An evaluation of the suppression paradigm in terms of Strengths, Weaknesses,
Opportunities, and Threats by a SWOT Analysis (Ghazinoory, Abdi, & Azadegan-Mehr,
2011; Lu, 2010; Marino, et al., 2014; Meddour-Sahar, 2015; Suh, & Emtage, 2005) is
exposed in Table 1. In a situation of predominating Weaknesses and Threats, as clearly
shown in SWOT Analysis, where S<W, O<T (their number are 8 v. 20, 4 v. 10,
respectively), a possible strategy, out of the possible four based on pairing of factors
(S,W,O,T), is the WT one (called mini-mini or defending strategy), aimed at
minimizing and exploiting the possible changes of the weaknesses (Vulturescu,
Ghiculescu, & Tîtu, 2011). This strategy is consistent with the shift of paradigm and
alternatives towards more sustainable ways to “coexist with fire” (Moritz, et al., 2014;
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Olson, & Bengston, 2015; Paton, Buergelt, Tedim, & McCaffrey, 2015; Smith, et al.,
2016).
Table 1. SWOT analysis of “war against fire” paradigm
“Coexist with fire”: a new paradigm
In order to reverse the escalating trend of the impacts of wildfires in both social and
ecological systems, the new paradigm assumes that, as a natural process, fire has both
beneficial (e.g., ecological role in sustaining biodiversity and ecosystem services, life-
sustaining tool for rural communities), and detrimental effects (e.g., conservation threat,
economic and social disruption, damages and fatalities) (Myers, 2006).
Accommodating these contrasting effects of wildfires is a true challenge for wildfire
management agencies (McGee, McFarlane, & Tymstra, 2015).
“Coexist with fire” is a distinctive paradigm from the “war against fire”, because it
adopts a proactive and long term approach and is inspired by the need to look for more
sustainable solutions for the social construct of the wildfire problem. Nay the social
representations attributed to fire, the perceptions and beliefs of societies and
organizations demand a less conflictive coexistence between people and fire, which
involves complex trade-offs (ERIKSEN, & HEAD, 2014) to minimize its detrimental
effects. This requires participatory approaches and shared responsibility between
institutions and actively engaged communities at risk (McCaffrey, 2015; Moritz, et al.,
2014; Smith, et al., 2016), to make them fire-resilient (Olson, & Bengston, 2015;
Smith, et al., 2016) i.e. able to cope with fire “as a natural and inevitable hazard”
(Moritz, et al., 2014: p.64).
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Approaches, programs, and policies in line with this perspective of wildfire
resilience are already ongoing (Table 2) and show that wildfire realm did not escape to
the resilience collective surge in science, policy, and practice that is still escalating
(Tierney, 2015). Programs such as FireSmart, Firewise Communities, Fire-Adapted
Communities mainly operate in Wildland Urban Interfaces (WUI), and act on the
characteristics of buildings and vegetal landscape by suggesting: i) protecting structures
by adequately wide defensible spaces around them; ii) eliminating flammable
vegetation in home ignition zone, adjacent to structures, to limit ember sources and
direct flame contact; iii) use of fire-resistant building materials for making buildings
safer and fire resistant (e.g., building codes); and iv) reducing the amount of fuel in
nearby areas, removing trees and brush and choosing suitable fire-resistant plants for a
firewise landscaping (CFA, 2011). A more effective approach is for local governments
to pass building codes, protection zone requirements, standards for subdivision design,
and some minimal land use restrictions to prevent building in very specific, highly
dangerous locations (Olson, & Bengston, 2015), making roads easily accessible to fire-
fighting crews (Kousky, Olmstead, & Sedjo, 2011), having an adequate water supply
and road access (CFA, 2011).
