New perspectives in fire management in South American savannas: The importance of intercultural governance

Abstract

Wildfires continue to cause damage to property, livelihoods and environments around the world. Acknowledging that dealing with wildfires has to go beyond fire-fighting, governments in countries with fire-prone ecosystems have begun to recognize the multiple perspectives of landscape burning and the need to engage with local communities and their practices. In this perspective, we outline the experiences of Brazil and Venezuela, two countries where fire management has been highly contested, but where there have been recent advances in fire management approaches. Success of these new initiatives have been measured by the reduction in wildfire extent through prescribed burning, and the opening of a dialogue on fire management between government agencies and local communities. Yet, it is clear that further developments in community participation need to take place in order to avoid the appropriation of local knowledge systems by institutions, and to better reflect more equitable fire governance.

Full text

PERSPECTIVE
New perspectives in fire management in South American
savannas: The importance of intercultural governance
Jayalaxshmi Mistry , Isabel Belloni Schmidt, Ludivine Eloy,
Bibiana Bilbao
Received: 12 October 2017 / Revised: 25 January 2018 / Accepted: 27 March 2018
Abstract Wildfires continue to cause damage to property,
livelihoods and environments around the world.
Acknowledging that dealing with wildfires has to go
beyond fire-fighting, governments in countries with fire-
prone ecosystems have begun to recognize the multiple
perspectives of landscape burning and the need to engage
with local communities and their practices. In this
perspective, we outline the experiences of Brazil and
Venezuela, two countries where fire management has been
highly contested, but where there have been recent
advances in fire management approaches. Success of
these new initiatives have been measured by the
reduction in wildfire extent through prescribed burning,
and the opening of a dialogue on fire management between
government agencies and local communities. Yet, it is clear
that further developments in community participation need
to take place in order to avoid the appropriation of local
knowledge systems by institutions, and to better reflect
more equitable fire governance.
Keywords Brazil Fire policy Indigenous Savanna 
Traditional knowledge Venezuela
THE BURNING ISSUE
Wildfires wreak havoc on habitats and peoples around the
world. The 2017 Chile wildfires, 2016 Fort McMurray fires
in Canada, the regular catastrophic bushfires in Australia,
Portugal and the USA, and the annual burning of vast tracts
of forest and savanna ecosystems in the Amazon Basin and
Indonesia are emblematic of this capacity for impact. Over
the decades, scientists have expanded our understanding of
fire behaviour and ecology, the effects of burning on
landscape dynamics, soils and biodiversity, and fire’s
contribution to global warming (Scott et al. 2014,2016).
Yet, the extensive occurrence of wildfires continues to
highlight the gap between fire policies largely conceived in
classic conservation terms within colonial histories, and
local burning practices situated in specific environmental
contexts (Eloy et al. 2018).
At the same time, there is mounting evidence to show
the critical role of indigenous and traditional communities
in effective fire management (Trauernicht et al. 2015). For
example, satellite imagery from northern South America
suggests that indigenous lands have lower incidence of
wildfires and deforestation rates, which significantly con-
tribute to maintaining carbon stocks and biodiversity
(Nepstad et al. 2006; Nelson and Chomitz 2011; Flantua
et al. 2013; Nolte et al. 2013; Welch et al. 2013; Walker
et al. 2015). However, traditional ecological knowledge
(TEK) on fire management is still poorly described, rarely
addressing the spatial and seasonal patterns of local burn-
ing practices within the landscape. With the now wide-
spread recognition that eliminating landscape fires is not
only ecologically, but also socially and economically
unviable in fire-prone ecosystems (Bilbao et al. 2010;
Durigan and Ratter 2016; Mistry et al. 2016), countries in
South America are moving towards the potential of an
‘intercultural fire governance’ (Rodrı
´guez et al. 2013a,b);
governance that acknowledges the multiple perspectives of
landscape burning, thus reducing conflict amongst stake-
holders, and supporting locally threatened biological and
cultural diversity.
