FIREPOL research in Angola focuses on the understudied eastern highlands and central plateau, where fire plays a crucial role in shaping woodland and savanna ecosystems, and sustaining rural livelihoods. This region is of particular interest due to its long history of conflict and complex political dynamics, both of which have significantly influenced local fire regimes. Our research investigates how the Angolan civil war contributed to a sharp decline in fire activity, leading to major landscape transformations. We combine satellite-based fire data with local oral histories to uncover the socio-political factors that have shaped these fire patterns.
In the next phase of our work, we will initiate a legislative theatre process in collaboration with the National Geographic Okavango Wilderness Project (NGOWP), Fundação Lisima, The Nature Conservancy, and People Powered (through their Climate Democracy Accelerator Program). This innovative participatory method will bring together local communities, conservation actors, and policymakers to lay the groundwork for a co-developed fire management plan rooted in lived experience, ecological knowledge, and equitable principles. The aim is to move beyond top-down approaches to environmental governance and support inclusive, adaptive strategies that recognize and build upon local practices, while promoting social and ecological justice.
FIREPOL’s work in Botswana focuses on understanding the social and political dimensions of fire governance in the Okavango Panhandle, a region of high ecological value and cultural diversity that lies just outside the boundaries of the Okavango Delta World Heritage Site. This area is of particular interest to FIREPOL because it presents a compelling case for how centralised fire policies intersect with customary land practices, local livelihoods, and conservation pressures. Our research investigates how fire regimes are being reshaped by national fire suppression policies, and how local communities continue to use fire for land management, hunting, and subsistence despite restrictive regulations. By examining these dynamics, we aim to contribute to more inclusive and context-sensitive models of fire governance. Planned activities include fieldwork with local communities, policy analysis, and integration of remote sensing and participatory data on fire use and perceptions.
We are working in partnership with the Okavango Research Institute (ORI) at the University of Botswana, and are seeking to expand our collaboration with local communities and conservation stakeholders in the region.
Thailand serves as FIREPOL’s entry point into the Lower Mekong Region. Our ethnographic work in the country explores the use of fire by Indigenous communities in the highlands of the northern provinces of Chiang Mai and Nan. During the dry season, these areas are regularly enveloped in a thick blanket of air pollution, which places crop fires under intense public scrutiny. Our research seeks to understand the socio-economic, cultural, and political factors that shape fire regimes in Thailand. Fieldwork has focused on the Omkoi District to study fire-mediated livelihoods, particularly those related to the foraging of hed thob mushrooms. Over time, fire management has evolved from unregulated burning to a more structured approach, incorporating both traditional knowledge and scientific research. Controlled burns are now registered and monitored, reducing the risk of uncontrolled wildfires while still allowing communities to maintain their agricultural and ecological practices. Together with local communities, we have observed the implementation of fire permit and monitoring systems, discussed approaches to managing fires in dry dipterocarp forests, and taken part in firebreak construction to support fuel management efforts.
Headquartered in Bangkok, the Center for People and Forests (RECOFTC) is our key partner in Asia, leading data collection on fire policy regimes across 20 countries. RECOFTC is also collaborating with us on the development of four in-depth country profiles (Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Lao PDR). Combined, these outputs will offer a comprehensive snapshot of fire management strategies across the broader region.
Argentina presents a compelling case for the politics of wildfires, particularly for two reasons: economic policies and interests in the area, and the commitment of the local population to participate in firefighting operations. In the country, neoliberal urban development and the extractivist model have driven national and international economic policies that are detrimental to the environmental ecosystems of peri-urban and rural areas.
The Sierra of Córdoba, part of the Bosque Chaqueño region, has been under scrutiny for decades. One common method of preparing these areas for agriculture or urban development is by altering the soil through fire. Indeed, many authors highlight that in 2020, the most common cause of wildfires in these areas was this type of human activity. The consequences have been enormous: loss of the remaining native forest (around 3%), as well as the loss of wildlife, human lives, and infrastructure. Besides this, the national firefighting system in Argentina is based on volunteer fire stations, where resources are not always sufficient and the primary focus is on safeguarding urban areas and human life. Therefore, many people who live in high-risk areas have independently organized to guard the forest through self-financed collectives.
