Fire enlightenment: emerging paradigms for integrated fire management policies in Latin America and the Caribbean fuelled by biocultural diversities

What relationships between fire management policies, fire sciences and local fire practices in Latin America and the Caribbean region?

Under conditions of increasingly extreme climate changes and rapid and dramatic transformations in land use, the occurrence of wildfire mega-events of great severity in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) has become a critical problem, affecting local communities, populations at urban-rural interfaces, firefighters, ecosystem biodiversity and carbon sequestration capacity. Despite costly investment in human resources and high technical deployment, dominant fire suppression policies have not been sufficiently effective to control and extinguish and reduce the risks and impacts of the most severe and extensive wildfires increasing throughout the LAC region, even affecting more vulnerable ecosystems such as primary tropical rainforests and wetlands (e.g., Delta del Paraná River, Argentina).

Co-developing new visions and capacities for integrated and intersectoral management of wildfires instead of just fighting them requires the inclusion of multiple perspectives and actors and rescuing the knowledge and adaptive practices of Indigenous peoples and local communities that inhabit natural spaces.  There are inspiring initiatives from which essential lessons can be learned. Challenges and barriers to overcome can be identified through collaboration, both at the regional level in LAC and in other regions that share similar challenges.  However, in LAC, we acknowledge that there are different paradigms for fire management policies regarding their relationships with interculturality, forms of implementation, collaborations and evaluation. Furthermore, co-production or co-management experiences include many problems: struggles for recognition, overcoming historical power and knowledge inequalities, organisation issues, financial restrictions, dominant rules, and technocratic processes.

This workshop will gather members of civil and government organisations, academics and representatives of local communities from different countries. The main objective is to share different experiences and knowledge systems related to fire management in LAC to contribute to the debate on the opportunities and challenges of dialogue and learning between scientific, fire practitioners’ expertise, and traditional knowledge.

• Contextualise and valorise Latin American experiences vis-à-vis other regions of the world to contribute to diagnosing actors positioning, and socio-environmental changes related to fire in the LAC region.
• Evaluate the status of integrated fire management policies in LAC and future plans incorporating an intercultural and intersectoral vision.
• Identify the innovations and issues involving collaboration between local communities, academics and fire managers.
• Strengthen and diversify the collaborative network between Latin American and European partners on integrated fire management policies.

PROGRAMME & SPEAKERS

Chairwoman: Jayalaxshmi Mistry, Leverhulme Wildfires Centre, Royal Holloway University of London, the UK & Cobra Collective

09:00 – 09:30    Welcome words & general introduction

Bibiana Bilbao, Simon Bolivar University, Venezuela & MAK’IT 2022-2023 Fellow, France

Ludivine Eloy, JRU ‘Actors, Ressources and Territories in Development’ (ART-Dev), French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), France

Alexandre Gaudin, JRU ‘Knowledge, Environment, Societies’ (SENS)’, AgroParisTech, France

Jayalaxshmi Mistry, Leverhulme Wildfires Centre, Royal Holloway University of London, the UK & Cobra Collective

Marie Toussaint, JRU ‘Knowledge, Environment, Societies’ (SENS), French Research Institute for Development (IRD), France

09:30 – 09:50    Indigenous peoples and local community representatives’ perspectives from LAC – Fire is life (video)

09:50– 10:10     Fire Practitioner’s Perspective – Fire management in Bolivia: Experiences and challenges from the line of fire

Carlos Pinto, Friends of Nature Foundation (FAN), Bolivia

10:10 – 10:30    Environmental Policy Manager’s Perspective – The integrated fire management approach for Latin America and the Caribbean: progress and challenges

Lara Steil, Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO)

10:30 – 10:50    Coffee break

10:50 – 11:10    Researcher’s Perspective: Research on the evolution of fire use regimes and practices in the LAC region

Bibiana Bilbao, Simon Bolivar University, Venezuela & MAK’IT 2022-2023 Fellow, France

11:10 – 11:30    Discussant

Ludivine Eloy, JRU ‘Actors, Ressources and Territories in Development’ (ART-Dev), French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), France

11:30 – 12:30    Q&As

12:30 – 14:00     Lunch

14:00 – 14:20     Introduction of the afternoon’s sessions

Patrick Caron, Montpellier Advanced Knowledge Institute on Transitions, MAK’IT, France

14:20 – 15:50     Panel discussion 1: Experiences and approaches of projects of international cooperation involving stakeholders’ engagement and interculturality in fire management

Moderator: Ludivine Eloy, JRU ‘Actors, Ressources and Territories in Development’ (ART-Dev), French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), France

Imma Oliveras, ‘FIRE-ADAPT’ project, JRU ‘Plant Architecture, Functioning and Evolution’ (AMAP), French Research Institute for Development (IRD), France

Jenny Lieu, ‘Land-use based Mitigation for Resilient Climate pathways’ (LANDMARC) project, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands

Nuria Prat, Pau Costa Foundation, Spain

Catherine Monagle, International Savanna Fire Management Initiative

Khalisha Ikhlef, UN International Decade of Indigenous Languages 2022-2032, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)

Serena Heckler, Platform for Climate Change, Risk and Resilience in UNESCO Sites in Latin America and the Caribbean, UNESCO, Uruguay

15:50 – 16:10    Coffee break

16:10 – 17:40     Panel discussion 2: Experiences and approaches of local projects involving stakeholders’ engagement and interculturality in fire management

Moderator: Alexandre Gaudin, JRU ‘Knowledge, Environment, Societies’ (SENS), AgroParisTech, France

Ameyali Ramos, International Savanna Fire Management Initiative & Commission on Environmental, Economic and Social Policy (CEESP), International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)

Laura Ponce-Calderón, Los ‘sin fuego’ in Chiapas, El Colegio de la Frontera Sur (ECOSUR), Mexico

Brian Ferrero, Fire management by Islander of Paraná River, Centro de Investigación y de Transferencia Rafaela (UNRaf), CONICET, Argentina

Miguel Matany Luque, Integrated Fire management with an Intercultural vision, National Fire Department, Ministry of Internal Relations, Justice and Peace, Venezuela

Rodrigo Falleiro, National Center to Prevent and Combat Forest Fires (PREVFOGO), Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA), Brazil

17:40 – 18:00     First day’s closing remarks

Bibiana Bilbao, Simon Bolivar University, Venezuela & MAK’IT 2022-2023 Fellow, France

18:00 – 19:30     Cocktail – Launch of the Spanish version of the book: Hacia la construcción de paisajes a prueba de incendios (Towards fire‑smart landscapes) by Nick Pasiecznik, Tropenbos International