Table 2. Synopsis of approaches of resilient wildfire management frameworks,
programs and strategies
All the above mentioned frameworks neglect that the origin and root causes of
events are in the Coupled Human and Natural Systems (CHNS) (Liu, Goodrick,
Stanturf, & Tian, 2007; Spies, et al., 2014) or Social-Ecological Systems (SES)
(Berkes, Colding, & Folke, 2003; Berkes, Folke, & Colding, 1998). They mainly
operate at landscape level, and cover portions of it, which are limited to single assets or
a community and the immediate surrounding spaces (Tedim, Leone, & Xanthopoulos,
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2015). These actions realize a patchwork that only reduces the intensity and severity of
fires that enter the treated properties, but have no general effect; they just focus on the
vulnerability of the structures to decrease the WUI wildfire disasters, which are clearly
not a wildfire control problem but a home ignition problem (Calkin, Cohen, Finney, &
Thompson, 2014). Such fire resilience approach proposes fire adaptation, focused on
individual residents’ actions in an institutional vacuum (Abrams, et al., 2015; Steelman,
2008). Resilience programs and strategies appear as a more proactive, positive, and
transformative expression of wildfire disaster reduction; however, the use of resilience
encloses also problems and challenges discussed in the following section.
ENHANCING RESILIENCE IN WILDFIRE RISK MANAGEMENT: PROBLEMS,
AND CHALLENGES
Problems and challenges
In wildfire scientific literature or political strategies, many times the term resilience
has been used without a clear definition of its meanings (e.g., Forestry Commission,
2014; Olson, & Bengston, 2015; Smith, et al., 2016). This is not a minor issue, for a
term with a long historical etymology (Alexander, 2013), used by diverse academic
disciplines and political arenas with different meanings, and serving different purposes
(Cretney, 2014; Cutter, et al., 2008; Manyena, 2006; Norris, et al., 2008; Reghezza-Zitt,
et al., 2012; Tierney, 2015; Weichselgartner, & Kelman, 2015; Welsh, 2014). The
concept of resilience is increasingly fashionable, attractive, and central to politicians,
stakeholders, and scientists probably due to “the ‘elasticity’ of the term and the
‘flexibility’ of the concept”, although with a danger “that the term becomes an empty
signifier that can easily be filled with any meaning to justify any specific goal”
(Weichselgartner, & Kelman, 2015: p.1).
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The plethora of scientific definitions of resilience does not diminish its pertinence
and value. Despite the absence of agreement on its definition, there is some consensus
on broad parameters of resilience, namely the capacity to respond to, and recover from,
or re-organize and change (Norris, et al., 2008) after a hazard event to reduce its
impacts (Cutter, 2014; Cutter, et al., 2008; Manyena, 2006; McAslan, 2010). So it can
be seen as a strategy for effective disaster preparedness and response (Cretney, 2014;
Norris, et al., 2008), while in political domain, it has been appropriated by neoliberal
ideology as a form of governance (e.g., Chandler, 2014; Tierney, 2015; Walker, J., &
Cooper, 2011; Welsh, 2014). Resilience can be a positive approach to reduce wildfires
negative impacts but it faces several challenges. The main problem stays on how
resilience is instrumentalized by political and economic elites to serve their powerful
interests, and used by institutional apparatus to fashion their structures just to guarantee
their persistence against external and internal factors of change (Welsh, 2014).
Resilience should neither be imprisoned in ideological constructions nor be a pretext to
legitimize the implementation of neoliberal actions focused on market, which make
citizens simple passive consumers of safety services sold by companies, instead of
political actors (Tierney, 2015). It is of paramount importance to avoid the idea that
resilience can only be built by technocratic expensive solutions. In a context of a
neoliberal technical-reductionist framework and a state-society relationship
characterized by a diminished state and superseded private–public partnerships
(Tierney, 2015; Walsh-Dilley, & Wolford, 2015), a segment of society can become even
more vulnerable due to an irreversible incapacity to prepare and to recover from a
hazard event. Resilience should not be a pretext to facilitate the abdication of
responsibility by the collective relocating it to the individual (Welsh, 2014).
