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During the five decades since its origin, law and economics has provided an influential framework for addressing a wide array of areas of law ranging from judicial behaviour to contracts. This book will reflects the first-ever forum for law and economics scholars to apply the analysis and methodologies of their field to the subject of wildfire. The only modern legal work on wildfire, the book brings together leading scholars to consider questions such as: How can public policy address the effects of climate change on wildfire, and wildfire on climate change?

Are the environmental and fiscal costs of ex ante prevention measures justified? What are the appropriate levels of prevention and suppression responsibility borne by private, state, and federal actors?

Wildfire Policy: Law and Economics Perspectives

Fire Authorities must develop an Integrated Risk Management Plan which considers any emergency, including wildfires, which could affect their community. This includes cross-border, multi-authority and national risks which, like wildfire, do not respect institutional boundaries. For example, the Sandhurst Fire of affected parts of both Surrey and Berkshire.

Integrated Risk Management Plans have to demonstrate how prevention, protection and response activities might best be used to mitigate the impact of incidents on communities in a cost-effective way [ 64 , p. Policy guidance on how this should be achieved for wildfire in Integrated Risk Management Plans was set out in [ 65 ]. Some FRS have embraced wildfire risk in their planning and prevention. Unlike other emergency services, the Fire Service does not have an external inspectorate. DCLG has instead largely devolved assurance in the running of Fire Authorities to the local level, backed by assessment by the National Audit Office [ 66 , 67 ], although their last inspection did not undertake a qualitative analysis of local FRS risk assessment planning.

Whatever the inconsistencies, the Integrated Risk Management Planning process does represent the beginnings of a commitment to address the complex issue of wildfire in a significant way. The participation of some FRS in local fire groups from the s is evidence of growing awareness that they need to involve other stakeholders such as land owners and land managers to help reduce ignitions, and to assist with contingency planning and suppression, especially for rural FRS, which face the brunt of extreme wildfire events but have limited resources to cope.

The Act, guidance and National Framework [ 63 , pp. The concept of local collaborative cross-sector working with land managers to improve response to wildfire incidents therefore became enshrined in national policy.

Why wildfire season never stops

The Association is also working alongside academic partners to refine the way wildfire is defined and evidenced using the Incident Recording System [ 12 ]. The response of wider stakeholders to wildfire in the UK is illustrated by the Forestry Commission, which has an evident interest in avoiding loss of timber and amenity value. Woodland cover has significantly increased since , with coniferous woodland accounting for just over half of the UK woodland area, although significantly higher in Scotland [ 70 ]. Their analysis of Incident Recording System data has already been discussed.

Here, we present three further examples. The introduction of the Incident Recording System helped promote the emergence of standards for defining wildfire. Agreement on standards is crucial to systematic innovation across many sectors [ 71 ]. As a result, UK national reporting requirements were linked for the first time to United Nations and European requirements and should facilitate the inclusion of UK fire statistics into the European Forest Fire Information System [ 73 ]. A key example is the UK Forestry Standard, which helps to ensure that forestry is sustainable and meets international agreements and national legislation [ 74 ].

Legal requirements and good forestry practice are combined with guidelines for compliance from different elements of sustainable forestry management. The Standard requires planning for forest fires; for example, a contingency plan and building resilience through adaptation in age classes, species selection and stand structure.

From this document, others cascade down, as discussed next. As a result of the Swinley Forest Fire, the Forestry Commission published practice guidance to help ensure both private and public Forestry Management Plans include mitigation and adaptation to wildfire incidents [ 75 ]. The aim was to move away from over-reliance on linear defences of fire breaks and fire plans to a more inclusive and integrated whole-site prevention approach.

The document anticipates the impacts of future climate change, especially in South East England. It covers wildfire behaviour, the need to plan for wildfire, and forest management plans for integrating wildfire resilience. It highlights forest management techniques to help prevent and improve response when wildfires do occur, including managing vegetation and fuels, creating fire breaks and fire belts and improving forest design; for instance, strategic placement of deciduous tree components to slow fire spread. Scope exists for building silvicultural resilience; deciduous trees are far more fire-resistant than young conifers.

