This course explores the complex nature of wildfires as both ecological and social phenomena, examining how these devastating events arise from intricate relationships between environmental conditions, human activities, and ecological processes. Through analysis of case studies, particularly the 2007 Greek wildfires, and application of the geographical concept of entanglement, this document offers insights into understanding and addressing the growing global challenge of wildfires in the twenty-first century.
Wildfire is defined as fire out of human control. More specifically, the United Nations Environment Programme has defined wildfires as 'an unusual or extraordinary free-burning vegetation fire which may be started maliciously, accidentally, or through natural means, that negatively influences social, economic, or environmental values'.
Wildfires are becoming an increasingly pressing environmental challenge worldwide. They are growing larger, more intense, and burning in places where they have never been seen before. Between 1998 and 2017, there were 254 recorded major wildfires across the world, resulting in an estimated US$68 billion in economic losses and contributing to 2,398 fatalities caused by wildfires, volcanic activity, and mass movement due to drought.
Climate projections indicate that the situation will worsen significantly during the remainder of the twenty-first century. Climate change and changes to land use practices are projected to make wildfires even more frequent and intense. Current predictions suggest that global wildfires will increase by 14 percent by 2030, 30 per cent by 2050, and 50 percent by the end of the century.
The impact of wildfires extends far beyond their immediate flames. They affect communities' health, drain economic resources, contaminate water supplies, leave significant toxic waste, accelerate the extinction of plant and animal species, and contribute to climate change. Understanding the complex reasons behind wildfire occurrence and developing strategies to reduce their recurrence, intensity, and impact has therefore become a critical environmental priority.
Earth is the only planet which currently has the appropriate environment, atmosphere, and mix of resources that make fire possible. Fire is much more than a naturally occurring chemical reaction. It is a tool that humans have adapted throughout history. Fire has the capacity to modify environments and shape social interactions between individuals, groups of humans, and the places in which they live. Therefore, fire can be understood as both a distinctive property of Earth's current environmental conditions and a defining characteristic of human social organisation and environment–society relationships.
Environmental historians, geologists, and geographers argue that over the past one million years, fire has been, and continues to be, key to environment-society relationships. They refer to the present era of Earth's history as the Anthropocene, the historical period dating from the commencement of significant human impact on Earth's atmosphere, ecosystems, and geology.
Fire plays a pivotal role in defining the Anthropocene in two key ways. Firstly, fire provided the layers of burned carbonised material (coal) in the geological layers of the Earth's surface that humans have been able to use to create industrial power. Secondly, by burning carbonised material to make power, fire has changed the composition of the Earth's atmosphere, introducing large quantities of gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2) as the waste products of combustion.
Although definitions of the Anthropocene have largely focused on how humans have controlled fire for industrial purposes, this period has also been marked by an increase in wildfires and their intensity. For millions of years many plants and animals have taken advantage of naturally occurring wildfires, triggered for example by lightning strikes on dry vegetation, to forge unique ecological niches and reproductive cycles within complex ecosystems that come to depend on fire. However, as the environment changes as the result of human actions, wildfires are increasingly becoming an environmental challenge rather than an environmental opportunity.
Humans have harnessed fire in numerous ways to manage and transform the environments in which they live. This mastery of fire has been fundamental to human development, expansion, and cultural evolution throughout history.
Humans have used fire to keep warm during cold nights and cold seasons, and to ward off wild animals, especially predators that threaten livestock or humans themselves.
Fire has been essential for cooking plants and animals for food, making them more digestible, increasing their nutritional value, and killing harmful pathogens.
Burning vegetation to clear ground and improve soil nutrient levels for agriculture has been a technique used across cultures and millennia.
Fire has been used to transform earth, rocks, and minerals into products such as lime for agriculture, pots for storage, bricks for building, and metals for implements.
Without fire, human life would have been drastically different. Humans would likely have been confined to the warm tropical savannah regions that nurtured early human populations rather than becoming a globally distributed species able to survive on every continent and at almost all latitudes. The ability to cook food enhanced its nutritional value and increased the range of edible substances, while preservation in fired storage vessels like pottery allowed for food security. This reduced the time spent foraging, enabling humans to devote time to creating complex social and cultural formations. The consistent nutrition provided by cooked food has also been linked to positive impacts on human brain development and size.
During the summer of 2007, wildfires raged across Greece in what was recorded as the worst natural disaster of contemporary Greek history at the time. The first fire started on 27 June 2007, and the final fire was extinguished in early September 2007. The fires burnt through dry forests and vegetation, often moving quickly through the landscape.