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In the process of coping with change and uncertainty crucial features of resilience
are resistance (or persistence), adaptation (or adaptability), and transformation (or
transformability). Resistance (or persistence) is the ability to conserve what we have
and recovering to what we were (Folke, et al., 2010; Pelling, & Manuel-Navarrete,
2011). Adaptation (or adaptability) refers to the capacity of a social-ecological system
to learn, change, and maintain within critical thresholds (Berkes, Colding, & Folke,
2003). Transformation (or transformability) is the capacity to create a new system
involving shifts in its attributes, including values and beliefs, the legislative frame, and
governance model (Olsson, Galaz, & Boonstra, 2014; Walker, Holling, Carpenter, &
Kinziq, 2004; Walker, & Salt, 2006).
A resilient society acquires and develops multiple endogenous abilities to cope with
wildfire, to reduce damages and avoid loss of life, focusing on readiness, on an
improved suppression response, on resisting to the event, and on resources to
compensate people who suffered losses. However, reaching all these goals in the most
efficacious and probably economic way is feasible if resilience building is integrated
with vulnerability and hazard reduction. It takes profit of the valuable research done in
the last decades on vulnerability and, in general, on disaster risk reduction. Anyhow
resilience is not a panacea; frameworks based on better integration of resilience,
vulnerability and hazard reduction could achieve better results. In order to fit with the
inherently wide scope of wildfire resilience and to clear its meaning to policy makers
and stakeholders, we propose the operational definition of wildfire resilience as the set
of capacities and characteristics of individuals and communities to take advantages of
the beneficial use of fire, to cope with its detrimental effects by modifying and
neutralizing the components which make fire a hazard, as well as recovering from such
negative impacts.
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Building resilience thus requires: i) to address the structural causes of unwanted
wildfires; ii) to act on the likelihood of extreme behavior of wildfires; iii) to reduce
vulnerability i. e. exposure and fragility or sensitivity of the exposed elements.
Vulnerability and hazard represent different manifestations of disaster risk creation
(Lewis, & CICERO (Center for International Climate and Environmental Research -
Oslo), 2012) and influence resilience. Enhancing resilience in wildfire management
means to build strong local capacities supported by a shared governance system, where
people empowered can receive the assistance (e.g., information, resources) they need
from the state and public agencies.
A resilience building program starts with the integration of updated existing
knowledge to guide the operational practices. Resilience building is a dynamic,
complex, and long term social-ecological and behavioral construction, which requires a
comprehensive picture of community to guide the operational practice; it can hardly be
reached by using secondary data (Paveglio, Boyd, & Carroll, 2016; Tedim, 2012;
Tedim, et al., 2014) or a set of pre-determined non-contextual parameters or static
indicators (Coetzee, Van Niekerk, & Raju, 2016; Zobel, 2011). On the contrary, it
requires accurate data and contextual dynamic indicators to identify the fields for
intervention (Miller, et al., 2010). Resilience must be created and maintained by
individual and collective actors (i.e. individual, household, community and society
levels), and supported by an adaptive management process (Coetzee, Van Niekerk, &
Raju, 2016; Pelling, & Manuel-Navarrete, 2011).
An operational wildfire resilience framework
Resilience perspective can be seen in terms of how well society deals with wildfire
disturbances, using a holistic approach integrating ecosystems, the built environment,
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the individuals, communities and society in an interrelational and place-based
perspective. Building wildfire resilience requires taking in consideration its different
dimensions: physical (e.g., robustness of buildings and infrastructures); organizational
(e.g., organization of the response apparatus); social (e.g., preparedness shelter, access
for evacuation). This holistic approach requires integrating knowledge from different
scientific domains (e.g., psychology, social sciences, engineering, urban planning, fire
ecology) looking for resilience building measures not just based on enhancing the
ability to withstand shocks (engineering resilience) but also adapting or even
transforming in response to them (Welsh, 2014).
