4:36 p.m.
Dear IUFRO Meliaceae E-list:
Below is IUFRO Spotlight #83. Other Spotlights can be found at:
http://www.iufro.org/media/iufro-spotlights/
Regards,
Sheila Ward
Deputy Coordinator
IUFRO WP 1.02.04
---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: IUFRO Headquarters <office(a)iufro.org>
Date: Tue, Oct 6, 2020 at 3:58 AM
Subject: IUFRO Spotlight #83 - Examining the Economic Drivers of Wildfire:
Where There's Smoke, There's Finance
To: Dear IUFRO Officeholder <mahoganyforthefuture(a)gmail.com>
[image: IUFRO Spotlight]
IUFRO Spotlight #83 - Examining the Economic Drivers of Wildfire: Where
There's Smoke, There's Finance
*IUFRO Spotlight is an initiative of the International Union of Forest
Research Organizations. Its aim is to introduce, in a timely fashion,
significant findings in forest research from IUFRO officeholders and member
organizations to a worldwide network of decision makers, policy makers and
researchers. IUFRO will encapsulate, and distribute in plain language,
brief, topical and policy-relevant highlights of those findings, along with
information on where/how to access the full documents.*
*Occasionally, IUFRO Spotlight also presents special activities such as
sessions at major IUFRO congresses or the work of the IUFRO Task Forces.
These focus on emerging key issues that contribute to international
processes and activities and are of great interest to policy makers and to
groups inside and outside the forest sector. With those criteria in mind,
the Spotlights for the next several months will highlight the undertakings
and goals of the IUFRO Task Forces. The IUFRO Spotlights will be
distributed in a periodic series of emails as well as blog postings.*
Examining the Economic Drivers of Wildfire: Where There's Smoke, There's
Finance
PDF for download
<https://www.iufro.org/fileadmin/material/publications/spotlights/spotlight83-drivers-of-wildfire.pdf>
[image: Photo showing Professional firefighters try to stop an advancing
fire with the help of local volunteers in Galicia, Spain. Photo by Nelson
Grima]
Professional firefighters try to stop an advancing fire with the help of
local volunteers in Galicia, Spain. Photo by Nelson Grima
"The world is ablaze. Or so it seems, and the scenario is repeating itself
every year now," says Dr. François-Nicolas Robinne, of the University of
Alberta's Department of Renewable Resources, and Coordinator of IUFRO's *Fire$:
Economic Drivers of Global Wildland Fire Activity Task Force* (TF).
"So far in 2020, the Western USA has been burning out of control, with
California experiencing its largest fire in recorded history; over 20% of
the Pantanal, one of the most biodiverse wetlands in the world, has gone up
in smoke in Brazil; and record-breaking temperatures in Siberia have been
driving massive fires far above the Arctic circle, thereby releasing
megatons of carbon into the atmosphere.
"Climate change," he says, "is an obvious and legitimate culprit for
wildfires," and along with lightning strikes and other more naturally
occurring fire drivers, bring challenges that must be addressed. "But many
other drivers influence fires, and economic ones are often overlooked.
"The majority of global fire activity is human-caused and often linked to
land degradation for the production of goods traded on the international
market.
"The reality is that, in many parts of the world, fire activity and its
aftermath can be linked to economic forces: the trade market, subsidies,
insurance premiums, taxes, or something as simple – yet critical – as daily
subsistence."
His TF is looking into the nexus between the economic level of local
populations, fire activity and effects on the provision of ecosystem
services and the global appetite for international commodities (e.g. oil
palm in Indonesia or beef from Brazil).
There is no comprehensive assessment at this time of the economic drivers
of global fire activity – either as direct drivers linked to capital market
systems/cash economies, or as indirect drivers linked to the production of
non-market values from ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration.
"So, gathering this type of information into one robust and informative
product is one of the fundamental reasons for the TF."
He explains that the TF wants to depict the variety of fire activity and
fire use around the world, and to show that in many cases it can be a
vector of landscape conservation, risk reduction, and economic development
all at the same time.
"There is an annoying tendency to put all fires in the same basket, even
after all these years of research showing the importance of flames for many
ecosystems and historical landscapes, including in the wet tropics," Dr.
Robinne says.
"Tropical forests for instance, concentrate the essence of the problem the
TF would like to tackle: Indigenous communities living off the land, using
fire with parsimony and ancestral knowledge, who have been fighting
multinational corporations that take and burn the land," he says.
"We would like to provide a comprehensive review of the economic drivers of
fire activity across the world, from local issues (e.g., use of fire in
traditional agriculture) to planetary markets (e.g., trade of goods coming
from fire-degraded lands). Hopefully, this work can lead to better
education and – one can dream – to concrete action to act on some of these
main drivers," Dr. Robinne says.
Fire, he says, "triggers a strong emotional response – especially in the
Western psyche – and since fire is often human-caused and linked to land
degradation, by explaining to people that the goods they are buying come
from a fire-degraded area, perhaps the emotional response will kick in and
help build environmental awareness.
"Then too, one must think of firefighting expenditures," he adds. "Fuel
overloads are linked to fire suppression for timber protection. Communities
allow urban expansion in fire prone forests so they can leverage more
taxes, but they also have to think about budgets for fire mitigation
programs, insurance claims that will come to billions of dollars, and,
somewhat less obviously, foreseeable water pollution out of municipal
watersheds that will cost millions at the very least."
Dr. Robinne says most people realize that relying on warlike, full-scale
firefighting is not economically sustainable and that extreme wildfire
events seem to be taking an increasing economic toll on societies.
"We know of efficient alternative paths to learning to live with wildfires
and-or to reduce global wildfire activity, yet we still need to show that
these paths are economically viable and socially acceptable," he says.
*IUFRO Task Force Fire$: Economic Drivers of Global Wildland Fire
Activity: *
https://www.iufro.org/science/task-forces/global-wildland-fire-activity/
*Further reading: IUFRO Occasional Paper 32 - Global Fire Challenges in a
Warming World: *
https://www.iufro.org/news/article/2019/01/23/occasional-paper-32-global-fi…
*The IUFRO Task Forces are established on a temporary basis during each
5-year IUFRO Board term and focus on emerging key forest-related issues.
The nine current TFs will run till 2024 at which time their relevance will
be assessed in relation to the forest issues of the day.*
*________________________________*
The findings reported in *IUFRO Spotlight* are submitted by IUFRO
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policy implications and be applicable to more than one country. If you
would like to have a publication highlighted by Spotlight, contact: Gerda
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The International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO) is the
only worldwide organization devoted to forest research and related
sciences. Its members are research institutions, universities, and
individual scientists as well as decision-making authorities and other
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Visit: https://www.iufro.org/
*________________________________*
*IUFRO Spotlight #83, published in October 2020*
*by IUFRO Headquarters, Marxergasse 2, 1030 Vienna, Austria. Available for
download at: **https://www.iufro.org/media/iufro-spotlights/
<https://www.iufro.org/media/iufro-spotlights/>*
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