Christian A. Kull

Fire in the Earth system.

Burn, Baby, Burn Wildfires can have dramatic and devastating effects on landscapes and human structures and are important agents in environmental transformation. Their impacts on nonanthropocentric aspects of the environment, such as ecosystems, biodiversity, carbon reserves, and climate, are often overlooked. Bowman et al. (p. 481) review what is known and what is needed to develop a holistic understanding of the role of fire in the Earth system, particularly in view of the pervasive impact of fires and the likelihood that they will become increasingly difficult to control as climate changes. Fire is a worldwide phenomenon that appears in the geological record soon after the appearance of terrestrial plants. Fire influences global ecosystem patterns and processes, including vegetation distribution and structure, the carbon cycle, and climate. Although humans and fire have always coexisted, our capacity to manage fire remains imperfect and may become more difficult in the future as climate change alters fire regimes. This risk is difficult to assess, however, because fires are still poorly represented in global models. Here, we discuss some of the most important issues involved in developing a better understanding of the role of fire in the Earth system.

The human dimension of fire regimes on Earth

Humans and their ancestors are unique in being a fire-making species, but ‘natural’ (i.e. independent of humans) fires have an ancient, geological history on Earth. Natural fires have influenced biological evolution and global biogeochemical cycles, making fire integral to the functioning of some biomes. Globally, debate rages about the impact on ecosystems of prehistoric human-set fires, with views ranging from catastrophic to negligible. Understanding of the diversity of human fire regimes on Earth in the past, present and future remains rudimentary. It remains uncertain how humans have caused a departure from ‘natural’ background levels that vary with climate change. Available evidence shows that modern humans can increase or decrease background levels of natural fire activity by clearing forests, promoting grazing, dispersing plants, altering ignition patterns and actively suppressing fires, thereby causing substantial ecosystem changes and loss of biodiversity. Some of these contemporary fire regimes cause substantial economic disruptions owing to the destruction of infrastructure, degradation of ecosystem services, loss of life, and smoke-related health effects. These episodic disasters help frame negative public attitudes towards landscape fires, despite the need for burning to sustain some ecosystems. Greenhouse gas-induced warming and changes in the hydrological cycle may increase the occurrence of large, severe fires, with potentially significant feedbacks to the Earth system. Improved understanding of human fire regimes demands: (1) better data on past and current human influences on fire regimes to enable global comparative analyses, (2) a greater understanding of different cultural traditions of landscape burning and their positive and negative social, economic and ecological effects, and (3) more realistic representations of anthropogenic fire in global vegetation and climate change models. We provide an historical framework to promote understanding of the development and diversification of fire regimes, covering the pre-human period, human domestication of fire, and the subsequent transition from subsistence agriculture to industrial economies. All of these phases still occur on Earth, providing opportunities for comparative research.

From hope to crisis and back again? A critical history of the global CBNRM narrative.

Community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) has been on the ascendancy for several decades and plays a leading role in conservation strategies worldwide. Arriving out of a desire to rectify the human costs associated with coercive conservation, CBNRM sought to return the stewardship of biodiversity and natural resources to local communities through participation, empowerment and decentralization. Today, however, scholars and practitioners suggest that CBNRM is experiencing a crisis of identity and purpose, with even the most positive examples experiencing only fleeting success due to major deficiencies. Six case studies from around the world offer a history of how and why the global CBNRM narrative has unfolded over time and space. While CBNRM emerged with promise and hope, it often ended in less than ideal outcomes when institutionalized and reconfigured in design and practice. Nevertheless, despite the current crisis, there is scope for refocusing on the original ideals of CBNRM: ensuring social justice, material well-being and environmental integrity.

Madagascar aflame: landscape burning as peasant protest, resistance, or a resource management tool?

Abstract Madagascar has a fire problem: despite a century of anti-fire repression and rhetoric, farmers and herders continue burning about half of the island’s grasslands and woodlands annually. The state criminalized burning due to concern that fire destroys the island’s natural resources and blocks development. Many peasants, however, rely on fire to maintain pastures and woodlands, prepare cropfields, control pests, and manage wildfires. The resultant conflict over natural resource management provides a convenient window into questions of peasant protest and resistance, and into strategies of power in resource management. Peasants have succeeded in continuing to burn unimpeded, leading to a century-long stalemate over fire, by taking advantage of first, contradictions and hesitations within the state, second, the natural character of fire (its inevitability, easy anonymity, and self-propagation), and third, the ambiguity between fire as explicit protest and fire as a livelihood technique used at politically opportune moments. This research demonstrates that models of domination (or criminalization) and resistance used to understand peasant-state relations in natural resource management are incomplete without, first, a consideration of the complex and ambiguous spaces between domination and resistance, between state and peasant, between protest and livelihood practices, and second, attention to the political-ecological context including resource ecology, rural livelihoods, and political discourse.

Empowering Pyromaniacs in Madagascar: Ideology and Legitimacy in Community‐Based Natural Resource Management

Development practitioners frequently rely on community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) as an approach to encourage equitable and sustainable environmental resource use. Based on an analysis of the case of grassland and woodland burning in highland Madagascar, this article argues that the success of CBNRM depends upon the real empowerment of local resource users and attention to legitimacy in local institutions. Two key factors — obstructive environmental ideologies (‘received wisdoms’) and the complex political and social arena of ‘community’ governance — challenge empowerment and legitimacy and can transform outcomes. In Madagascar, persistent hesitancy among leaders over the legitimate role of fire has sidetracked a new CBNRM policy called GELOSE away from one of its original purposes — community fire management — towards other applications, such as community management of forest exploitation. In addition, complications with local governance frustrate implementation efforts. As a result, a century-long political stalemate over fire continues.