FROM ZERO FIRE TO PRESCRIBED BURNING
Fire has been used as a management tool by traditional
communities in savanna and forest environments around
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https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-018-1054-7

the world for millennia (Bowman et al. 2011) and some
ecosystems such as tropical savannas are dependent on
regular burning (Durigan and Ratter 2016; de Carvalho
and Mustin 2017). Nevertheless, most countries adopted
‘zero-fire’ policies intended to avoid and control virtually
any fires, by focusing on fire-fighting techniques such as
fire brigades, technical support in the form of helicopters
and trucks, and predictive fire risk modelling, as well as
environmental education programmes to dissuade indige-
nous and local people from burning. Critiques of wide-
spread fire suppression policies underlined the unique role
fire plays in the ecologies and cultures in many parts of
the world, as well as highlighting the ineffectiveness of
these policies (McDaniel et al. 2005; Sletto 2008;Sor-
rensen 2009; Carmenta et al. 2013; Mistry et al. 2016).
This stimulated a turn in the tide as fire managers realized
that a different approach was needed; one that addressed
the continued occurrence of wildfires with the changing
socio-economic situation of countries, the conflict of
interests with local communities, and the emerging effects
of climate change.
Indeed, after several decades of frustrated attempts to
implement zero-fire policies, Brazil and Venezuela have,
over the last 2–3 years, started to consider and implement
fire management policies (Bilbao et al. 2010,2017;
Schmidt et al. 2016,2018) (Box 1). These policies seek to
reintroduce fire as a management tool in fire-prone
ecosystems in order to (re)create seasonal mosaic land-
scapes, manage dry fuel and avoid large and catastrophic
wildfires. This represents a major paradigm shift in fire
management policies. In Brazil, prescribed early dry
season fires, based on the Australian savannas experiences
of valuation and reinterpretation of indigenous burning
practices (Bliege Bird et al. 2008; McGregor et al. 2010;
Russell-Smith et al. 2013,2015), are an important aspect
of the management techniques which aim to consider
TEK and actively involve local communities. In Vene-
zuela, the integration of indigenous burning practices with
ecological knowledge from long-term collaborative fire
experiments in savanna-forest gradients constituted the
basis of a patch-mosaic burning model to be applied in
Canaima National Park (Bilbao et al. 2006,2009,2010;
Rodrı
´guez et al. 2013a,b). However, while signifying
major advances, as we discuss below these new fire
management programmes need to be based on rigorous
assessment of the local socio-ecological context in Brazil
and Venezuela to ensure management goals are achieved.
For example, the excessive concentration on early dry
season fires to prevent late dry season fires may in fact
affect the existence of landscape pyrodiversity and
exclude local productive activities (Oliveira et al. 2015;
Petty et al. 2015; Laris et al. 2016).
Box 1 Recent fire management developments in Brazil and
Venezuela
Since 2014, Brazil and Venezuela have started to consider and
implement fire management policies, through networks of
research, expertise and international cooperation.
In Brazil, the Ministry of Environment, co-funded by the German
Cooperation Agency and piloted in three large ([150 000 ha)
protected areas (PAs) initiated the Cerrado–Jalapa
˜o project.
Located in the northern Cerrado (savanna), this Integrated Fire
Management programme aims to: (i) change the predominant
burning season in PAs, especially reducing the areas hit by late-
dry season wildfires; (ii) protect fire-sensitive vegetation, such
as riparian forests, from wildfires; (iii) enhance PA staff
decision-making and fire management abilities, and; (iv)
decrease conflicts between PA and local communities. The
project has close links with the Australian savanna fire
management model (Russell-Smith et al. 2013,2015) and
involves advice and exchanges between Australian and
Brazilian park managers (Schmidt et al. 2018). Local research
to determine management goals and fire regimes, and
continuous evaluation will be essential to adapt international
experiences to the Brazilian socio-ecological context.
In Venezuela, there has been a longer history of trying to move
away from solely fire-fighting, focused in the Canaima
National Park (CNP) in the south-east of the country. The
CNP contains the headwaters of the Caronı
´River which
supplies the Guri Reservoir where 70% of the country’s
hydroelectric power is generated. Here, wildfires are a regular
occurrence, and in spite of carrying out expensive and
enormous fire suppression efforts, on average only 13% of
total fires are combated (EDELCA-CORPOELEC 2008). A
series of participatory action research projects funded by the
national science financing agency (FONACIT) have brought
together ancestral Pemo
´n indigenous fire knowledge,
scientific debate and inclusive dialogue between indigenous
communities, fire-fighters, institutional and academic
stakeholders about the socio-ecological issues of the CNP
(Bilbao et al. 2010,2017; Rodrı
´guez et al. 2013a,b). Fire
experiments initiated in 1999 for 11 years in savanna-forest
gradients simulating traditional Pemo
´n fire management
techniques have shown how burning at different times during
the dry season generate heterogeneous fuel patterns and
biodiversity which reduce the risk of hazardous wildfires and
protect the most vulnerable and diverse riparian and tropical
humid forests (Bilbao et al. 2006,2009,2010).