Forestry Commission plans for incident response include provision of circular fire access routes, water supplies and hard standings. It influenced the design of a major housing development adjacent to the Swinley Forest fire site and is recommended by Dorset FRS to help landowners reduce wildfire risk [ 77 ].

It was also used in the redesign of Dorset's Purbeck Forest. The Forestry Commission's scheme for Dorset's Purbeck Forest in Southern England shows how the potential impact of wildfire can be mitigated by collaborative planning. Partial deforestation of coniferous woodland to generate lowland heath was proposed—a shift to an open, more fire-prone and heavily used ecosystem. Fire would damage the ecosystem and pose a threat to the A35 Trunk Road and the Wytch Farm oil processing facility.

An Environmental Impact Assessment screening exercise was undertaken and judged that an Environmental Statement [ 78 ] was required. In practice, this meant producing fire maps and an action plan, and local training in fighting wildfires. The danger of climate change has brought wildfire into sharp international focus [ 81 ]. The UK Climate Change Risk Assessment identified increased frequency of wildfire as one of seven key risks [ 7 , p. Wildfire was seen as a key cross-sector risk, being cited under biodiversity and ecosystem services [ 83 ] and at least three of the 11 other sector reports 18 , and therefore, one which requires integrated land use and emergency planning.

Linkages with other natural hazards were also highlighted; for instance, tree pests and diseases may encourage fire spread [ 84 ]. Climate change will also bring increasing pressure on Fire and other Emergency Services. However, Government is not always consistent in its treatment of the new policy issue of wildfire.

Sir Ken Knight's review of proposed Fire Service efficiencies and operations did not address the financial challenges of increasing frequency of wildfires, nor the impacts of a changing climate [ 85 ]. Knowledge and cross-sector structures within the England and Wales Forum were explicitly highlighted and used in the national plan.

The Programme identified three vital roles of the Forum in preparing for the impact of climate change on wildfires: In response, the Chief Fire Officers Association produced a report that acknowledged the present and future growing risks of large wildfire incidents, recommending that ideally the risk of severe fires should be considered, and where appropriate addressed, during the development of each relevant FRS Integrated Risk Management Plan [ 87 ]. Natural England also produced a report in which wildfire was considered a high-priority threat to landscapes and biodiversity as well as to public access and engagement [ 88 ].

It highlighted the increasing wildfire risk to heaths, stating that it would define how mitigation of wildfire risk would be encouraged in land management schemes for susceptible habitats. The climate change agenda has therefore been an important driver in raising awareness of wildfire as a cross-sector issue.

Wildfire policy: Law and economics perspectives — Arizona State University

For development control planning, there is a risk that major residential developments will be situated next to high-risk wildfire sites in the rural—urban interface, posing a risk to public health and safety. For example, a pilot study of a sample area of 11 by 12 km around the area of the Swinley Forest fire showed there are 33 care homes for the elderly in the area, six of which are adjacent to fire-prone heathland [ 89 ].

However, planners' awareness of wildfire risk in the UK rural—urban interface remains low. This is because the planning process is reactive; it responds to severe events, and return periods for severe wildfire are typically longer than the political cycle. Policy instruments therefore do not specifically identify wildfire, and suitable tools to quantify wildfire risk are not yet widely available. The National Planning Policy Framework for England and Wales was developed to simplify the numerous Planning Policy Statements and Guidance that have evolved over the past few decades, and to ensure a correct balance between sustainable social, economic and environmental development.

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Policy 99 suggests planning authorities should anticipate the impact of climate change over the longer term. In all cases, natural hazards and climate change tacitly include wildfire, however, until it is overtly specified, wildfire will continue to be overlooked in most planning decisions. Further, no real traction is likely until tools are developed to quantify and map wildfire likelihood, impact and resulting risk in a similar way to flooding, for example, using wildfire threat analysis as adopted in New Zealand [ 92 , 93 ].

It took severe flooding before risk mapping tools were established. Regrettably, it will take more severe events like Swinley Forest to put wildfire firmly on Planning's radar. Use of planning policy to help adaptation to wildfire is a common approach in North America and Australia. Anticipation of wildfire is embedded into integrated land use planning, habitat management and building regulations. This joined-up approach builds resilience to all but the most extreme bushfire incidents.