The human toll of these wildfires was significant, with a death toll of more than 78 people (some estimates as high as 84), including several firefighters. The environmental and economic impact was equally devastating—more than 180,000 hectares of forest and agricultural land were destroyed, over 3,000 houses were damaged or destroyed, and a substantial number of livestock and forest animals perished.
The most destructive and lethal infernos broke out on 23 August, expanded rapidly, and raged out of control until 27 August, before being finally extinguished in early September. During August 2007 alone, 67 people died as a result of the wildfires.
Like all wildfires, these fires also had significant long-term effects. They released carbon into the atmosphere, contributing to climate change, and caused substantial economic consequences for individuals, communities, and the Greek nation. Studies have shown that victims of the 2007 Greek wildfires experienced increased symptoms of depression, anxiety, hostility, and paranoia. Furthermore, by altering local habitats and ecosystems, the fires had lasting impacts on wildlife populations and biodiversity.
The 2007 Greek wildfires primarily affected western and southern Peloponnese as well as southern Euboea. During the height of the crisis in August and September, extensive fire fronts were created when individual fires merged, advanced into villages, and could only be extinguished after several days of intense firefighting efforts.
The regional unit of Ilia (also known as Elis), situated on the Peloponnese Peninsula, was the worst affected area. Nearly 40% of forest land in this region was burnt and 44 people lost their lives. The fires in Ilia generated particular concern not only because of their extent and the deaths and devastation they caused, but also because they threatened the archaeological site of ancient Olympia, the birthplace of the Olympic Games and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Although the fires burned around the edges of the Olympia archaeological site, the ancient ruins themselves were thankfully spared from destruction. However, the surrounding landscape, including the culturally significant Kronios Hill which forms part of the site, was severely affected. In the aftermath, emergency measures had to be implemented to prevent soil erosion after the burning caused a severe loss of vegetation cover, including the installation of log dams on the hills surrounding the site.
Understanding why the 2007 Greek wildfires occurred requires an appreciation of the Mediterranean climate and ecosystem characteristics that contribute to fire risk. Forest fires are a serious challenge throughout Mediterranean Europe, and some Mediterranean ecosystems are both prone to fire and dependent on it for reproduction and regeneration.
Wet winters produce abundant fuels, while very dry, hot summers cure those fuels to high levels of flammability, creating ideal conditions for fire spread.
In coastal regions during the summer months, strong winds may fan forest fires, dramatically increasing their speed and intensity.
Drought recurring on a 3–5 year time scale exacerbates normal summer season fire conditions, creating exceptionally dangerous conditions when these cycles align.
Historical data shows that the number and frequency of fire events in Greece has been increasing since the mid-1970s. While more extreme dry summers associated with climate change may be a factor, evidence suggests that wildfires result from a complex combination of human factors, physical conditions, and ecological processes.
The 2007 Greek wildfires were significantly more severe than previous events and exemplify this complexity: some but not all were set deliberately by humans; agricultural practices exacerbated the risks; political organisation and mismanagement undermined responses; economic and property development opportunities provided incentives for land use change; and climatic, ecological, and resourcing issues made environmental restoration difficult.
As wildfires become more numerous and severe worldwide, understanding why they occur becomes increasingly important. The 2007 Greece wildfires were not simply caused by the Mediterranean climate but were produced by complex environmental and social interactions.
The increasing incidence of wildfires on cultivated land, nature reserves, and the peripheries of settlements across the world exemplifies many issues posed by contemporary environment-society relationships. On one hand, such fires indicate the penetration of low-density suburban settlements into semi-arid woodland, bush, and scrub which is naturally prone to burning. On the other hand, the increasing incidence of fires is often linked to the droughts and higher average and maximum temperatures associated with accelerating global climate change.
To understand these complex dynamics, geographers have developed the concept of entanglement. In this context, entanglement can be understood as the many ways in which living systems, environmental processes, humans, flora, fauna, and other life forms are connected to each other, mixed up, and more-or-less co-dependent on each other.
This suggests a world of things, relationships, and experiences made by connections, influences, exchanges, and interdependencies between environmental processes, humans, and non-humans. Such chains of relation, mixing, and co-dependence are sometimes obvious and clear but are often complex and difficult to trace.
Framed this way, entanglement represents the mixing and entwining of environments, humans, physical matter, and other life forms, influencing how things connect and interact, whilst also shaping each as individuals or entities and the world in which they exist. This concept can help us understand wildfires and the challenge they pose by revealing the intricate web of factors that contribute to their occurrence and spread.
Stephen Pyne, a renowned environmental historian specializing in fire history, has developed influential frameworks for understanding wildfires as complex entanglements. In his book, Fire: Nature and Culture, Pyne argues that the environmental challenge posed by the increasingly frequent, dramatic, and dangerous reappearance of wildfires within recent decades is the result of both the nature of fire itself and human actions.