In the past 2 years, the Brazilian and Venezuelan experiences
have converged in several meetings and workshops, and we
(the authors) have organized and facilitated multi-stakeholder
meetings on fire management in Parupa, Venezuela (2015)
a
and in Brasilia, Brazil (2017)
b
involving local indigenous and
traditional community representatives, scientists,
environmental managers and government officials. These
have contributed to the development of a national fire
management policy in Brazil (currently at consultation phase
with the explicit aim to include traditional fire practices and
promote intercultural fire management) and the adoption of
intercultural and participatory fire management by the
Venezuelan government as part of their core policies and
plans for the Venezuelan Protected Areas National System.
a
See http://projectcobra.org/participatory-and-intercultural-fire-
management-network
b
See http://projectcobra.org/report-on-intercultural-and-participatory-
fire-management
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INITIAL LESSONS LEARNED
There are advances and challenges associated with the new
fire management approaches in Brazil and Venezuela.
Here, we point out some of the inherent tensions and bar-
riers faced by fire managers.
This is the first time in Brazil and Venezuela that natural
resource managers are actively planning and starting large-
scale prescribed fires, a major step forward for conserva-
tion agencies (Rodrı
´guez et al. 2013a,b; Milla
´n2015;
Bilbao et al. 2017; Schmidt et al. 2016,2018). Although
there is a growing body of scientific knowledge on the
effects of fire on Neotropical biodiversity (Durigan and
Ratter 2016), not all species or situations have been stud-
ied. This is especially important when one considers the
broadly applicable information fire managers might need or
use to take management decisions (Driscoll et al. 2010).
The inherent dynamic nature of fire means that predicting
the outcomes of all actions is impossible, and a decision of
no-action (not actively managing fire) is also a manage-
ment decision with consequences.
In Brazil, for example, the past decades of ‘zero-fire’
policies in protected areas of the Cerrado (savanna) biome
have commonly led to large ([50 000 ha) areas being
consumed by wildfires in several hours or a few days
(Barradas 2017). Similarly, Canaima National Park in
Venezuela has been subject to increasingly larger fires,
reaching 32 000 ha in a single dry season, fuelled by high
accumulation of dry combustible materials (Bilbao et al.
2010). The human and financial resources mobilized to try
to control such wildfires exceed several times the protected
areas’ annual budget. The detrimental consequences of
such wildfires should therefore be compared to the poten-
tial benefits of smaller, controlled fires started with the
intention to create a burning mosaic that helps avoid
wildfire propagation. For that, managers should be allowed
to perform fire management considering uncertainty, and
the fact that all species and/or effects will not be known in
these highly diverse ecosystems.
Acknowledging that traditional groups from different
localities have in-depth contextual knowledge on fire
management (Mistry et al. 2005; Bilbao et al. 2010; Welch
2015; Eloy et al. 2017), new fire management policies in
Brazil and Venezuela are attempting to incorporate TEK
into their processes and techniques. In Brazil, for example,
elders from local communities are engaged to produce fire
calendars that form part of the prescribed burning plans. In
some instances, where the traditional practices of fire
management were lost, for example in the Indigenous
territory of the Xerente, Brazil, institutions are ‘rescuing’
TEK to reapply it for conservation purposes (Falleiro et al.
2016). A national fire management policy currently being
drafted in Brazil aims to explicitly include TEK and its
adaptive capacity to address current and future environ-
mental challenges. In Venezuela, the indigenous Pemo
´n
communities of Canaima National Park have been involved
in joint ecological experiments as a process of strength-
ening and regaining fire TEK, as well as consulting and
learning from elders on fire calendars and ancestral prac-
tices. Improved dialogue between communities and insti-
tutions has led to a greater receptiveness by the Pemo
´nto
exchange and share their knowledge. The new fire man-
agement plan for the Park will consider both traditional,
technical and scientific knowledge to decide where, when
and how to set fires, as well as include formal agreements
between communities, EDELCA, INPARQUES and the
Ministry of Science and Technology (Bilbao et al. 2017).
