Bibiana Bilbao

Bibiana Bilbao is a Full Professor at the Environmental Studies Department, Simón Bolívar University in Venezuela, and an active Cobra Collective CIC (Community Interest Company), UK member.

Dr Bilbao, a field and experimental ecologist, has more than 25 years of teaching, capacity building and researching experience in tropical ecology of savannas and human-modified lands, addressing both ecological and human dimensions of natural resources sustainability. Her expertise also includes leading and supporting national and multi-national interdisciplinary action-research projects facilitating the integration of scientific, technical, and local Indigenous knowledge to design environmentally sustainable management plans. She has also promoted participatory and intercultural fire management policies, fostering Indigenous livelihood and cultural heritage as well as biodiversity conservation in natural areas of Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina and other Latin-American countries.

Dr Bilbao has received the 2010 European Award ‘Innovation for Sustainable Development’ for coordinating the interdisciplinary project: ‘Risk factors in habitat reduction in the Canaima National Park: Vulnerability and Tools for Sustainable Development’, the 2013 Award for Best Scientific Work, Technology, and Innovation in Natural Sciences of the Venezuelan Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation. She also co-leads the Participatory and Intercultural Fire Management Network in South America and is a member of the Advisory Board of the international Leverhulme Centre for Wildfires, Environment and Society in the UK.

Under the current changing climate and social governance conditions, wildfire occurrence has become a critical issue, trespassing academic and technical disputes and reaching sensible socio-political arenas. Latin American (LA) Indigenous peoples and rural communities, the population in urban-rural interfaces, and firefighters are in the most vulnerable conditions but often demonstrate innovation. Although many countries in LA lack robust wildfire databases, recent analyses of local and national data and remote sensing registers reveal an increasing tendency of uncontrollable wildfires of high intensity and extension.

Since colonial times, dominant fire management approaches applied in LA have been dwelled on administrative actions that ban the use of fire (‘zero fire’), excluding this natural phenomenon from ecosystems. Despite costly investment in human resources and high technical deployment, these ‘suppression policies’ have not been sufficiently effective. Furthermore, they have tended to exclude local traditional fire knowledge and practices, which, while allowing the survival of these ancient cultures, preserve forest diversity and represent valid adaptive options to climate change threats.

This proposal aims to develop a unique opportunity to consolidate cooperation with Montpellier’s partners and capitalise on pioneering initiatives from LA, constructing sustainable, effective new paradigms of integrated fire management strategies, implementing participatory methods including multiple-perspectives ones (indigenous, academic and institutional), based on mutual respect, co-production of knowledge and nature-based solutions.