Tropical forest transitions and globalization: neo-liberalism, migration, tourism, and international conservation agendas.

Deforestation is giving way to forest regeneration in some tropical regions. We investigate such “forest transitions” in two biodiversity-rich countries. A case study near the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica shows how synergies between international conservation ideologies, neo-liberal reforms, tourism (and associated real estate investment), and migration (as one strategy for livelihood diversification) lead to increased forest cover. We find these factors widespread in Costa Rica as a whole. In Madagascar, by contrast, while the factors are present to varying degrees, similar trends are largely absent. Many analysts compare tropical forest transitions to the forest history of modernizing temperate countries. While our findings may appear consistent with such models based on processes of modernization, they are comprehensible only with reference to contemporary forces of globalization. We conclude that globalization has diverse impacts shaped by regional contexts; these can include the benefits of reforestation but also the costs of social marginalization.

Historical landscape repeat photography as a tool for land use change research

This study applies repeat photography – the comparison of historical and recent landscape photographs from the same camera point – to the case of highland Madagascar. First, it evaluates whether repeat photography is an efficient, effective, and useful method to identify region-wide trends in land use change. To do so, it proposes and applies a systematic methodology that addresses the significant obstacles of spatial bias and temporal inconsistency. When compared with the analysis of air photos and satellite images, the technique is found to provide useful high-resolution data and a deeper historical reach. If pursued opportunistically alongside other fieldwork, the method is efficient in time and cost; it can be a useful way to identify environmental trajectories worthy of further investigation, to corroborate other studies, and to illustrate changes. Second, the overall trends of 20th century land-use change in highland Madagascar are investigated. Results suggest that many parts of the central highlands – dominated 100 years ago by open grasslands – are now characterized by expanded and intensified agriculture, an increased presence of trees (fruit trees and exotic reforestation species), and general stability in soil erosion. These results complicate the view of Madagascar as an island suffering problematic environmental degradation, such as deforestation and erosion.

Leimavo Revisited: Agrarian Land‐Use Change in the Highlands of Madagascar

Describing and explaining land-use change is of critical concern in Madagascar, where land transformations such as deforestation and resulting environmental degradation currently capture widespread attention. While the eastern rain forest recedes in the face of swidden cultivators, the highlands demonstrate more constructive transformations. In this paper I present a case study of land-use change in Leimavo, a small village near Ambositra studied in the 1960s by Jean-Pierre Raison. Here, the twentieth century has seen a gradual reduction in irrigated rice cultivation and cattle husbandry, and a boom in market-oriented orange, vegetable, and grain production. In the long term, a historical landscape of grassy hills has been transformed into a productive cultural landscape with woodlots, anti-erosion benching, rice terraces, fruit groves, and diverse crops. Critical factors determining the trajectory of land-use change include regional population pressure, state policies, market incentives, climate variatio...

Dry Forests in Madagascar: Neglected and Under Pressure

SUMMARY The dry forests in Madagascar represent a remarkable tropical forest ecosystem, occupying almost the entire west slope of the island up to the very northern tip, especially on substrates associated with sedimentary formations. These forests span several woody vegetation types of the island, including (i) the southwestern coastal bushland, (ii) the southwestern dry spiny forest-thicket, and (iii) the western dry forest. These landscapes show a high degree of biodiversity with several centers of endemism hosting a globally unique fauna, with disparities in richness and diversity according to the groups, probably related to paleo-refugia. These landscapes also provide important ecosystem services for various ethnic groups residing along the coast, also hosting the only autochthonous group in Madagascar, the Mikea forest people. In this paper we review the scientific literature to highlight the importance of dry forests socio-ecological landscapes in order to identify knowledge gaps where future research is required to better inform management and policy to better balance conservation and development interests. For this, we recommend the adoption of transdisciplinary approaches that engage with a broad number of stakeholders in order to allow policy adaptations to better cope with current and future changes (e.g., agriculture, energy demands and needs).

Fire ecology and fire politics in Mali and Madagascar

Anthropogenic fires dominate Africa, where they have long shaped landscapes and livelihoods. Humans evolved in Africa’s fire-prone grasslands and savannas, eventually taking ignition into their own hands. This chapter reviews current knowledge about and concerns over lire in two African countries. Mali and Madagascar. Vast areas of land burn in both countries each year as people light fires to shape vegetation communities for a number of often overlapping and sometimes competing reasons, ranging from pasture and game management, to crop field preparation, to pest and wildfire control. In Mali, hunting and agropastoral fires shape vegetation zones along the gradient between the dry north and the more humid south. Their anthropogenic nature removes much of the interannual variation common in fire regimes elsewhere—they are a regular, predictable feature of the landscape. In Madagascar, fires prepare and maintain the vast pastures of the interior, and enable farmers to cultivate farther into the few remaining stands of forest. Although rural populations rely upon fire for numerous livelihood activities, they sometimes struggle to control fire. Policy makers have long criticized the fires for reducing tree cover and contributing to land degradation, raising the specter of desertification in Mali and deforestation in Madagascar. As a result, colonial and independent governments have periodically tried to eradicate—or at least minimize—landscape burning. These efforts wax and wane with the political context, with drought cycles, and with periods of international concern. Government fire restrictions are frequently perceived by rural residents as an imposition on their way of life, and enforcement has led to animosity against government agents. Given people’s resistance, as well as fire’s inevitability in wet-dry grassy landscapes, fire management is largely at a standstill. Some form of co-management is likely the only viable solution, yet in order for this to work, governments will have to accept the usefulness and inevitability of many fires.