Democratizing wildfire strategies. Do you realize what it means? Insights from a participatory process in the Montseny region (Catalonia, Spain)
Otero, Iago 1981- (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals)
Castellnou, Marc (Generalitat de Catalunya. Grup de Reforç d'Actuacions Forestals)
González, Itziar (Institut Cartogràfic de la Revolta)
Arilla, Etel (Generalitat de Catalunya. Grup de Reforç d'Actuacions Forestals)
Castell, Llorenç (Generalitat de Catalunya. Grup de Reforç d'Actuacions Forestals)
Castellví Mata, Jordi (Generalitat de Catalunya. Grup de Reforç d'Actuacions Forestals)
Sánchez, Francesc (Institut Cartogràfic de la Revolta)
Nielsen, Jonas Ø. (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Department of Geography)

Data:	2018
Resum:	Participatory planning networks made of government agencies, stakeholders, citizens and scientists are receiving attention as a potential pathway to build resilient landscapes in the face of increased wildfire impacts due to suppression policies and land-use and climate changes. A key challenge for these networks lies in incorporating local knowledge and social values about landscape into operational wildfire management strategies. As large wildfires overcome the suppression capacity of the fire departments, such strategies entail difficult decisions about intervention priorities among different regions, values and socioeconomic interests. Therefore there is increasing interest in developing tools that facilitate decision-making during emergencies. In this paper we present a method to democratize wildfire strategies by incorporating social values about landscape in both suppression and prevention planning. We do so by reporting and critically reflecting on the experience from a pilot participatory process conducted in a region of Catalonia (Spain). There, we built a network of researchers, practitioners and citizens across spatial and governance scales. We combined knowledge on expected wildfires, landscape co-valuation by relevant actors, and citizen participation sessions to design a wildfire strategy that minimized the loss of social values. Drawing on insights from political ecology and transformation science, we discuss what the attempt to democratize wildfire strategies entails in terms of power relationships and potential for social-ecological transformation. Based on our experience, we suggest a trade-off between current wildfire risk levels and democratic management in the fire-prone regions of many western countries. In turn, the political negotiation about the landscape effects of wildfire expert knowledge is shown as a potential transformation pathway towards lower risk landscapes that can re-define agency over landscape and foster community re-learning on fire. We conclude that democratizing wildfire strategies ultimately entails co-shaping the landscapes and societies of the future.
Ajuts:	Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad CSO2014-54513-R
Nota:	Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu MdM-2015-0552
Drets:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, la comunicació pública de l'obra i la creació d'obres derivades, fins i tot amb finalitats comercials, sempre i quan es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original.
Llengua:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; recerca ; Versió publicada
Publicat a:	PloS one, Vol. 13 (October 2018) , art. e0204806, ISSN 1932-6203

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0204806
PMID: 30325926

35 p, 9.1 MB

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