Abstract
Over the last few decades, according to the Forest Fire Prevention Services of the Catalan Government, a small number of fires (less than 1%) have been responsible for the destruction of more than three quarters of the burnt forest area in Catalonia. However, while these wildfires have transformed many components of the landscape, including its vegetation and soils, they offer landowners the opportunity to learn from past decisions. This article aims to analyze the responses of forest owners in Central Catalonia after the great forest fires of the 1980s and 1990s, including the way in which their objectives and strategies are defined and their actions implemented. By conducting interviews with the members of forest owners’ associations and by means of participant observation at association meetings, we seek to examine the processes of social learning experienced by this collective and to identify the mechanisms used in their efforts to create socio-ecological structures that are less vulnerable to fire. Associationism is unusual in the world of Catalan forest ownership, despite the great number of private forest areas. In our results, however, associationism emerges as a strategy for cooperation, a recognition of the need to link ecological and social structures in the territory, and one which we define as a form of ‘socio-ecological resistance’. Our study highlights that the goals and actions of forest owners’ associations have both an instrumental and emotional component, so that reason, emotion and action have come to form the three vertices of socio-ecological resistance to fire.
Highlights
Fire, a natural element, with a presence dating back millions of years, is known to have played a significant role in the shaping of Mediterranean landscapes [1,2,3,4]
Over the last few decades, according to the Forest Fire Prevention Services of the Catalan Government, a small number of fires have been responsible for the destruction of more than three quarters of the burnt forest area in Catalonia
By conducting interviews with the members of forest owners’ associations and by means of participant observation at association meetings, we seek to examine the processes of social learning experienced by this collective and to identify the mechanisms used in their efforts to create socio-ecological structures that are less vulnerable to fire
Summary
A natural element, with a presence dating back millions of years, is known to have played a significant role in the shaping of Mediterranean landscapes [1,2,3,4]. Fire has been adopted as a tool for the management of these ecosystems, humanized since time immemorial [5,6]. Other human activities, and especially those affecting land use and land management changes, have a huge influence on fuel availability and its structure, two characteristics that have played a major role in modulating fire regimes across the Mediterranean Basin [4,7]. Changes in fire regimes appear to be affecting all Mediterranean climate zones around the world, including those of Portugal [10], Spain [11], Greece [12], Israel [13,14] and Chile [15].
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