Considering that wildfire can be changed in its characteristics (i. e. intensity and
severity) so reducing fire hazard and decreasing vulnerability, we propose an
operational framework with specific actions to enhance wildfire resilience (Fig.1)
which link it with the components of the disaster cycle (Deeming, 2013; Jakes, &
Sturtevant, 2013). Given the complex and dynamic interdependence between people
and nature in the construction of wildfire, risk should be seen through the lens of
social–ecological resilience (Berkes, Colding, & Folke, 2003; Folke, 2006; Folke, et al.,
2010; Miller, et al., 2010; Walker, B., Holling, Carpenter, & Kinziq, 2004) or
evolutionary resilience (Davoudi, et al., 2012; Simmie, & Martin, 2010), and
management of risk reduction (i.e. hazard and vulnerability) that takes place in the
context of everyday life (Cutter, 2014; Paton, Dougals, & Tedim, 2012).
Fig. 1 Wildfire resilience operational framework.
A resilient society should act on fire hazard by reducing the number of
anthropogenic ignitions, decreasing fire intensity and the rate of spread; on
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vulnerability, by lessening the propensity of exposed elements to suffer damage and
loss (Birkmann, Kienberger, & Alexander, 2014) when impacted by a wildfire; and
finally by enhancing the capacity of response and recovery.
THE FIRE SMART TERRITORY: AN INNOVATIVE STRATEGY OF “COEXIST
WITH FIRE”
Fire Smart Territory: the concept
In the studies and strategies for resilience to wildfire two main scales have been
followed. One focuses on the engineering view of resilience, mainly by adopting
measures for the protection of homes and other assets. The other is referred to
landscape or forest management, based on the use of the term resilience as: (i) the
capacity of ecosystems to bounce-back, reproducing the floristic composition present
before the event (i.e., ecological resilience) (Lloret, Calvo, Pons, & Díaz-Delgado,
2002; Vaz, 2009); or (ii) interventions to reduce intensity and severity of wildfires,
consisting of change of fuel continuity, decrease of fuel load, use of silvicultural
measures, planned burning, grazing, control of access, and firefighting infrastructures
(Forestry Commission, 2014).
In both cases resilience is fundamentally aimed to reduce the impacts of fire, not
certainly to “coexist with fire” which requests an approach addressing all the phases of
disaster cycle and a local intervention at the scale of territory (Fig. 2), the latter
intended as a socially appropriated space, closely “interconnected with society on
different spatial, temporal and social scales” (Raffestin, 1980: p. 12). Territory
encompasses both the human, the natural and the ecological systems, and landscape as
the picture of their interaction (Raffestin, 2015), framed by power relationships and a
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system of governance, where the choices and capabilities of the actors, influence the
conditions for wildfires to start and their impacts (Fig. 3). Building wildfires resilience
with a focus on the territory represents the opportunity both to understand the political
and social processes that are responsible for disaster risk creation and to support the
solutions to contain an eminently anthropogenic hazard.
Fig. 2 - Scale of intervention and measures from different approaches and programs
following the perspective of "living with fire" (A-“FireSmart: community protection”,
“Firewise Communities”, “Fire adapted communities”; B- “Integrated fire
management”, “Fire smart landscape management”; C-“Community-based fire
management” [Source: (Tedim, 2016) ]
Fig. 3 - Territory, landscape and community relationship
Following such opinion, the novel concept of Fire Smart Territory (FST) has been
developed (Tedim, Leone, & Xanthopoulos, 2015, 2016). FST is “a fire prone territory
in which the integration of economic and social activities aimed at risk reduction and
conservation on natural values and ecosystem services is accomplished by aware and
well trained empowered communities, able to decide the objectives and practices for
preventing, controlling or utilizing fire” (Tedim, Leone, & Xanthopoulos, 2015: p. 224).
