Climate change and extended droughts have put a fine point on the inadequacies of state-run fire suppression, which is all too often purely reactive; the frequency and ferocity of global wildfires are on the rise as a result. In their place, Community-Based Forest Fire Management (CBFFM) has become an essential approach, one that makes use of local ecological know-how and grassroots mobilization for the sake of proactive prevention. Yet bringing rural and wildland-urban interface (WUI) communities into the fold of formal forestry governance is not without its problems. Bureaucratic friction and a dearth of resources can make for inconsistent integration at best.
Here we put forward a systematic examination of the institutional, socio-economic and behavioural factors at play in community participation. Our mixed-methods design is built on a synthesis of large-scale empirical work and the kind of institutional narratives found on the ground. We administered a structured cross-sectional survey to 850 volunteers, community leaders and residents in the vicinity of high-risk forested areas. To triangulate those figures, we conducted 60 semi-structured interviews with everyone from state forestry officials and environmental sociologists to indigenous practitioners of fire management.
Statistical modelling of the quantitative data – including confirmatory factor analysis and hierarchical multiple regression – was used to test the predictive value of things like institutional trust and local knowledge. On the qualitative side, a thematic review of the interview transcripts turned up systemic obstacles, not least the absence of reliable funding for patrols and the alienation wrought by top-down edicts. What the numbers show is a clear pattern: the application of local ecological knowledge is by far the better indicator of engagement (β = 0.62, p < 0.001) than any financial inducement (β = 0.45, p < 0.01). Trust in regional authorities also matters; where it is high, we see a 72 per cent increase in active fuel-load reduction. Conversely, our regression analysis confirms that inflexible bureaucracy is a major deterrent to volunteerism (β = -0.54, p < 0.001). The findings point to the need for a decentralisation of fire governance. It is time for policymakers to move on from prescriptive control and put in place co-management models that properly fund and empower the communities doing the stewardship.