Pyne approaches wildfires as an entanglement of three interrelated processes: physical, ecological, and human. This framework provides a comprehensive way to understand how wildfires develop and spread across landscapes.
Fire is a chemical reaction moulded by the physical characteristics of its environment. Those physical parameters shape the area burning at any one time (the zone of combustion) as it moves about the landscape. Abundant fuel material and hot, dry weather patterns that make these fuels more flammable make wildfires more likely.
A fire's environment is primarily organic as the living world provides the fuel for fire's chemical processes. Where there is no organic material as carbon-based fuel, fire does not exist. Fire's ability to adapt to different circumstances means that it can smoulder in debris close to the ground, race across open scrubland, or burn fiercely through dense wooded areas.
Humans increasingly control and influence where fires happen and what type of fuel is chosen to be burned. The story of fire on Earth is ever more the story of what people do or don't do, directly or indirectly, with fire and its setting.
By thinking about fires as a set of three entangled processes, Pyne highlights the interrelationships and dependencies that make wildfires the product of environment-society entanglements rather than just an act of nature or the consequences of human action alone. This approach encourages a more nuanced understanding of wildfire dynamics and potential management strategies.
Applying Pyne's entanglement framework to the 2007 Greek wildfires reveals how physical processes created conditions conducive to extreme fire behavior. The climate conditions in Greece during 2007 set the stage for unprecedented wildfire spread and intensity.
In 2007, precipitation in Greece lagged significantly behind average levels. By August, precipitation was almost zero throughout the affected regions. This extreme dryness coincided with maximum temperatures that surpassed the average for the period between 2000 and 2007, with readings exceeding 40°C. A further increase in maximum temperature was observed after the 23rd of August, accompanied by strong winds, a combination that created perfect conditions for rapid wildfire spread.
These climatic conditions fundamentally transformed the landscape's susceptibility to fire. Places that were normally wet became dry, creating ideal pathways for wildfires to rush through the landscape. The extreme temperatures essentially pre-dried potential fuel sources, making them exceptionally flammable. The strong winds that developed in late August then acted as an accelerant, pushing flames rapidly across the landscape and creating fire fronts that were extremely difficult for firefighters to combat.
The physical processes at work during the 2007 Greek wildfires exemplify how climate change is altering fire regimes globally. The extreme temperatures, prolonged drought, and strong wind events experienced during this period are precisely the conditions that climate scientists predict will become more common in Mediterranean regions as global warming intensifies.
The ecological dimension of the 2007 Greek wildfires reveals how landscape changes and vegetation patterns contributed significantly to fire behavior. While Mediterranean ecosystems have evolved with fire as a natural process, changes in land management and vegetation composition created unusually dangerous conditions.
The most badly affected type of land during the 2007 Greek wildfires was agricultural land intermixed with natural vegetation, specifically abandoned fields. These areas became perfect incubators for wildfires, as they contained abundant organic debris from both wild ecologies and farming practices. The absence of regular management meant that these areas accumulated substantial fuel loads that, once ignited, burned with exceptional intensity.
Many Mediterranean plant species have evolved adaptations to periodic fires:
Several ecological factors increased fire risk in Greece:
The ecological dimensions of the fires were deeply intertwined with human processes. Local-scale land use changes associated with rural-to-urban migration meant fewer people were available to manage the landscape, leading to a dangerous accumulation of potential fuel. Additionally, attempts to boost the declining agricultural sector through European Union funding for commercial olive groves inadvertently created large areas of monoculture that, under dry conditions, became exceptionally prone to spreading fire.
These ecological factors demonstrate how changes in land management and vegetation patterns—influenced by broader social and economic trends—created landscape conditions that were primed for catastrophic fire. The accumulation of fuel in abandoned agricultural areas, combined with the physical processes of drought and high temperatures, created an ecological setting where fires could easily start and rapidly spread.
Human factors and processes played a crucial role in both causing the 2007 Greek wildfires and undermining effective responses to them. These human dimensions ranged from issues of land ownership and property rights to institutional arrangements for fire management and prevention.
Land use and ownership patterns in Greece created conditions that incentivized fire-setting. A high proportion of forest lands in Greece are nationally owned but lack clear evidence of ownership because historically there has been no systematic Land Registry. This ambiguity created opportunities for individuals to use arson as a means to lay claims to property ostensibly under national jurisdiction, particularly in areas located at urban peripheries where demand for land for development is highest, or in scenic areas desired by tourism developers.