FST proposes:
(i) to overcome the general anti-fire bias, and reduction of the conflictive
relationship with fire, so sustaining its beneficial aspects while reducing the risks,
through understanding its role in natural and human systems;
(ii) understanding the wildfire problem in each territory not through sectoral
ecological or social approaches independently considered, but by a holistic approach,
grounded on the concept of CHNS or SES; fire is not a natural process with social
overtones but a social one, culturally framed and transmitted (Pyne, 2000);
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(iii) the reduction of unwanted wildfires through the concertation of contrasting
interests (inside communities), the management of conflicts between individuals,
communities, and institutional bodies, and the integration of more wise and authorized
fire use in the daily activities of communities;
(iv) development of synergies and complementarities between prevention,
mitigation, preparedness, and suppression activities; and
(v) a new model of wildfire governance, based on shared and complementary
responsibilities and concerted roles of communities and institutions (Buergelt, & Paton,
2014), which is not shaped by neoliberal discourses and practices conceptions “that
involve symbiotic relationships among market and state actors” (Tierney, 2015: p.
1334) but based on a state-society relationship that recognizes citizens with rights.
The implementation of FST requires an empowered and trained society, assuming a
leading role in containing wildfires through ordinary and routinely actions in the daily
life, and not as an extra and dedicated activity (Paton, & Tedim, 2012; Tedim, & Paton,
2012). FST considers crucial avoiding that communities persist as indifferent or passive
spectators of suppression activities, and reluctant in assuming imposed and frequently
inadequate top-down prevention measures.
FST is not a “one size fits all” check list of procedures, but allows the development
of tailored solutions for building wildfire resilience. It is not based on the development
of technocratic measures but on low cost, nature-based, and social-based ones. It can
vary across space, and its configuration is determined by the choices, behaviors, and
resources of the communities where fires occur. Territories where wildfire problems are
mitigated or solved, could benefit from a certification system and be labeled with the
FST brand. The start of the process of operationalization of FST concept is September
2016, in three pilot areas in Portugal, in the frame of the research project FIREXTR-
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Prevent and prepare society for extreme fire events: the challenge of seeing the “forest”
and not just the “trees".
CONCLUSION
At global or national level a program aimed to eliminate the presence of wildfires is
unrealistic, but at local level some anthropogenic sources of unwanted fires can and
should be eliminated, while in other places it will be just possible to reduce the risk at
an acceptable level. Wildfire hazard refers to a largely expected, predictable, recurrent,
seasonal phenomenon, characterized by concentration and repetition of anthropic
causes in some geographic contexts, resulting from a complex interaction among
anthropogenic actions and environmental predisposing factors. Building resilience can
represent the solutions to such options, but its surge in wildfire field is not accompanied
by a robust conceptualization and operational framework; the scientific community,
closed in disciplinary perspectives, has been unable to offer a proper answer to the
practitioners, creating the occasion for the political appropriation of the term, whose
outcome can be very different from the one communities expect.
A resilient society develops capacities at different scales to cope with wildfire, not
exclusively focusing on preparedness, or on resisting and recover from the event, but
also acting on vulnerability reduction and on the likelihood and behavior of wildfire
hazard. It should be intended as the set of capacities or characteristics of individuals,
assets, and systems to take advantages of the beneficial use of fire and to minimize its
detrimental effects.
FST fits with the need to accommodate resilience in different ways as assumes that:
(i) it is possible to reduce hazard likelihood and intensity, and it is possible to decrease
vulnerability; (ii) resilience is not a simple adaptive process based on the inevitability
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of wildfires, but can result from deep changes in the organization an characteristics of
the social-ecological systems at risk. FST proposes low-cost social and nature-based
measures and does not share the resilience discourse as a neoliberal informed form of
governance that supports the shift of the burden of providing security from the state to
the individual. FST as a new strategy of wildfire risk management, adopting a social-
ecological resilience perspective, and establishing a new model of governance, appears
as a promising holistic approach.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work was prepared in the frame of project FIREXTR- Prevent and prepare society
for extreme fire events: the challenge of seeing the “forest” and not just the “trees", of
which the first author is team leader, co-financed by the European Regional
Development Fund (ERDF) through the COMPETE 2020 - Operational Program
Competitiveness and Internationalization (POCI Ref: 16702) and national funds by
FCT-Foundation for Science and Technology, Portugal, (FCT Ref:
PTDC/ATPGEO/0462/2014). We thank both institutions for making possible the project
activities (From July 2016 to May 2019) which will make possible the implementation
of Fire Smart Territory concept in pilot areas in Portugal (www.firextr.pt).
