Format/Structure

Panel

Long Abstract

The Mediterranean climate zones (stretching from Chile and California to the Mediterranean basin itself and then to Australian southwest) are uniquely vulnerable regions with high-fire activity. As historical fire regimes in these zones are radically altered by climate change, land-use shifts and demographic changes, they are gaining scholarly attention – both as sites of disaster narratives and spaces of transformative potential and hope.

Fire has, for millennia, been a factor of human influence in the Mediterranean eco-systems which thus are deeply anthropogenic landscapes (Pyne, 2009). The resulting local knowledges and stories of guarding, cleaning and protecting forests, pastures and fallows precisely through human presence and activity are often in sharp contrast to state narratives on combating wildfires. Recent research by wildfire experts suggests that current Mediterranean fire management policies, focusing on firefighting and suppression, are destined to fail as they are unfit to account for the non-linear impacts of climate and landscape changes (Moreira et al., 2020). Moreover, political contestations around wildfires are frequently reflected in struggles for livelihoods, (indigenous and rural) land ownership and usage rights. This calls for holistic planning approaches grounded in multispecies justice in wildlife-urban interfaces (WUI), rural areas and beyond.

This panel explores the intersection of planning and solution approaches to wildfire risks and the socio-ecological role of the “political forest” (Peluso & Vandergeest, 2001). We invite critical submissions on Mediterranean wildfires that go beyond official narratives and lead a way through the unfolding climate catastrophes, related (but not limited) to:

- Multispecies justice

- Feminist and decolonial approaches to wildfire management

- Earthcare labor and fire ecologies

- State capacity and neoliberal fire-fighting regimes

- the politics of “degraded” land, “empty space” and Green Extractivism

- Politics of reforestation/afforestation/adaptation

- Marginalization and politics of blame

- methodologies of political ecology and activist research

This Panel has 7 pending paper proposals.
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