Fire Suppression and the Wildfire Paradox in Contemporary China: Policies, Resilience, and Effects in Chinese Fire Regim
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Fire Suppression and the Wildfire Paradox in Contemporary China: Policies, Resilience, and Effects in Chinese Fire Regimes Jack Patrick Hayes 1 Accepted: 16 September 2020 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract China has a long history of both using and managing fire use while still regularly forced to fight forest fires. My approach seeks to generate historical insights that explain how the wildfire paradox developed over the past 150 years in northeastern and southwestern China. To explore these dynamics, I use the concepts of “panarchy” and adaptive cycles, rigidity and wildfire paradox, and fire fences and corridors to explore socio-ecological resilience and fire management. By examining the interaction of wildfires and successive fire policies, the fundamental transformation of fire suppression after 1949, along with adaptive cycles of disruption and recovery in fire prone areas, I hope to broaden perspectives on how ideas, policies and people influenced forest ecosystems and resilience through total fire suppression concepts. Keywords China . Wildfire paradox . Fire management . Forest fires . Adaptive cycles . Wildfire policy
The paradox simply put: China’s forests regularly catch fire, and government authorities from at least the nineteenth century have tried to establish procedures for preventing fire, fighting it when it occurs, and reforesting burnt-over areas and all too often laying the grounds for the next fire. Historical insights from the late 1800s to the present help to explain how the wildfire paradox developed in northeastern and southwestern China under the PRC government from 1949 to 2015. History also expands our understanding of influences and constraints on management evolution and adaptation, and unpacks some key challenges in coordinating wildfire management. A history of fire regimes and management also broadens perspectives on how different groups in Chinese society have played varying roles in wildfire management and forest resilience.1 This investigation employs the concepts of fire regimes, panarchy, and adaptive cycles to explore China’s fire regimes. The goal is to develop a conceptual
1
See research by Thomas Spies et al. (2014) and Michelle Steens-Adams et al. (2017) on wildfire-society relations. This analysis draws from a larger project that incorporates more material on indigenous fire and landscape management, China’s southern fire regime, and other historical materials.
* Jack Patrick Hayes [email protected] 1
Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Surrey, Canada
framework with which to analyze fires, socio-ecological resilience, and fire management based over a significant historical timeline.
Fire Regimes and the Wildfire Paradox Fire is a fundamental ecological process that affects ecosystems, communities, social values, and services across the world. This makes fire an ecological and human process, crafted in the modern era out of a mix of policies and praxis, in China as elsewhere. Many decision makers in fire-prone areas face
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