The Next Step in Asia
For the past 30 years, forest fires in Asia have increased in both frequency and intensity. The problems they cause are not limited to the fires themselves. Haze from forest fires often results in significant increases in respiratory conditions, lung-function complaints and other related effects. Whenever adverse fire weather conditions persist, it is almost a foregone conclusion that severe air pollution and haze events, induced by fire-associated smoke, will ensue in Asia and elsewhere.
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In China, most forest fires are concentrated in a small number of regions. The highest number and largest sizes of forest fires occur in Heilongjiang, Inner Mongolia, Yunnan, Guangxi and Guizhou provinces. These remote regions tend to have the majority of forest cover; are exposed to more climatic extremes, including extreme wind events; and have few fire management (prevention and control) facilities.
Fire and forestry professionals need to be looking for solutions to these problems beyond conventional fire-management approaches. National and community-based solutions are needed, especially those that engage local communities, nongovernmental organizations and other stakeholders critical to the success of such approaches. There is a need to apply an ecosystem approach so that all fires, including those for agricultural or land-clearing purposes, are managed in an integrated manner that considers the needs of nature and people.
Over the last five years, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and The Nature Conservancy have been jointly preparing and presenting training programs and workshops on community-based fire management. CBFiM is a type of forest and land management in which a community - with or without the collaboration of other stakeholders — has substantial involvement in deciding the objectives and practices involved in preventing, controlling or using fires.
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In March, those organizations joined with the China State Forestry Administration to enlist forest fire scientists, managers, policy-makers and nongovernmental organizations from northeast Asia to deliver a workshop on community-based fire management in Xishuangbanna, in southwest China's Yunnan Province. The aim was to develop viable fire management options for the present socio-cultural conditions in China and elsewhere within the region.
The workshop's objective was to inform the wider fire management community of the role and use of CBFiM with examples from the local region and from across the globe. It also was intended to encourage and promote the role of communities in fire and landscape management.
CBFiM approaches can play a significant role in fire management, especially where human-based ignitions are the primary source of wildfires that affect the livelihood, health and security of people. CBFiM may involve arrangements for communities to respond and manage fire, as well as a shared understanding of how communities fit in a larger fire-management system.
In some existing examples of CBFiM, communities offer effective input into land and fire management decision-making, analyze and solve problems, self-regulate and adjust activities, and respond to fires and other emergencies. Consequently, a series of enabling factors seems to allow elements of CBFiM to develop:
The community has the capacity to make implementable decisions that reflect its objectives.
The community derives benefits from this system of fire management.
The community has both an internal capability and external conditions that allow it to offer meaningful input into decisions of how fire is to be managed on the landscape.
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