These developments in fire policy and associated pro-
grammes are significant, and government institutional
advocacy for greater intercultural and participatory fire
management must be recognized. At the same time, further
improvements in the process of involving traditional
communities could lead to better outcomes for all. At the
multi-stakeholder meeting on fire management in Brasilia
in 2017, we (the authors) asked the indigenous and tradi-
tional community representatives, scientists, environmental
managers and government officials, to reflect on the fol-
lowing: What is participation? How is this viewed and
implemented by different actors? How could the formation
of official brigades affect the dynamics of collective fire
management in the communities? Who makes the deci-
sions? How can conservation institutions and local com-
munities interact to improve fire governance? How can fire
management be a community owned solution? How can
fire management be integrated into people’s everyday
activities and livelihoods? How can indigenous and sci-
entific knowledge work together for more effective fire
management?
In the current policies, local community meetings are
central to the fire management programmes. However, staff
from environmental institutions are not trained nor used to
consider TEK to define or apply environmental policies,
exacerbated by the perception that TEK is something of the
past, static, without technical value and not responsive to
current and future challenges. In parallel, local communi-
ties have no valid reason to believe or collaborate with
institutions that have marginalized their knowledge and
practices for so long. Therefore, when these meetings are
performed, participation seems to be more of a ‘consulta-
tion’ where TEK is seen as a source of information that can
be incorporated into institutionalized processes, thus
(re)establishing hierarchical relationships where
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environmental managers’ technical decisions are worth
more than local peoples’ opinions.
1
This can be made worse by the increasing dependency
on geospatial technologies and global science metrics
(emissions) (Sletto 2008; Mistry and Bizerril 2011;Car-
menta et al. 2013). In the well-documented Australian case,
large-scale burning often implemented by helicopters and
technicians, increased a sense of disengagement of Abo-
riginal people from their territory (Eriksen and Hankins
2014; Fache and Moizo 2015; Petty et al. 2015; Perry et al.
2018). Furthermore, to date, local participation in pre-
scribed burning schemes has come mostly in the form of
professionalized, and to some extent, militarized, rangers/
brigades. Brazil, for example, has invested in ‘community-
run’ brigades since the mid-2000s. Although these fire
brigades are used as a way to ‘integrate’ TEK and scientific
knowledge about fire management, the technical training
and the fact that people are hired specifically to manage fire
could move practices away from collective governance (a
norm in many traditional communities) to individual
actions, discouraging members of the wider community
from taking responsibility for wise fire management and
maintaining the subordination of local practices to those of
external experts (Mistry et al. 2016).
As seen in the Australian case, institutionalized fire
management programmes risk turning local communities
to beneficiaries of a service, rather than promoting self-
determination and responsibility for the management of the
land they live in (Eloy et al. 2016,2017). With a focus on
early dry season burning to protect against late dry season
wildfires, the policies fail to recognize that traditional fire
management is characterized by multiple, and sometimes
opportunistic, burning throughout the year linked to vari-
ous social, ecological and spiritual purposes, which pro-
duce the mosaic landscapes to help buffer the impacts of
climate variability and maintain biodiversity (Bilbao et al.
2009,2010; Laris et al. 2016). In addition, incorporating
local uses of fire for productive activities such as swidden
agriculture and livestock grazing can represent a challenge,
since these fires frequently depend on late dry season fires
which are generally perceived as ‘bad’ fires (Eloy et al.
2018).
Reflecting on Aboriginal fire management in northern
Australia, Petty et al. (2015) suggest that ‘‘it is inherent in
the nature of institutionalized management programs to
replace the complexity and contingency of indigenous fire
management with standardized goals’’ (p. 140). We see this
happening in Brazil.
2
Preliminary evidence from the Inte-
grated Fire Management (IFM) programme in Brazil shows
a small decrease in total burned area, but a significant
reduction in the percentage of late dry season emissions,
which is one of the main goals of the programme in the
three protected areas (Fig. 1). Since emissions from fires
account for 28% of land use emissions, this reduction is
now strategic for the Brazilian government and included in
its 2016 National Emission Inventory. However, there is
considerable uncertainty on the impacts of early dry season
burning on fire intensity and biodiversity (Oliveira et al.