With the pressure to build more houses, especially in South East England, greater emphasis in the planning system is placed on protecting surrounding priority species and habitats. Perversely, land management for purely conservation objectives can be inappropriate for wildfire mitigation and adaptation, creating greater risk to the public and the wider environment. Providing more green infrastructure also represents more fuel. Greater effort is needed to engage this sector. The response to wildfire in the UK remains varied, fragmented and incomplete at local level.

National policy is related to goals such as disaster management and adaptation to climate change. Responsibility for the single problem of wildfire is fragmented across government departments. There is a need to overcome the challenges of complexity and fragmentation by introducing a clear policy, at least towards potential severe wildfires. In effect, policy needs to act as a selection mechanism to pick the best features of the community-based response at local level and to combine initiatives at the national level.

To some extent a pragmatic solution is emerging as groups such as the England and Wales Wildfire Forum become de facto consultative panels for government. Of the 10 policy outcomes for managing wildfire risk in the rural? In the USA, however, a national policy framework already existed through Federal institutions such as the National Park Service [ 97 ]. Rather, local responses have recently emerged because of a need to align the scale of decision-making with direct experience of those who bear the consequences of those decisions.

Wildfire Policy: Law and Economics Perspectives (Electronic book text)

In the USA, there is a clear process of modifying existing institutions to respond better to local community needs. In effect, the process of adaptive governance seen with wildfire in the USA has been reversed in the UK. Instead of governance spreading from central control towards local solutions, in the UK, the evolution of local solutions has prompted ad hoc coordination at local and national level.

In turn, this has influenced the formal policy of government as it evolved through emergency planning and climate change legislation. It is now argued that the USA needs to move towards a position where communities work hand in hand with planners, architects and land managers to coexist with wildfire [ ].

These recommendations have strong echoes of the emergence of local wildfire groups in the UK during the s and accord closely with the goals of the Forestry Commission in managing fire. However, as we have seen, the UK response still largely ignores the role of the UK planning system in anticipating wildfire problems and improving resilience. The UK experiences wildfires annually, but the episodic frequency of severe incidents reduces awareness in wet years.

Return periods for severe wildfire are typically longer than the political cycle and five-year time span considered for emergency planning. Historically limited fire statistics, especially for burnt area, hinder the ability to accurately evidence the issue and quantify risk. Development of agreed standards, pioneered by the Forestry Commission, allowed geo-referenced data on wildfires to be collected in the Incident Recording System for all vegetation fires across GB from , although spatial accuracy and lack of reliable data on fire perimeters limit development of geographic information systems-based risk assessment tools at the local scale.

England does not yet have a specific national wildfire agency or strategy. The now 46 regional FRS have a statutory duty to extinguish wildfires alongside structural fires and other emergency rescue duties. The definition of wildfires is lenient, covering any uncontrolled vegetation fire where a decision or action regarding suppression is required. The Scottish government identifies the more significant incidents in the Incident Recording System using a definition based primarily on FRS resources and estimated burned area.

For England, further work is needed to agree a hierarchy of vegetation fires, which allows for differences in local circumstances between FRS and also suits outcome scenarios used in Community Risk Registers. The FRS-centred approach and resulting suppression paradigm runs the risk of more severe fires in the future, unless other methods of managing fuel and ignition sources are also implemented. This important international message is not widely realized in the UK. In this respect, recognition as hazard is a double-edged sword, denying beneficial effects of vegetation fire.

Successful management requires the adoption of a cross-sector approach at the national scale, not just as now for the emergency response phase of large incidents, but also at the prevention phase. As we have seen, this is beginning to be redressed with wildfire risk assessments now included as conditions of some agri-environment subsidies. Even now though, such a national cross-sector approach is challenging because of the fragmented responsibility for wildfire at different phases of the hazard chain. Policies which impact on wildfire have evolved separately in each sector and can result in unintended consequences.