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Table 1- SWOT analysis of “war against fire” paradigm
STRENGTHS WEAKNESSES
Aggressive, hard, and fast attack to contain the size of fires, limit damages,
and cascading effects
Symptomatic and sectoral approach where wildfire is considered merely a
civil protection emergency issue
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Capacity and priority to protect people and assets
Fits the public demand and expectation for intervention
Gives people a feeling of safety even in high risk areas
Supported by structural prevention measures (e.g., lookout towers, water
points, fire breaks)
Politically expedient and consistent with the short “political life” of
deciders
Gets efficacious support from dedicated legislative corpus
A better deployment of resources, equipment and technology can improve
results
Incapacity to act on the reduction of fire occurrence
Scarce attention to land management measures of prevention (e.g.,
thinning, silvicultural activities), and risk awareness
Criminalization of the use of fire as a management tool
Neglect the fundamental ecological role of fire in ecosystems
Episodic use of prescribed burning, usually by institutional actors without
acknowledging Traditional Ecological Knowledge of rural people
Attack mainly based on water use; no provision and reluctance for use of
fire-for-fire control methods, such as backfire or burning-out (“suppression
fires”)
Wildfires easily overwhelming the extinction capacity of water use
Excess of expectation on the efficacy of the aerial intervention
Unresponsive during multiple simultaneous emergencies, and in case of
extreme and mega-fires
Difficult and costly intervention in WUI
Reactive in short term response to wildfire events, but diminished
importance as they are distanced by time
Approach to new challenges (e.g. climate change, societal changes) only
based on the reinforcement of equipment and new technologies, with
increases of costs
Resources mobilization concentrates on response instead of reinforcing
prevention and looking for the integration of the two
State centric and top-down legislation with little if any decision-making
powers at the local level
Disaster legislation skewed towards the response focus, with less attention
on the processes to reduce vulnerability and enhance resilience
Command-and-control structures akin to civil defence and civil protection
modes
Focus on building more the institutional capacity of firefighters than of
communities
A top-down bureaucratic structure
Scarce concertation with local populations and lack of participatory
approach
OPPORTUNITIES THREATS
The political mandates appreciate and reinforce the suppression
organization, whose short-terms results are visible and politically expedient
The legislative corpus sustains the activity and continuity of the
suppression model
Media and public opinion pressure support the suppression model
The efforts of the organizational system to guarantee its own survival and
resist to accept changes
Potential increase of hazardous landscapes due to the changes of
connectivity of vegetal cover
Expansion of the wildland-urban interface
Increased frequency and intensity of weather extreme conditions (e.g., heat
waves, droughts) and longer fire seasons
Decreasing availability of water resources
Uncertainty on anthropic impacts on wildfire regimes
Uncertainty on the contexts in which wildfire management will operate in
future
Increased vulnerabilities (e.g., economics, social) to wildfires
Possible decrease of human resources availability in rural areas to support
voluntary firefighters, due to depopulation and ageing
Escalating of mega-fires
Limited financial resources to sustain the increasing and staggering costs of
suppression
Table 2 Synopsis of approaches of resilient wildfire management frameworks,
programs and strategies
APPROACHES/
PROGRAMS/
POLICIES
DESCRIPTION SPATIAL SCALE
APPROACHES AND PROGRAMS
Fire smart forest/
landscape
management
Use management activities to alter the forest fuels for fire management
purposes also at landscape level (Hirsch et al., 2001; Fernandes, 2008, 2010)
Forest blocks;
landscape
Integrated fire
management (IFM)
IFM focuses on fire’s ecological role, and its benefits and risks to society.