The absence of a comprehensive Land Registry in Greece created legal ambiguities that incentivized arson. Under Greek law before 2007, forest areas that burned could potentially be reclassified for development, creating a perverse incentive for intentional fire-setting in areas with high real estate potential.
The transfer of wildfire management responsibility from the Forest Service to the Fire Service in 1998 created institutional gaps. The Forest Service (1948-1998) had expertise in forest management but was underfunded, while the Fire Service lacked the same level of understanding of forest ecosystems and fire prevention strategies.
During the 2007 wildfires, there was insufficient coordination between different government agencies, leading to delays in response, ineffective deployment of resources, and communication breakdowns that hampered firefighting efforts.
Fire prevention and management systems also contributed to the scale of the disaster. From 1948 to 1998, the Forest Service (part of the Ministry of Agriculture, later the Ministry of Environment) was responsible for integrated management of forests and forest fire. However, insufficient funding seriously hampered the agency's effectiveness. Then, in 1998, the responsibility for wildfire management was transferred to the Fire Service without adequate preparation, leading to an ineffective response to fire danger and insufficient coordination during the 2007 wildfire events.
These human factors demonstrate how institutional arrangements, property rights systems, economic incentives, and policy decisions contributed to creating conditions where wildfires could both start more easily and spread more extensively. When combined with the physical and ecological factors previously discussed, these human dimensions complete the picture of the 2007 Greek wildfires as a complex entanglement of interrelated processes.
Using the concept of entanglement to understand wildfires offers several important advantages over more simplistic causal explanations. By approaching wildfires as complex intersections of physical, ecological, and human processes, we gain insights that can inform more effective management and prevention strategies.
The entanglement approach highlights how wildfires cannot be understood as simply physical, ecological, or human events. Instead, they emerge from the interactions between these domains. In the case of the 2007 Greek wildfires, though each individual fire had a distinctive and specific trigger, it was the web of wider processes, circumstances, and events that was key to making this a major environmental catastrophe.
Reveals interconnections between seemingly unrelated factors
Uncovers obscure connections difficult to trace
Informs integrated management approaches
The entanglement concept also highlights the nature of fire itself as highly adaptable in ways that can easily escape directed attempts to suppress it. This emphasises how simply changing agricultural practices, creating a better formal land ownership registry, or increasing funding to the Greek Forest Service for clearing and maintaining forested land, would not necessarily achieve the aim of protecting landscapes, property, and people from fire. When such directed approaches are taken, fire just keeps returning somewhere else or in a different form triggered by something else.
This insight is crucial for developing more effective wildfire management strategies. Rather than focusing on single-factor interventions, the entanglement approach suggests that integrated, multi-faceted strategies are needed. Thinking about wildfires as entanglements could be particularly helpful for informing how forestry, ecology, and environmental resources are managed in the future, so that people can find ways to live and work with and around the propensity for Mediterranean landscapes to be subject to wildfires.
As wildfires become an increasingly regular and destructive environmental challenge globally, more attention needs to be given to how wildfires are prepared for and responded to. Understanding wildfires as entanglements of environmental and social processes helps to highlight how effective planning requires engagement with nature, communities, local knowledge, scientific understanding, and political systems.
Different perspectives exist on the most effective approaches to wildfire management. Some argue that the emphasis should be placed on preventing wildfires through landscape management, controlled burning, and reducing human-caused ignitions. Others believe it is best to ensure that there are robust systems for responding to wildfires when they inevitably occur, focusing on firefighting capacity, early warning systems, and evacuation procedures.
In reality, a comprehensive approach requires attention to both prevention and response. The increasing frequency and intensity of wildfires under climate change means that even the best prevention strategies will not eliminate wildfire risk entirely. Similarly, focusing solely on response capacities without addressing the underlying factors that make landscapes more prone to severe wildfires would be shortsighted.
The most effective wildfire management strategies acknowledge the complex entanglements that give rise to wildfires and address multiple dimensions simultaneously. This might include enhancing ecosystem resilience through ecological restoration, strengthening community preparedness, improving institutional coordination, addressing climate change, and developing adaptive management approaches that can respond to changing conditions.
In response to the devastating 2007 wildfires, Greece has taken steps to be better prepared for future wildfire threats. However, there are significant disagreements about the effectiveness of these measures and the appropriate balance between prevention and response strategies.
Experts like Dr Gavriil Xanthopoulos from the Institute of Mediterranean Forest Ecosystems in Athens have highlighted the importance of prevention measures, including better forest management, fuel reduction, and land use planning. They argue that addressing the underlying conditions that make landscapes vulnerable to severe wildfires is ultimately more effective than focusing primarily on firefighting capabilities.