2015; Laris et al. 2016). Long-term experiments from the
Gran Sabana, Venezuela have shown a higher daily vari-
ability in fire behaviour associated with weather conditions,
fine fuel load and wind velocity, compared to along the dry
season (Bilbao et al. 2006,2009,2010). Likewise, the
general pattern of plant cover and biomass recovering from
pre-fire conditions revealed higher and faster rates from
middle dry season burns compared to early and late burns
(Bilbao et al. 2009). A switch, therefore, from late to early
dry season burning requires much greater local level
assessments of above ground biomass, burn severity, fuel
burn completeness, and GHG emissions in order to provide
evidence for its efficacy towards improving savanna man-
agement and supporting local productive activities.
Achieving emissions reductions goals has led to a nar-
rative of and investment in ‘alternatives to the use of fire’
within the IFM programme. This is justified by arguments
that traditional fire knowledge has been or soon will be lost
so other solutions are needed, that fire-free methods are
more ‘modern’, productive and a way out of poverty, and
that carbon emissions from agriculture and grazing could
be reduced by fire-free farming and grazing techniques.
However, these approaches can only reinforce the idea that
traditional uses of fires are obsolete, indicating that
advancing fire management policies requires not only
technical and ecological information, but also much more
work on changing preconceptions and the dominant insti-
tutional discourses about fire use.
TOWARDS BETTER INTERCULTURAL
GOVERNANCE
Recent meetings in Parupa, Venezuela and in Brasilia,
Brazil facilitated by the authors and involving local com-
munity representatives, scientists, fire/environmental man-
agers and government officials, have shown the importance
of bridging local, technical and scientific understandings of
fire and its governance (Rodrı
´guez et al. 2013a,b; Mistry
1
However, note that in Venezuela, over the past few years, there has
been significant commitment and understanding from the Forest
Firefighters of INPARQUES about the role and importance of TEK,
and they have encouraged and promoted full participation of the
indigenous Pemo
´n in fire management.
2
The following observations are derived from presentations made at
the Cerrado-Jalapa
˜o project meeting in Brasilia in November 2017.
123 ÓThe Author(s) 2018
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and Berardi 2016). These events have allowed collabora-
tive and reflective dialogue on policy and practice, an
opportunity for learning across different communities, as
well as between communities and institutions. We argue
that supporting processes for integrating multiple per-
spectives through an ‘intercultural interface’ of institutions
and knowledge systems (Goldman et al. 2011; Howitt et al.
2013; Tengo
¨et al. 2014) is critical as Brazil and Venezuela
transition towards more participatory forms of fire man-
agement and governance. This can be done through:
– training decision-makers and PA managers in partici-
patory methods that encourage engagement with, and
appreciation of, indigenous and traditional perspectives
and practices of fire management. For example, in a
recent workshop focused on the management of
Canaima National Park, we facilitated training for
scientists and government agencies on participatory
video and community owned solutions approaches to
working with indigenous communities.
3
– legitimizing and strengthening indigenous and tradi-
tional fire management as a community owned solution
grounded in local social–ecological systems. For
example, promoting regional participatory workshops
and field experiments could help understand fire
behaviour, fire propagation and local productive fire
uses, and how they could be more effectively included
in fire management programmes. We are promoting
this in the Jalapa
˜o savanna region regarding the burning
of fire-sensitive wet grasslands. These areas are simul-
taneously targeted for fire management by local
Figure 1 Maps of burn scars according to fire season in the three protected areas of IFM implementation in the Brazilian savanna from 2014 to
2016. JSP Jalapao State Park, SGTES Serra Geral do Tocantins Ecological Station, CMNP Chapada das Mesas National Park. Prepared by
Ludivine Eloy (we used burn scars data from the Brazilian Institute of Space Research (INPE) (https://prodwww-queimadas.dgi.inpe.br/aq30m/),
with a 30-m resolution produced from Landsat imagery. Using ArcGIS software, we compiled all the shapes of burn scars from 2014 to 2016,
dividing data between three periods: early, modal and late, with at least three sets of data per period (early dry season: 16th October–15th July;
mid dry season: 16th July–15th August; late dry season: 16th September–15th October). We adopted ICMBio’s periods and classification for fire
seasons)
3
See http://projectcobra.org/learning-and-planning-together-for-
action-on-climate-change-mitigation-and-adaptation.
ÓThe Author(s) 2018
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communities for plant harvesting and cattle raising, and
by landscape managers for protecting fire-sensitive
riparian forests. Finding common fire management
practices of these wet grasslands can improve produc-
tive practices, conserve biodiversity and reduce
conflicts.