In the absence of coordinated central policy guidance and spurred by individual champions, community-based solutions gradually emerged during the s, long before formal awareness and government policy began to deal with the issue. Indeed, these grass-roots responses have diffused upward to facilitate later central government actions. This has happened at two levels; first, local and regional fire groups evolved in response to the crisis events of , , and ; and second, they were followed by national forums, aided by academia-led knowledge exchange initiatives.

FRS facing problems of rural wildfire and limited financial resources were forced to work in partnership with land owners and managers, environmental groups, water authorities and other stakeholders, and to innovate at the local level. These local fire groups took ownership of the wildfire problem, collaborating to gradually develop knowledge and management strategies at scales matched to their own local social and ecological conditions.

On a national scale, the England and Wales Wildfire Forum, Scottish Wildfire Forum and the Chief Fire Officers Association Wildfire Group are helping to spread good practice laterally and vertically, assisted by academic knowledge exchange initiatives. Knowledge of wildfire management has been co-produced by both scales of these self-assembling, informal partnerships, improving local emergency response on the ground and raising government awareness of wildfire.

Both levels fit the evolutionary model in that participatory solutions gradually evolved in a cumulative way and vary between groups [ 8 ]. For national government, both the emergency planning and climate change agenda have been significant catalysts for wildfire awareness and the emergence of cross-sector working. Systematic national policy towards wildfire as hazard began to emerge in , when Government initiated a programme of contingency planning against risks and natural hazards facing civil society.

Crisis events have again been very significant; national awareness of wildfire was spurred by the fire season, and especially by the small but high-impact rural—urban interface fire at Swinley Forest. Risk assessments for the London Olympics also played a part. The need for national cross-sector collaboration on wildfire was boosted by the Climate Change Risk Assessment in Key stakeholders such as the Forestry Commission have pioneered good practice in adaptive land management to build fire resilience into UK forests by developing best practice guides and evidencing wildfire occurrence from national fire statistics.

Their approach has begun to diffuse into local areas adjacent to woodlands, and into broader DEFRA policy for lowland and upland heath. The Dorset case study shows that potential impact of wildfire can be mitigated by an adaptive collaborative approach to landscape planning, and innovative, but rare and much needed engagement with development control planning.

In summary, policy and practice have responded slowly and fitfully to the complexity of the wildfire problem. Taken overall, wildfire policy exhibits an evolutionary process, where locally adapted participatory solutions have emerged at multiple levels and diffused in response to need, as much as to legislation. The current national policy paradigm is still one of fire suppression in keeping with FRS practice for structural fires.

Recognition of severe wildfire as a national hazard has pushed it up the emergency planning agenda, but potentially undermines the longer-term benefits of vegetation fire and its role as a part of the socio-ecological system. We are still a long way from learning to live with fire, but the need for a risk management approach to wildfire, instead of zero tolerance to all vegetation fires is beginning to be recognized. Progress is being made towards a cross-sector approach that integrates fire and land management, especially at the prevention stage.

The grass-roots evolution of participatory solutions has been a key enabling process. A coordinated and funded policy is now needed to identify best practice and promote understanding of the role of fire in UK socio-ecological systems. Northern Ireland fires were recorded separately, so are not included in this analysis. Northern Ireland fires are recorded separately, so were not included in this analysis. Since 1 April , they cover Great Britain only https: The Incident Recording System still flags primary fires, but reports all vegetation fires equally.

They oversee their regional FRS and are funded jointly by central Government and local rates; levied by Local Authorities on residents for provision of essential services, including FRS. Some such as Northumbria, Gloucestershire, Merseyside and Hertfordshire included their own variants and codes for lower severity or spread into the rural—urban interface.

Fatality numbers are low under 10 and casualty figures are between 50 and , primarily as a result of respiratory complaints and burns. Replies were received from 50 of the current total of 54 FRS. Percentages are out of The knowledge exchange elements of this paper were supported by: National Center for Biotechnology Information , U.

Author information Article notes Copyright and License information Disclaimer. Accepted Feb This article has been cited by other articles in PMC. Abstract Severe wildfires are an intermittent problem in England. Wildfires -- Prevention and control -- Government policy -- United States. Contents Common law liability for fire: Merrill Fuel for the fire: Bradshaw The political economy of wildfire management: Anderson and Terry L.

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