In contrast, officials like George Konstantakoplous, Fire Officer of the Pyrgos Fire Service, emphasize the importance of robust response systems, including sufficient firefighting resources, improved coordination between agencies, and enhanced technologies for early detection and suppression of wildfires.
Greece has implemented legal changes to remove incentives for arson by prohibiting development on burned forest land. The country has also worked to improve coordination between the Forest Service and Fire Service.
Enhanced satellite monitoring, aerial surveillance, and early warning systems have been developed to detect fires earlier and track their spread more effectively.
Efforts to educate communities about fire risk and involve them in prevention and preparedness activities have increased, though these remain underdeveloped in many areas.
Forest management practices have been revised to reduce fuel loads and create fire breaks, though implementation has been inconsistent across different regions.
Despite these improvements, Greece continues to face significant challenges in wildfire management. The country's complex topography, Mediterranean climate, and the ongoing impacts of climate change create conditions highly conducive to wildfire. Economic constraints, particularly following the financial crisis of 2007-2008 and subsequent austerity measures, have limited investments in wildfire prevention and management. Moreover, continued rural depopulation has reduced the number of people available to manage land and detect fires early.
The recurring nature of major wildfire events in Greece since 2007, including significant fires in 2018, 2019, and 2021, suggests that additional measures and a more integrated approach to wildfire management may be needed to adequately address this growing environmental challenge.
In 2022, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) published a comprehensive report titled "Spreading Like Wildfire: The Rising Threat of Extraordinary Landscape Fires," which made recommendations for how the environmental challenge of wildfires should be prepared for in the future. The report acknowledged that it is impossible to eradicate the risk of wildfires and undesirable to entirely eliminate wildfires due to their ecological benefits. Nevertheless, it emphasized the increasing frequency and intensity of wildfires and offered guidance for better management.
The UNEP recommendations were grounded in three core principles. Firstly, that prevention is more effective than response, addressing the underlying conditions that lead to severe wildfires before they occur. Secondly, that policies and practices should be regionally specific and tailored to locations' particular conditions, recognizing that wildfire risks and appropriate management strategies vary greatly across different landscapes and cultures. Thirdly, that lessons should be learned from Indigenous peoples who have historically effectively coexisted with fire-prone ecosystems and have used fire as a tool for sustainable land management.
These principles reflect a growing recognition that wildfire management requires integrated approaches that acknowledge the complex entanglements of environmental and social factors that contribute to wildfire risk. By addressing multiple dimensions of wildfire risk simultaneously and drawing on diverse knowledge systems, the UNEP report suggests that countries can develop more effective strategies for living with fire in a changing climate.
Among the nine recommendations presented in the UNEP report, several focus on understanding the changing nature of wildfire risk under climate change and improving knowledge about fire behaviour in different ecosystems. These recommendations acknowledge that effective wildfire management must be grounded in a deep understanding of how fires behave and how climate change is altering fire regimes.
Climate change is increasing the likelihood of fire occurrence in many regions. The most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report indicates that weather conducive to wildfires ("fire weather", which is hot, dry, and windy) is becoming more frequent in some regions and will continue to increase with higher levels of global warming. Countries must meet and exceed their commitments under the Paris Agreement to reduce global warming and the prevalence and behaviour of wildfires globally.
There is a critical need to better understand the behavior of wildfires in different ecosystems and under a changing climate. This knowledge will support consistent fire data collection and analysis across organisations and countries, thereby improving the management of wildfire fuels, facilitating ignition prevention, and reducing gaps in fire management preparedness and response. Improved data collection and analysis will also help monitor changes in fire activity, assess ecosystem response to changing fire regimes, and enhance climate models.
These recommendations highlight the importance of both global and local actions in addressing wildfire risk. At the global level, reducing greenhouse gas emissions to mitigate climate change is essential for limiting the increasing frequency and severity of fire weather conditions. At the local and regional levels, improved understanding of fire behavior in specific ecosystems can inform more effective management strategies tailored to particular landscapes and conditions.
By linking climate action with improved fire science, these recommendations acknowledge the entangled nature of wildfire risk and the need for integrated approaches that address multiple dimensions of the challenge simultaneously.
The UNEP report emphasizes the importance of integrated fire management approaches and the value of indigenous and traditional knowledge in addressing wildfire challenges. These recommendations recognize that effective wildfire management requires holistic strategies that balance multiple objectives and draw on diverse knowledge systems.
While fire is a natural ecological process, changes to our climate and land-use are contributing to more wildfires. Dealing effectively with the increase in wildfires requires policies and incentives that promote integrated fire management approaches. Achieving and sustaining adaptive land and fire management requires a well-designed and balanced combination of policies, a clear legal framework, and incentives that encourage appropriate land and fire use. These approaches maintain and restore healthy ecosystems while meeting the social, economic, and health needs of human populations.