– creating spaces for continual multi-stakeholder conver-
sations about fire management, where different per-
spectives and experiences can be shared, and where
action plans to improve fire management can be co-
developed. Actions have to be aimed at encouraging
indigenous and traditional communities more auton-
omy with respect to implementing policies, including
the leadership and funding of fire management pro-
grammes. In Venezuela, a plan for joint training
between the Pemo
´n indigenous community of Kava-
naye
´n, Canaima National Park and Forest Firefighters
of INPARQUES is underway. Elders of the Kavanaye
´n
community will share their knowledge and train forest
firefighters on ancestral practices, and in turn firefight-
ers will train young Pemo
´n on fire combat techniques
used to control accidental wildfires. Prescribed fires
will be jointly planned, implemented and evaluated,
and indigenous representatives hope to share their
experiences with other indigenous communities in the
park.
Brazil and Venezuela, two countries where fire man-
agement has been highly contested, have undergone a
major paradigm shift in their approaches to fire manage-
ment. Despite the progressive nature of these policies, it is
critical that we build a collective adaptive learning envi-
ronment in which we can experiment and monitor fire
management methods and interventions while giving an
equal footing to scientific and local knowledge as valid
systems of information that can be used for fire gover-
nance. Only by working hand in hand, can we prevent
frequent catastrophic wildfires and maintain local com-
munities’ livelihoods and cultures that help to protect
highly threatened fire-prone ecosystems.
Acknowledgements We thank all the participants of the meetings in
Parupa and Brasilia, the communities of the Jalapa
˜o Region
(Mateiros, Tocantins State), IBAMA, ICMBio, Naturatins in Brazil,
Pemo
´n indigenous people from Kavanaye
´n, Forest Fire-fighters of
INPARQUES and Parupa Scientific Station (CVG) in Venezuela for
welcoming us and taking part in the research. Thanks to the two
reviewers for their insightful comments that greatly helped to improve
the paper. In Brazil, this study was funded by Gesellschaft fu
¨r
Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) through the ‘‘Cerrado Jalapa
˜o’’
Project. LE received research Grant from the CAPES through the
‘‘Cie
ˆncias sem fronteiras Fronteiras’’ Program (Grant Number
88881.068021/2014-01). JM and BB were supported by the British
Academy International Partnership and Mobility Scheme (Ref.
PM130370) and the Woodspring Trust, UK, and Venezuelan
FONACIT Risk and Apo
¨k Projects (Ref. 2011000376 and
G-2005000514).
Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted
use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give
appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a
link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were
made.
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AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES
Jayalaxshmi Mistry (&) is a Professor of Environmental Geography
at Royal Holloway University of London. Her research interests
include environmental governance, fire management, bridging
indigenous and scientific knowledge systems, and participatory
methods.
Address: Department of Geography, Royal Holloway University of
London, Egham, Surrey TW200EX, UK.
e-mail: j.mistry@rhul.ac.uk
Isabel Belloni Schmidt is an Assistant Professor at the University of
Brasilia. Her research interests include sustainable use and manage-
ment of Cerrado native areas, especially fire management and plant
harvesting.
Address: Departamento de Ecologia, Universidade de Brası
´lia, P.O.
Box 04457, Brası
´lia, DF CEP 70910-900, Brazil.
e-mail: isabelbschmidt@gmail.com
Ludivine Eloy is a Researcher in Geography at the French National
Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and Invited Researcher at
University of Brasilia. Her research interests include traditional
resource management practices and their interfaces with environ-
mental norms, agrobiodiversity and agricultural landscapes dynamics
in Brazil.
Address: National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), UMR 5281
ART-DEV, Paul Vale
´ry University, 34090 Montpellier, France.
Address: Centro de Desenvolvimento Sustenta
´vel, Campus Univer-
sita
´rio Darcy Ribeiro Gleba A Universidade de Brası
´lia - Asa Norte,
Brası
´lia, DF 70910-900, Brazil.
e-mail: ludivine.eloy@univ-montp3.fr
Bibiana Bilbao is a Professor at Simo
´n Bolı
´var University. Her
research interests include ecology of tropical savannas and human-
modified lands, and integration of ecological and indigenous knowl-
edge for sustainable and participatory management plans, especially
fire and natural resource management.
Address: Departamento de Estudios Ambientales, Universidad Simo
´n
Bolı
´var, Apartado 89000, Caracas 1080, Venezuela.
e-mail: bibiana.bilbao@gmail.com
123 ÓThe Author(s) 2018
www.kva.se/en
Ambio