What rural communities can teach us about wildfire prevention and recovery

Fighting wildfires requires more than technical fire management. It demands thriving rural communities. That is one of the conclusions from a long-term project examining wildfire experiences across Spain, Chile and Sweden.

“Wildfires are not only environmental problems, but also deeply social, emotional, and political processes shaped by inequality and power relations”, says SLU researcher and project leader Marien González-Hidalgo.

For over 15 years, Marien has explored how wildfires unequally affect the well-being of local communities such as rural communities in Sweden, rural and sub-urban communities in Spain and Indigenous and peasant communities in Chile. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and focus groups, as well as collaboration with researchers, activists and community leaders across these territories, she argues that wildfire prevention and post-disaster policies need to bring broader socio-economic perspectives into the equation.

“Wildfires are becoming one of the defining socio-environmental challenges of our time, reshaping landscapes, livelihoods, and emotional well-being. They are not only natural but also socially constructed, affecting people unequally.”

The research highlights how people in Spain and Chile have been expelled, directly or indirectly, from certain rural areas through decades of tree plantation expansion. Further, rural areas have been increasingly abandoned due to the cities growing. The few people who remain often hold local knowledge that can contribute to wildfire prevention, response and post-fire recovery.

“Beyond firefighting itself, there are other forms of valuable knowledge, such as how water flows through the landscape, which species are more or less flammable, where to seek shelter in forests, or which neighbours can provide or need particular emotional support”, says Marien.

Wildfire vulnerability is political

The research points to broader social and political factors behind wildfire vulnerability. Marien argues that maintaining strong public services – such as schools, healthcare facilities and local shops – and social support systems in rural areas could help communities become more resilient to future disasters.

“It is an accumulation of small factors that, added together, creates big costs. Addressing them require structural changes in how society is organised, since the social, economic and political processes create and reinforce vulnerability. Changing dominant socio-environmental agendas is challenging, but our research shows that it’s important for building resilience against disasters.”

Today, dominant socio-environmental agendas are often shaped by so-called ‘green’ developments, Marien highlights. The developments generate capital but can ultimately undermine the livability of local communities.

“This creates a major challenge for building resilience in a context where disasters till continue to happen – which they will, due to climate change and the ongoing socio-environmental transformations.”

These socio-environmental transformations are important to understand – many current policies for rural development and forestry contribute to ecological degradation, emotional distress, and social conflict, Marien argues. For example, many of the wildfires studied occurred in landscapes already transformed by intense forestry. 

“When we analysed emotional well-being, people’s emotional distress was not only connected to the disaster itself. It was also linked to the industrial forestry landscapes that existed before the wildfire.”

According to Marien, analysis and discussion about recovery and emotional well-being often focus narrowly on the period immediately after a wildfire. However, there is a need to take a longer-term perspective. That could help create a better understanding of how residents’ well-being connects to wildfire prevention and vulnerability.

“We need to look at how policies and governance structures shape the conditions in which disasters emerge, and what structural components lie behind them.”

By identifying local, community-driven strategies, the research can help strengthen the work of NGOs, forest organisations, farming communities and other civil society actors to develop more sustainable rural and forest policies.

“We can either learn from past crises or wait for the next to come. Sometimes it’s impossible to be totally prepared – we can’t control everything, but we can become better at discussing and addressing the social conditions that shape disasters.”

Contact

Marien Gonzalez Hidalgo
marien.gonzalez.hidalgo@slu.se
+46 76 565 61 03