Indigenous fire management practices often involve carefully timed, low-intensity burns that reduce fuel loads while maintaining ecological health and cultural connections to land.
Globally, there is growing recognition of the important role that Indigenous and traditional knowledge and experience can play in informing land management practices that assist in the prevention and mitigation of wildfires. Indigenous and traditional knowledge of land management in many regions, particularly the use of fire to manage fuel, including for wildfire mitigation, can be an effective way of reducing hazard. It can also ensure that biodiversity and cultural values are respected, as well as create livelihood opportunities.
These recommendations acknowledge that wildfire management is not merely a technical challenge but a complex social and ecological issue that requires diverse knowledge systems and approaches. Indigenous and traditional communities have often developed sophisticated fire management practices over many generations, adapted to specific ecosystems and cultural contexts. These practices frequently involve regular, controlled burning to reduce fuel loads and maintain ecological health, preventing the buildup of conditions that can lead to catastrophic wildfires.
By promoting integrated approaches that draw on both contemporary science and traditional knowledge, these recommendations aim to develop more holistic and effective strategies for living with fire in a changing climate. This integration of diverse knowledge systems reflects the understanding of wildfires as complex entanglements of environmental and social processes.
The UNEP report highlights the importance of international cooperation and strategic investment in wildfire management. These recommendations recognize that wildfire challenges often transcend national boundaries and require collaborative approaches, while also emphasizing the need to rebalance investments toward proactive mitigation rather than reactive suppression.
The greatest potential for coherent and consistent improvement in fire management is through continued international interaction and exchange, joint problem solving, and sharing experiences in wildfire management and research. Existing networks and working groups tend to be focused on fire response. These efforts should be encouraged and supported, while expanding their focus to include cooperative work around mitigating fire risk before wildfires occur and building back better following a wildfire. Development of an international standard for wildfire management will facilitate international cooperation and help all wildfire-prone countries build capacity.
International cooperation allows for the sharing of resources, expertise, and technologies across borders, enhancing capacity to address increasingly severe wildfire challenges.
Wildfires become uncontainable when they exceed the limits of suppression. Given the current limitations of fire suppression and a future predicted to have longer fire seasons and more severe fires due to increasingly worse fire weather conditions, making targeted investments in preparedness measures now will yield significant benefits. Wildfire risk reduction activities represent a sound return on investment as they reduce the potential impacts of wildfires. In the long term, they will be more cost effective than relying on reactive firefighting and post-disaster recovery efforts.
Shifting investment from reactive firefighting to proactive mitigation can reduce the severity of wildfires and minimize the costs of damages and suppression efforts.
These recommendations address important institutional and financial dimensions of wildfire management. International cooperation is particularly important as wildfire challenges intensify under climate change, potentially exceeding the capacity of individual countries to respond effectively. By sharing knowledge, resources, and technologies across borders, countries can enhance their collective capacity to address wildfire risks.
Similarly, the recommendation to rebalance investments recognizes the limitations of reactive approaches to wildfire management. While firefighting capacity remains essential, an overreliance on suppression without adequate investment in prevention and mitigation can lead to a cycle of increasingly severe wildfires and escalating costs. By shifting resources toward proactive measures like fuel management, forest restoration, and community preparedness, countries can reduce the potential impacts of wildfires and break this cycle.
The UNEP report emphasizes the critical importance of community engagement and safety considerations in wildfire management. These recommendations recognize that effective wildfire management requires the active involvement of local communities and careful attention to the safety of firefighters and other frontline responders.
Enabling communities and local authorities in wildfire-prone areas to understand and accept the residual risk of wildfires will strengthen coordination of key stakeholders and build capacity to prepare for, respond to, and recover from wildfires. Activities include risk reduction at the dwelling, local, and regional levels, infrastructure hardening, evacuation planning, air quality alerts, and social and infrastructure recovery and rebuilding. Key stakeholders need to be involved throughout the fire management process, including both women and men from local communities.
Community engagement in wildfire preparedness ensures that local knowledge, concerns, and needs are incorporated into management strategies and builds collective capacity to respond effectively to fire events.
While firefighting is an essential component of fire management at all scales, the safety and long-term health of firefighters is paramount.
The risk of harm to both female and male firefighters, before, during, and after operations must be minimized. Fire management bodies must take measures to ensure safe work practices in all aspects of firefighting, ensuring that they understand and reduce the risks of smoke inhalation, minimize the potential for life-threatening entrapments, and provide firefighters with access to adequate hydration, nutrition, rest, and recovery between shifts.