This is achieved by preventing damaging fires and maintaining desirable fire
regimes with beneficial ecological and/or economic roles in maintaining
ecosystem stability and sustainable land management and productivity.
(Myers, 2006; Pyeongchang Declaration, Korea, 2015).
Landscape
conservation area,
landscape or region
FireSmart The approach to make sure that a house can survive a wildfire with little or Single home
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24
no damage ( https://www.firesmartcanada.ca/what-is-firesmart) (Canada)
Ready, Set, Go!
initiative (RSG)
RSG initiative urges WUI residents to prepare their homes and property for
fire season, be prepared if they need to evacuate, and then go at the first hint
of danger (http://wildfiretoday.com/2009/05/28/policy-of-prepare-stay-
defend-or-leave-early-is-under-fire/)
Single home (USA)
Stay and Defend or
Leave Early Approach
(SDLE)
Residents decide whether to stay and defend their property which requires
appropriated preparations in advance or to leave well before a fire threatens
but is not yet in the area (McCaffrey & Rhodes, 2009; Tibbits & Whittaker,
2007).
Single home
(Australia)
Firewise Community A community which takes appropriate measures to become more resistant to
wildfire structural damage (http://www.firewise.org/about.aspx).
Single home,
neighborhood,
community (USA)
Fire Adapted
Community
A knowledgeable and engaged community in which the awareness and
actions of residents regarding infrastructure, buildings, landscaping, and the
surrounding ecosystem lessens the need for extensive protection actions and
enables the community to safely accept fire as a part of the surrounding
landscape (http://www.fs.fed.us/fire/prev_ed/fac/faqs.pdf)
Assets; surrounding
environment;
community (USA)
Community based
wildfire
Management
(CBFiM)
A fire management strategy, sometimes independent of state or national
government support (Pronto, 2016) grounded on local communities in the
identification and application of land-use fires, wildfire prevention and
suppression (FAO, 2008).
Community
POLICY STRATEGIES AT NATIONAL SCALE
National Strategy for
Disaster Resilience
(NSDR)
In a disaster resilient community empowered people understand the risks
they are exposed to, have anticipated disasters to protect themselves and their
assets and livelihoods, work together with local leaders and in partnership
with emergency services to withstand and recover from emergencies and
disasters (https://www.coag.gov.au/sites/default/files/national_strategy_
disaster_resilience.pdf)
State; communities;
(Australia)
The National
Cohesive Wildland
Fire Management
Strategy (NCWFMS)
NCWFMS is a strategic push to work collaboratively among all stakeholders
and across all landscapes, using best science, to make meaningful progress
towards the three goals: Resilient Landscapes, Fire Adapted Communities,
Safe and Effective Wildfire Response. To safely and effectively extinguish
fire when needed; use fire where allowable; manage natural resources; and as
a nation, to live with wildland fire” (WFEC 2014;
https://www.forestsandrangelands.gov/strategy/thestrategy.shtml)
State; communities;
landscape (USA)
Forestry
Commission
planning program
Guidelines for building wildfire resilience into forest management planning
with the aim to reduce the likelihood and severity of fires in forests and
woodlands (Forestry Commission, 2014)
Forest (United
Kingdom)
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Fig. 1 Wildfire resilience operational framework
Fig. 2 - Comparison of the scale of intervention and the type of measures from different approaches and
programs following the perspective of "living with fire" (A-“FireSmart: community protection”,
”Firewise Communities”, “Fire adapted communities”, “Risk-to-resilience continuum”; B- “Integrated
fire management”, “Fire smart landscape management”; C-“Community-based fire management”
(Source: Tedim, 2016)
Fig. 3 - Territory, landscape and community relationship
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