Landscape Fire Governance Framework

With over 300 million hectares burned annually, Landscape Fires are assuming increasingly extreme characteristics and causing more severe impacts on populations and ecosystems. They are a local problem with global consequences. Fire applied in land use and land-use change and the increasing severity of wildfires and their difficulty of control mirror socio-economic dynamics, economic incentives and public policies that determine land use and occupation. The diversity of underlying reasons of fire use and causes of wildfires, their systemic nature, and a growing number of stakeholders with different visions and solutions require that the simpler dichotomy of prevention and response give way to a more robust framework capable of addressing complexity and uncertainty. To better prepare societies to achieve sustainable development goals and ensure lower losses in fires, the technical and scientific community at the 8th International Wildland Fire Conference in Porto, proposes a fire governance model (Landscape Fire Governance Framework) that brings governments, businesses, academia, and members of civil society together in balanced and technically supported solutions. This framework presents the guidelines for the development of this model.