These recommendations highlight the human dimensions of wildfire management. Community engagement is essential for developing effective wildfire preparedness strategies that reflect local needs, values, and knowledge. By involving community members in planning and decision-making processes, wildfire management efforts can become more responsive to
The UNEP report's final recommendation focuses on the gender dimensions of wildfires, an often overlooked but important aspect of wildfire management. This recommendation recognizes that men and women may experience and respond to wildfire risks differently, and that effective wildfire management strategies should account for these differences.
Available research indicates that women and men have different approaches to wildfires, including risk perception and decision making. The collection of sex-disaggregated data will help to identify patterns for further analysis, including national, regional, or global trends. Understanding gendered risk perceptions can help policymakers develop more effective and robust approaches to wildfire management and improve safety for all members of society.
Improving gendered knowledge extends to helping firefighting become a more inclusive activity. Women firefighters face various challenges ranging from gender discrimination and sexual harassment to ill-designed equipment and protective clothing that puts them at greater risk of injury. Addressing these challenges requires specific attention to gender dimensions in training, equipment design, organizational culture, and support systems.
Collecting sex-disaggregated data on wildfire risk perception, decision-making, impacts, and response can reveal important patterns that inform more effective and inclusive management strategies.
Ensuring that firefighting equipment, protective clothing, and tools are designed for diverse body types and physiologies can improve safety and effectiveness for all firefighters.
Promoting the meaningful participation of both women and men in all aspects of wildfire management, from policy development to implementation, can lead to more comprehensive and responsive strategies.
This recommendation acknowledges that gender is an important social dimension that shapes how individuals and communities experience and respond to wildfire risks. By collecting and analyzing gender-disaggregated data, wildfire management strategies can become more sensitive to these differences and more effective at addressing the needs and concerns of diverse populations.
Moreover, by promoting gender inclusion in firefighting and other wildfire management roles, organizations can expand their capacity, draw on a wider range of perspectives and skills, and develop more innovative and adaptive approaches to wildfire challenges. This focus on gender dimensions reflects the understanding of wildfires as complex social-ecological entanglements that require attention to both environmental and social factors.
When evaluating the United Nations' recommendations for wildfire management, it's important to consider how they address the complex entanglements of physical, ecological, and human processes that contribute to wildfire risk. Effective recommendations should recognize and respond to multiple dimensions of wildfire challenges rather than focusing narrowly on single factors or approaches.
Recommendations that position wildfires within the broader context of climate change acknowledge the physical processes that are creating more conducive conditions for extreme fire behavior. These approaches recognize that addressing wildfire challenges requires attention to the underlying drivers of climate change as well as local adaptation strategies.
Recommendations focused on managing the 'fuel' needed to allow fires to start and spread address the ecological dimensions of wildfire risk. These approaches acknowledge the role of vegetation management, landscape restoration, and ecosystem health in shaping fire behavior and impacts.
People-focused recommendations designed to develop more fire-aware human behavior before, during, and after fires address the human dimensions of wildfire risk. These approaches recognize that human actions, decisions, and institutions play crucial roles in either exacerbating or mitigating wildfire challenges.
Combining prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery
Engaging multiple stakeholders and knowledge systems
Understanding fire's role in ecosystem processes
Adapting strategies to local environmental and social conditions
The most effective recommendations are those that recognize the entangled nature of wildfire challenges and propose integrated solutions that address multiple dimensions simultaneously. These approaches avoid simplistic framings that position wildfires as either purely natural disasters or solely the result of human actions, instead acknowledging the complex interactions between environmental and social factors.
By evaluating recommendations through the lens of entanglement, we can identify strategies that are more likely to be effective in addressing the multifaceted challenges posed by wildfire in a changing climate. This perspective encourages holistic approaches that balance multiple objectives, engage diverse stakeholders, and adapt to specific contexts rather than seeking one-size-fits-all solutions.
Despite increasing awareness of wildfire challenges and growing efforts to develop more effective management strategies, several significant challenges remain for the future. These challenges reflect the complex entanglements of environmental and social factors that contribute to wildfire risk and the difficulties of coordinating responses across different scales and sectors.
Climate change presents perhaps the most significant challenge for future wildfire management. As global temperatures continue to rise, many regions are experiencing more frequent and severe fire weather conditions, longer fire seasons, and unprecedented fire behavior. These changes may outpace the capacity of existing management systems and require transformative approaches rather than incremental adjustments.
Land use changes and development patterns also pose ongoing challenges. As human settlements continue to expand into fire-prone areas, more people and property are exposed to wildfire risk. Managing this wildland-urban interface requires careful attention to building codes, land use planning, vegetation management, and community preparedness.