In Spring 2025, FIREPOL connected with professors studying this topic, as well as active participants in self-organized, self-financed collectives that work to extinguish and prevent wildfires, and attended events on political ecology and community initiatives focused on ecological restoration. In July 2025, we will conduct fieldwork to study the social organization of these collectives and the perspectives of care connected to the practice of extinguishing wildfires.
Our collaborator in this region is Joaquín Ulises Deon (UNC – CONICET).
Another area of interest for FIREPOL is the Province of Corrientes, in the northeast of Argentina, with a particular focus on the Esteros del Iberá – one of South America’s largest wetlands and a hotspot of biodiversity and conservation efforts. This region is especially relevant for investigating how fire management intersects with environmental governance, rural livelihoods, and competing land-use agendas. In recent years, the area has experienced increasingly frequent and intense wildfire events. Notably, in 2022, wildfires burned over one million hectares, drawing national attention to the ecological vulnerability and socio-political complexity of the region. Our research in Corrientes focuses on understanding how different actors – cattle ranchers, commercial forestry stakeholders, public authorities, among others – relate to fire, how they perceive its risks and benefits, and how they use it. Rather than viewing fire solely as a destructive force, we explore how it is embedded in broader cultural, economic, and political dynamics.
Our collaborators in this region are Professor Brián Ferrero (CONICET / Universidad de Rafaela), Adriana Millán (CONICET / Universidad de Rafaela), and Fernando Laprovitta (Universidad Nacional del Nordeste – UNNE).
Our research in Bolivia focuses on a set of national policies commonly referred to as Incendiary Laws: a legislative package enacted from 2013 onward that, in the name of food sovereignty and rural development, justified previously illegal deforestation and substantially weakened environmental regulations on land use. We are analyzing their distributive impacts, with particular attention to how they may have disproportionately benefited certain social groups, exacerbated environmental and land inequalities, and driven significant land-use change and biodiversity loss. The use of fire as a tool to clear land — a widespread “slash-and-burn” practice — has become more frequent and less regulated under these policies, aligning with concerns about fire as a political and institutional instrument shaping landscapes. This case is of direct relevance for FIREPOL, as it highlights how legal-institutional changes, under the banner of sovereignty or development, can accelerate deforestation and trigger social-ecological trade-offs.
In addition, we are analyzing 63 semi-structured interviews conducted in the Chiquitania region in 2022. The interviewed group consisted of a range of actors, including public officials, representatives of non-governmental organizations, community leaders and members, and representatives of ranchers’ associations. The analysis is part of a broader effort to investigate the political dimensions of wildfires, with a particular focus on understanding how fire events can be strategically used as political weapons. Specifically, the analysis centers on the physical and phenomenological characteristics of wildfires that make them susceptible to political instrumentalization.
Bolivia, therefore, represents a compelling case for exploring the intersection between fire events and political dynamics, due to the overlapping social, political, and environmental instability it has experienced since 2019 — a crucial year when environmental and political crises began to intertwine in public discourse.
It serves as a critical site for understanding the political economy of fire, the role of policy in shaping land conflicts, and the intersection between governance, inequality, and environmental degradation.
Brazil is a central case for FIREPOL due to its unique convergence of diverse fire management practices, ecological fire regimes, socio-environmental transformations, and colonial legacies embedded in fire governance. The country includes both fire-adapted ecosystems such as the Cerrado and fire-sensitive biomes like the Amazon, which are increasingly affected by fire-related disturbances driven by land-use transformations, climate change, and socio-political agendas.
In this country, our research focuses particularly on the transitional zones between the Amazon rainforest and the Cerrado savanna – regions where the expansion of agricultural frontiers, deforestation, and devegetation have intensified fire activity, often with cascading effects on human and non-human mobilities. These areas provide a crucial context for analyzing how fire acts not only as a biophysical agent but also as a political and cultural force that reshapes landscapes, livelihoods, and patterns of movement. Brazil’s relevance to FIREPOL lies in its potential to expose the entanglement of fire with broader processes of dispossession, (im)mobility, and environmental control, while also challenging dominant narratives that frame fire solely as a destructive or exceptional event. By engaging with these dynamics through an intersectional and more-than-human lens, our research in this area seeks to reframe fire as a central analytical category in understanding contemporary socio-ecological change.
