Changing fire regimes in East and Southern Africa’s savanna-protected areas: opportunities and challenges for indigenous-led savanna burning emissions abatement schemes

Abstract

Background Late dry-season wildfires in sub-Saharan Africa’s savanna-protected areas are intensifying, increasing carbon emissions, and threatening ecosystem functioning. Addressing these challenges requires active local community engagement and support for wildfire policy. Savanna burning emissions abatement schemes first implemented in Northern Australia have been proposed as a community-based fire management strategy for East and Southern Africa’s protected areas to deliver win–win-win climate, social, and biodiversity benefits. Here, we review and critically examine the literature exploring the design and application of savanna burning emissions abatement schemes in this region, characterizing their contextual and implementation challenges. Results We show that the application of Northern Australian savanna burning methodologies in East and Southern Africa tends to adopt centrally determined objectives and market-based approaches that prioritize carbon revenue generation at the national level. The exclusive prescription of early-dry season burns in African mesic savannas prone to woody thickening can compromise savanna burning objectives to mitigate late-dry season wildfires and their greenhouse gas emissions in the long-term, as well as present multiple biodiversity trade-offs in the absence of formal metrics monitoring species’ responses to changes in fire regime. These features restrict indigenous participation and leadership in fire management, creating uncertainties over the opportunities for local income generation through carbon trading. Findings suggest that future savanna burning applications will need to address asymmetries between formal institutions and local land governance systems, explicitly acknowledging colonial legacies in institutional arrangements across protected areas and hierarchies in agrarian politics that threaten processes of equitable decentralization in natural resource management. Conclusion We argue that the effective transfer of the Northern Australian fire management model is limited by a lack of long-term ecological and emissions data and political and institutional barriers, and is hindered by the region’s recent colonial history, population growth, and consequences of rapid climatic change. To provide a community-based strategy, savanna burning schemes need to establish context-specific legal frameworks and implement Free, Prior, and Informed Consent to safeguard the roles and responsibilities of indigenous and local people and their distribution of carbon benefits.

Decolonising Fire Science by Reexamining Fire Management across Contested Landscapes: A Workshop Approach

“…In recent history, anthropogenic climate change has intensified and increased the frequency of ENSO events in East Africa, resulting in multi-year droughts interspersed with heavy rainfall and flooding events [63]. Given that East Africa's wildfire seasons are more than a month longer than in the 1980s [64], the rapid accumulation of flammable biomass during wetter periods, largely concentrated in protected areas where fire suppression has been implemented, poses significant social-ecological threats and vulnerabilities [16].…”

“…The intentional decoupling of fire from its sociocultural and environment context since the late 1800s has contributed to the loss of traditional fire knowledge and homogenised Kenya's diverse pyro-geographies. Historical fire regimes, characterised by small-scale fires with heterogenous burning objectives and impacts, have been replaced with a singular, dominant fire regime, characterised by high-intensity wildfires concentrated within and around protected areas where fire suppression is enforced [16,71].…”

“…Since the mid-twentieth century, scientists and practitioners have increasingly recognised the regenerative role of fire in fire-dependent and fire-adapted ecosystems. This has resulted in the implementation of prescribed early dry season burning in some parts of the world [6,15], for example, in "Indigenous-led" savanna-burning emissions abatement schemes in Australia [16][17][18][19], and in many cultural burning projects in the USA [20][21][22]. However, most of the research informing early burning practices is based on field plot experiments with little or no human presence [3,23,24], rather than Indigenous peoples' interannual fire practices [25].…”

“…However, most of the research informing early burning practices is based on field plot experiments with little or no human presence [3,23,24], rather than Indigenous peoples' interannual fire practices [25]. The exclusive prescription of early burning in fire-dependent savanna woodlands and fire-adapted forests can alter ecosystem functioning and reduce carbon sequestration in the long-term where some high-intensity fires are necessary components of the systems' adaptive cycle [16].…”

How policy interventions influence burning to meet cultural and small-scale livelihood objectives

“…As of 2019, there were over 70 Indigenous burning projects in Northern Australia alone, accounting for 10% of Australia's carbon credit issuance. Drawing on the Australian example, there is now interest in developing similar prescribed burning projects with Indigenous people in savannas in Africa and Central and South America (ISFMI 2015, Lipsett-Moore et al 2018, Russell-Smith et al 2021, Croker et al 2023b. https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol29/iss1/art35/ From the reviewed literature it is difficult to assess how successful many of these policy interventions have been in (re)introducing burning practices, given the short-term nature and recency of many projects, and a lack of long-term evaluation.…”