Economic drivers of global fire activity: A critical review using the DPSIR framework

Highlights

• The double-exposure to globalization and climate change is worsening wildfire risk.

• We need a paradigm shift from prevention-suppression to adaptation-mitigation.

• We need global scale science-policy interfaces to manage wildfire.

• Remote connections and cross-scale interactions of wildfire need more research.

Abstract

Overall decline of global burned area paradoxically hides a number of economic realities that have increased the likelihood and costs of wildfire-caused disasters. In this critical review, we address the pressing need to identify and incorporate economic elements shaping global wildfire activities. To synthesize our current understanding of economic drivers of wildfires, we leverage the DPSIR framework to structure the issues related to wildfires to establish coherent causal pathways between Drivers (D), Pressures (P), States (S), Impacts (I) and Responses (R). We identified global patterns of worsening wildfire risks with the double-exposure to globalization and climate change. Current developments call for a paradigm shift in how we understand and manage wildfires to promote an adaptation-mitigation-resilience strategy. We propose expanding the science-policy interface to global scale with new indicators for assessing and communicating the impacts of global economic drivers on wildfire activities, such as “Virtual wildfire trade” accounting to monitor delocalized fire activity—exported fires and land transformation from developed to developing regions with weak governance. We also identified the areas where research is lacking, highlighting future research areas in wildfire economics to advance effective, efficient, and equitable global governance of wildfires.

Introduction

Fire has been a traditional landscape management tool throughout human history and wildfires¹, ecosystems, and human societies have co-evolved over millennia (Bowman et al., 2011; Scott et al., 2013). In the Anthropocene, however, human influences are rapidly altering wildfire regimes established in evolutionary time. Colonization, rural exodus, aggressive wildfire suppression, urban sprawl, global trade, among other factors, have all contributed to recent wildfire disasters to varying, yet often interacting, degrees (Bond, 2016; Bowman et al., 2009, Bowman et al., 2020; Hessburg et al., 2019). While global area burned overall declined during the past decades largely due to agricultural expansion and intensification, negative impacts of wildfires on society are worsening with ongoing environmental changes and economic globalization (Andela et al., 2019; Andela et al., 2017; Curtis et al., 2018; Doerr and Santín, 2016; Knorr et al., 2014). This situation was well exemplified by the 2015 fire season in Indonesia that released at least 0.35–0.60 Pg of carbon into the atmosphere (Nechita-Banda et al., 2018). Many small-scale human-caused fires (over 100,000) to prepare land mainly for oil palm agriculture grew out of control under the warm and drought condition of El Niño period and cost Indonesia at least $16 billion USD, or a 1.9 % loss in GDP (World Bank, 2016). The estimated cost does not include cumulative impacts on ecosystem or costs to other countries (World Bank, 2016). This double-exposure to globalization and climate change complicates our understanding of the climate-human-fire nexus, as environmental and economic ramifications tangle ((O'Brien and Barnett, 2013; O’Brien and Leichenko, 2000; Rockström et al., 2009).

After a number of recent catastrophic fire years, there are now growing calls for modern society to co-exist with wildfires, especially in fire-adapted ecosystems—as many traditional communities still do—rather than fight them (Doerr and Santín, 2016; Moritz et al., 2014; Mistry et al., 2016; Moore, 2019; Reinhardt et al., 2008; Yazzie et al., 2019). Effective wildfire governance requires comprehensive land use planning coordinated with risk and ecosystem management (Doerr and Santín, 2016). However, characterization of wildfire risk is still heavily driven by ecological studies and human causes of fires are still poorly understood (Chuvieco et al., 2021), while costs and loss statistics dominate the global wildfire narrative (Gill et al., 2013; IUFRO, 2018; Moore, 2019; World Bank, 2020). In this critical review, we argue that devising a governance scheme addressing the worldwide wildfire “problem” should start with understanding macroeconomic forces underpinning wildfire hazard geography and its system-wide impacts. Notwithstanding the importance and variability of local factors influencing wildfire risk, we posit that common patterns exist worldwide. Our goal is twofold: 1) synthesizing our current understanding of wildfire economics and identifying where research is lacking, and 2) generating insights into economic dimensions of wildfires to inform sound policies and sustainable fire management. The focus is not on reviewing related economic theories and formalizations, which have received limited academic attention thus far (Rideout et al., 2008; Fitch and Kim, 2018). We employed the Drivers-Pressures-States-Impacts- Responses (DPSIR) framework to highlight economic drivers behind wildfire patterns and the economic consequences triggered by detrimental fires and advocate building inclusive cross-scaled science-policy interfaces to manage wildfires. We conclude with possible pathways forward for managing wildfires at a global scale.