Role in FIRE-ADAPT: co-leader of the thematic area “(inter)cultural services and human well-being”
Organisation: Tyndall Centre for Climate Change and School of International Development, University of East Anglia (UEA)
Country: United Kingdom
What motivated me to join FIRE-ADAPT
The most incentivising thing was knowing who else was inside, the network, and having the opportunity to work with people whose scientific work I’ve read, like Imma Oliveras, Bibiana Bilbao and other colleagues. Also, having in the project fire managers from different contexts, I mean South American and European countries, seemed extremely unique. Finally, the possibility of networking through secondments in order to really try to connect different knowledges and understandings seemed very special and necessary given this global crisis of wildfires. So, it was the the network, the potential to connect contexts and knowledges, and the timing.
What my area of work in the project pursues
Our focus is on bringing diverse cultural knowledges together and also scientific knowledge and place-based or practitioner knowledge. It’s that connexion of knowledges which is really important to our work.
The next dimension that motivates our objectives is, on one side, trying to understand better and give visibility to the lived experiences of quemas (burns) or managed fire, and, on the other side, the experience of “incendios” or wildfires; we are interested in showing the different types of impacts of those different fires. These includes their benefits but also their burdens because, even in the managed fires, practices that have been used for many generations perhaps now require some adaptations for new realities. You know that the process can generate benefits, of course, but also can put stresses on communities, their governance and their interaction with institutions. When we’re talking about impacts, we’d want to move beyond just thinking of those on carbon, the area of forest or land burnt, or the amount of biodiversity impacted; we also want to think about the people living in those places: what the impacts are on their lives and livelihoods, the material things, their agriculture, yields, income, assets, houses, etc. but also on their own relations with each other and the non-material attributes that we all have as part of our well-being: our subjective and relational well-being and our relationship with the land, with the territory.
How we are going to achieve our objectives
Through linking research projects that we already have ongoing that look into the questions I talked about above. For example, I’m involved in research in the Amazon, where we’re trying to understand what people are experiencing when incendios or wildfires burn through their forest, what that means for the biodiversity considering that, when we’re talking about biodiversity, we are also talking about people’s food, how families are finding difficulties to collect the different resources from the forest as a result of fire.
One of the PhD students in our team is trying to understand what the values that communities hold are, the different sorts of relationships and arrangements that they have and knowledges and attachments to the land that have enabled them to scape from this sort of reality of incendios (wildfires) in their forests; what kind of factors exist in communities that help them to control the fires as well as to help them and their interactions with institutions. You could say those things are the intangible: the relationships people have with each other, the land and the institutions. We’re trying to understand what they are and to give them visibility.
What strengths of the partners come together in the project
One of the big benefits of FIRE-ADAPT is the access it gives to the many many case studies, contexts and realities. The fire managers in particular have got a very good knowledge of the sorts of dynamics because they are in the middle, connecting… they speak with the politicians and the policymakers, but they also work in the communities. They have a really interesting perspective because they’re like a bridge. Furthermore, they have experience in the many communities that are involved in these integrated fire management strategies. That is a real benefit, especially for this more human dimension side.
We researchers bring in our existing research projects to then try to do new research in some of these places where we can also have the opportunity to hear what the priorities of the fire managers are. Then, we can try to make sure our research is delivering to those relevant questions.
The natural scientists are going to generate and share a great amount of data, which is going to be fantastic resource, and we’ll be working to bring in social sciences and interdisciplinary thinking more.
This is me
Favourite food: apple crumble
Favourite film: The Piano, by Jane Campion
Favourite music: world music, specially Brazilian music.
I admire: Frances Seymour, who was the Director General of CIFOR when I worked there.
Superpower I´d like to have: fly
In France, I´d take you to: the Fendlands in Norfolk, which are beautiful because they have a lot of history to them. Also, a lot of knowledge on how to collect the different grasses, weave them, and fish in them.