Wildfire mitigation and adaptation: Two locally independent actions supported by different policy domains

Abstract

There is a broad consensus in the academic and policy communities over the need to shift the focus from fire suppression to fire prevention. To inform policies that effectively promote this shift, we distinguish between prevention actions aimed at more fire-resilient landscapes and those focused on the protection of people, i.e., wildfire mitigation and adaptation (WM&A), respectively. With the goal of discussing the usefulness of this distinction and identifying local factors and external resources that promote each of those preventive actions, we developed an analysis of collective WM&A actions across 116 parishes in a wildfire-prone region in Portugal, using primary and secondary data. Two principal component analyses were used to explore relationships between variables expressing collective WM&A actions. Random forest, a machine learning technique based on multiple decision trees, was used to model how those actions are related to local factors (land use/land cover, population, institutions) and access to policy funding for wildfire prevention. Our results showed that collective mitigation and adaptation responses to wildfire are locally independent, in coherence with their distinct goals, actors involved, and institutional and policy framing. Mitigation through owners’ collaboration proved to be strongly related to policy funding (notably that exclusively addressed at mitigation), local socioeconomic dynamism, and ownership structure, whereas adaptation responses are related with leadership by local governments. Considering these differences, the incipiency of adaptation actions, and the difficulties in expanding owner’s collaboratives beyond the most favourable local conditions, we conclude that mitigation and adaptation actions are currently supported by two distinct policy domains with unequal consolidation but equally underfunded.