Governing wildfires: toward a systematic analytical framework

Abstract

Despite recent research, a systematic approach to understanding wildfire governance is lacking. This article addresses this deficit by systematically reviewing governance theories and concepts applied so far in the academic literature on wildfires as a step toward achieving their more effective and holistic management. We engage our findings with the wider governance literature to unlock new thinking on wildfires as a process and outcome. This comparative approach enables us to propose a novel framework for analyzing wildfire governance based on four pillars: (1) actor participation in decision-making and decision taking; (2) actor collaboration and coproduction across and within levels, scales, and networks; (3) path dependencies and local place-based dynamics of wildfire incidence and comprehension; and (4) actor adaptation to and anticipation of wildfire risk to fashion effective institutions that address the global wildfire challenge. We show how this framework can help specify a suite of bespoke analytical and policy practitioner approaches to facilitate preemptive and restorative wildfire strategies via new networks between communities, states, and wider society, thus providing the basis for more equitable and sustainable governance of wildfire risks and impacts.

Uncharted territory: governance opportunities for wildfire management and the case of Cyprus

“…The methods for the two research aims were as follows (for further details see Supplementary File S1). According to a systematic review of wildfire governance systems (Kirschner et al 2023), much of the wildfire literature has implications for the governance of wildfire without being directly linked to the term conceptually. For this reason, we decided to conduct a targeted review to develop and inform characteristics of the wildfire challenge that form opportunities to their governance (research aim 1).…”

“…For this reason, anticipatory governance strategies are used for 'governing in the present to adapt to or shape uncertain futures' (Muiderman et al 2020, p. 1;Steelman 2016;Fischer et al 2016;Miller et al 2022;Kirschner et al 2023). This includes to overcome the assumption of a knowable future to unlink management strategies from historical conditions (Miller et al 2022), defining scenarios for upcoming years and decades, and the systematic monitoring of management outcomes beyond disaster-focused wildfire metrics such as area burned and with more attention to local wildfire regimes (Kelly et al 2019;Platt et al 2022;Essen et al 2023).…”

“…Wildfire activity is now understood as partially resulting from and interacting with the overarching governance system (Kirschner et al 2023;Mauri et al 2023), in addition to factors such as climate, landscape morphology and primary productivity (Bowman et al 2020). In this context, the 'governance system' describes the values, interests, organisational processes and institutions guiding decision making and decision-taking amongst state and non-state actors.…”

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

“…Regardless of their motives, to succeed, ongoing efforts to support local fire use will need to account for the effects and legacies of fire suppression policies, as well as other policy interventions that indirectly limit burning. Existing global syntheses point to the complex governance environment in which Indigenous fire management is situated (Nikolakis and Roberts 2020), and review governance theories that have been applied in the study of wildfires (Kirschner et al 2023). More regional reviews examine collaborative fire management between state agencies and Indigenous peoples in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the USA (Thomassin et al 2019), South America (Mistry et al 2016), and East and Southern Africa (Croker et al 2023a) specifically.…”

To burn or not to burn: governance of wildfires in Australia

“…Clarke et al 2022), this nuance is not always captured in how fire-prone landscapes are governed or managed in practice. Historical policies and practices also create path dependencies and even rigidity traps, where the status quo is maintained even when it is maladaptive (Méndez et al 2019), preventing place-based management of fire regimes and limiting capacity to respond to both new information and changing social and ecological conditions (Platt et al 2022, Kirschner et al 2023.…”