Institutional and governance challenges also complicate wildfire management. Responsibility for different aspects of wildfire risk often falls to different agencies and levels of government, creating coordination problems and potential gaps or overlaps in management efforts. Developing integrated governance systems that can coordinate actions across sectors and scales remains a significant challenge.
Resource constraints further limit the capacity to address wildfire challenges effectively. Many regions face shortages of funding, personnel, equipment, and other resources needed for comprehensive wildfire management. As wildfire seasons lengthen and overlap across different regions, these resource constraints may become more acute.
Finally, balancing different values and objectives in wildfire management presents ongoing challenges. Different stakeholders may prioritize different aspects of wildfire risk, such as protecting human life and property, maintaining ecosystem health, preserving cultural values, or supporting livelihoods. Finding approaches that can accommodate these diverse priorities while effectively reducing overall risk remains a complex challenge for the future.
Despite the significant challenges posed by increasing wildfire risk, there are also promising innovations emerging in wildfire management. These innovations span technological, ecological, social, and governance dimensions, reflecting the complex entanglements that characterize wildfire challenges.
Technological innovations are enhancing capacities for wildfire detection, monitoring, prediction, and suppression. Advanced remote sensing technologies, including satellites and drones, can detect fires earlier and monitor their spread more accurately. Artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms are improving fire behavior prediction models, while new firefighting equipment and techniques are expanding suppression capabilities. Digital platforms are also enhancing communication and coordination during fire events.
Ecological approaches to wildfire management are increasingly emphasizing the restoration of fire-adapted ecosystems and the use of prescribed fire to reduce fuel loads and maintain ecological health. These approaches recognize fire's ecological role and seek to work with natural processes rather than against them.
Social innovations in wildfire management include new models of community engagement, education, and preparedness. "Fire-adapted communities" programs build local capacity to live with fire, while citizen science initiatives involve community members in monitoring and research.
Governance innovations include new institutional arrangements that better coordinate wildfire management across different agencies and levels of government. Collaborative governance models engage diverse stakeholders in decision-making processes.
Perhaps most promising are integrated approaches that combine innovations across different dimensions. For example, some regions are developing comprehensive wildfire management systems that integrate advanced technologies for detection and prediction with ecological approaches to fuel management, community-based preparedness programs, and adaptive governance structures.
These diverse innovations reflect growing recognition of wildfires as complex entanglements of physical, ecological, and human processes that require multifaceted approaches. By combining technological capabilities with ecological understanding, social engagement, and effective governance, these innovations offer pathways toward more resilient and adaptive wildfire management in a changing climate.
Throughout this document, we have explored wildfires as complex entanglements of physical, ecological, and social processes. This approach has revealed how wildfires emerge from intricate interactions between climate and weather conditions, ecosystem characteristics, land use patterns, human behaviors, institutional arrangements, and many other factors.
The case study of the 2007 Greek wildfires demonstrated how this entanglement framework can illuminate the multifaceted nature of specific wildfire events. The fires that devastated parts of Greece that summer were not simply the result of hot, dry weather, nor merely the consequence of human actions such as arson or institutional failures. Rather, they emerged from the interaction of multiple factors: climate conditions created the physical potential for extreme fire behavior; ecological changes like agricultural abandonment increased available fuel; and human dimensions such as land ownership disputes, rural depopulation, and institutional fragmentation created additional vulnerabilities.
This understanding of wildfires as entanglements has important implications for how we approach wildfire management. Simple, single-factor interventions are unlikely to be effective in addressing the complex challenges posed by wildfire. Instead, integrated approaches that address multiple dimensions simultaneously are needed. The United Nations recommendations for wildfire management reflect this understanding, emphasizing the importance of coordinated actions across different domains, from climate change mitigation to ecosystem management to community engagement.
As climate change intensifies and human societies continue to transform landscapes, the challenges posed by wildfires are likely to grow. Meeting these challenges will require continued development of our understanding of the complex entanglements that give rise to wildfire risk, as well as innovative and integrated approaches to living with fire in a changing world. By approaching wildfires as entanglements rather than isolated events, we can develop more sophisticated, nuanced, and effective strategies for managing this growing global challenge.
The concept of entanglement provides a valuable analytical framework that can be applied beyond wildfires to understand other complex environmental challenges. By revealing the intricate relationships between environmental and social processes, this approach can help us develop more holistic and effective responses to the many interconnected sustainability challenges facing our planet in the twenty-first century.
Special note: This course is available thanks to Open University course DD213 Environment and society: https://www.open.ac.uk/courses/modules/dd213. The subject matter and some images were used to create this course.
