Generating narratives on future risk to inform regional climate change adaptation planning

Bardsley, Douglas K.; Wiseman, Nathanael D.; Hugo, Graeme

doi:10.1002/9781118451694.ch5

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 79 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Narratives are the stories told about humans, creating themes that inform ways of thinking, and therefore policies and actions (Moskwa et al 2018). Examining and understanding narratives about how people position themselves and others in relation to complex environmental issues complements the modelled 'hard' sciences in developing policies for adaptative approaches regarding the landscape and fire (Bardsley, Wiseman, and Hugo 2016).…”

Section: The Australian Landscape: a More-than-human Contact Zonementioning

confidence: 99%

Living with fire in the landscape: uncomfortable adaptation, or border war?

D’Arcy¹

2022

Advances in Forest Fire Research 2022

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

With anthropogenic climate change already bringing more frequent and more intense wildfires, combined with significant human populations living in wildfire-prone landscapes, there are increased calls for adaptive approaches to fire. There is hope that by doing so, and by moving from a predominantly responsive â€˜war on wildfireâ€™ approach, humans can learn to â€˜thrive with fireâ€™ (Tedim et al. 2020). Humans around the world have always shared their landscapes with fire â€“ circumstances dictating the degree of comfort. Through these lived experiences, the stories of humans learning to live within their landscapes and therefore with fire have always been â€“ and continue to be â€“ stories of learning and innovation (Bowman et al. 2011; Pyne 2016). These adaptations, however, have been both enabled and constrained by how humans and their institutions have envisioned their relationships with the more-than-human actors and agents that share the landscape with them (Ruane 2018). These actors and agents include, amongst many other things, fire, vegetation and the weather. There has been a great deal of focus on what can be learnt from Indigenous knowledges about fire on the landscape (i.e. (Roos et al. 2016; Steffensen 2020). However, there has been less attention on how complex and often conflicting Western visions of the landscape and therefore of fire have contributed to particular adaptive approaches. This paper explores how these visions â€“ Aboriginal, as well as colonial, romantic, scientific, national and ecological â€“ are a useful way of examining current narratives and adaptive approaches to fire in an Australian context. Examining these differing visions helps understand the range of fire management adaptions that have emerged in Australia. Each vision has implications for how â€˜fire-adaptiveâ€™ communities might act; what decisions they might make; who might be involved; and the processes that are used to take an adaptive approach to fire. They offer knowledges and practices that could complement the dominant colonial vision of â€˜war on wildfireâ€™, as well as reduce the effects of social and environmental â€˜slow emergenciesâ€™ on human and more-than-human vulnerabilities. However, despite knowledge of these alternative visions in governments and communities, they are difficult to incorporate meaningfully into the dominant vision. Adaptive approaches to fire in more-than-human communities will require trade-offs across levels of society, scales of landscapes and of time.

show abstract

Section: The Australian Landscape: a More-than-human Contact Zonementioning

confidence: 99%