As noted throughout this collection, fire ecologies are pluralistic. Fire is a cultural, social, political, economic, technical, and environmental force that requires working across multiple knowledge, practices, actors, and institutions. It is crucial to broaden and expand understandings of fire. In this collection, we focus on fire from these multiple perspectives, especially by considering how community-oriented and transdisciplinary networks, technologies, and practices can contribute to changing environments. As many participants in our fire ecology events have noted, it is not possible to eliminate fire; therefore, it is necessary to establish how best to live with fire.Pausas et al., “The Role of Fire on Earth.”

In this respect, we further align our approach with the UNEP report, Beyond the Blaze, which establishes that the emphasis worldwide is currently on responding to fires at the moment of conflagration. This is where the majority of resources, including financial resources, are oriented. However, given the transformation of many environments into more fire-prone conditions, it is essential to engage with the entire fire lifecycle, including investing in prevention and preparation alongside conservation and restoration as key components of fire ecologies. As Fernanda Romero notes in her interview in this collection, while communities will respond to extinguish fires, collective engagement with fire needs to extend to a much wider fire ecology, so that communities organize beyond disastrous events by preparing for and developing resources to recover from fire events. In an aligned way, Andrés Fuentes Ramírez and Paola Arroyo Vargas discuss in the interview in this collection that fire prevention and recovery are areas with notable gaps in fire research and action, but which would benefit from further attention to develop more effective land practices and policies.

There are now many resources that approach fire through the physical and natural sciences. However, fewer compendia bring together community perspectives, local techniques, ancestral knowledge, and creative practice, along with science, technology, and policy. To synthesize the many insights and proposals that emerged from our Field Schools, interviews, and fieldwork, we have developed this conclusion as a series of eight key topics that together form “Proposals for Living with Fire.” This final chapter serves as a toolkit and guide, complementing existing methods and techniques with a broader range of perspectives.For examples of different toolkits and guides to environment, hazards, climate and fire, especially from citizen and community perspectives, see: Ariztia et al., “Baroque Tools for Climate Action”; Armijo et al. «‘Sensores humanos’»; Biskupovic and Canteros, «Movilizando saberes ciudadanos»; Climate & Wildfire Institute, and the Tahoe Fund, Fire Smart Community Pilot Playbook; Gabrys, Citizens of Worlds; Muskrats to Moose Project Team, We Are Fire; Susskind, Playbook for the Pyrocene.

We have condensed our extensive collaborative discussions into eight proposals as common themes that a diverse range of key actors have emphasized. Through our conversations and events, participants and interviewees emphasize the need to:

1. Recognize that fire is a complex social-ecological system,

2. Integrate fire prevention into land-use and environmental planning,

3. Improve collaboration, communication, and trust across different sectors,

4. Support community-led action and involvement in fire prevention,

5. Strengthen environmental education and capacity building,

6. Develop and use equitable technologies,

7. Ensure adequate financing and resources, and

8. Enable cultural and ecological resilience and recovery.

We outline each of these in more detail in the sections below, further describing the principles and concrete actions identified for each proposal.

Fire is not simply a threat. It can be a necessary and integral part of many ecosystems, shaped by climate, land use, and human activity. At the same time, many environments that have not historically been fire-dependent are becoming increasingly fire-prone. Fire ecologies are changing in response to climate and land-use changes.Jones et al., “Global and Regional Trends and Drivers of Fire”; AMUCH, «Estudio nacional de caracterización de los incendios forestales». The transformation of fire ecologies requires updating and expanding social and cultural practices for engaging with these environments in flux. It is important to move beyond a control-based paradigm toward collaborative approaches to living with fire, especially given the dynamic, at times unpredictable nature of fire events. Such a transition acknowledges the multidimensional aspects of fire as destructive and regenerative, and as shaped by historical, cultural, and ecological influences. It is essential to promote transdisciplinary approaches that engage science, the arts, traditional knowledge, and embodied experiences to foster a more holistic understanding of fire. Fire management strategies should integrate cultural practices, local knowledge, oral histories, and Indigenous fire stewardship.Mistry et al., “Community Owned Solutions for Fire Management in Tropical Ecosystems.” Traditional fire knowledge evolves, adapts, and can complement scientific and technological approaches as environments change.

Concrete actions that align with proposal one include:

Develop transdisciplinary fire management plans and frameworks

• Integrate ecological sciences, cultural practices, social science, public policy, and embodied environmental experience.

• Value local and ancestral knowledge, integrating these insights into fire prevention and disaster response strategies.

Foster multiple modes of knowledge transmission

• Integrate technical and cultural modes of fire literacy.

• Create forums for intercultural dialogue where artists, scientists, Indigenous leaders, and community members can co-design fire strategies.

• Ensure that the voices of local communities are central to decision-making processes, especially regarding prevention strategies and land-use planning.

Develop diverse protocols for planning, detecting, responding to, and recovering from fires

• Create channels and platforms for including on-the-ground experiences, local observations, and sensory data.

• Incorporate local data and observations into risk evaluation and emergency planning.

Planning frameworks and land management practices play a crucial role in managing wildfire risk, while also facilitating community-oriented governance and preparedness. This second proposal identifies the need for fire prevention to be fully integrated into territorial planning frameworks. More broadly, a coherent rural planning framework should be developed that provides regulatory continuity while also being sensitive to local conditions and knowledge. Land-use frameworks should anticipate, regulate, and guide fire prevention in development plans. Frameworks should facilitate and support sustainable land management practices that align with environmental conservation and restoration goals, while incorporating local ecological knowledge and traditional forest management techniques. Planning should also develop future-ready strategies to anticipate environmental change and impacts from a warming climate. Mitigation and adap-
tation strategies that include regenerative landscape practices, water conservation, and firebreaks should be included in policy development and environmental planning.

Concrete actions that align with proposal two include:

Develop and implement joined-up territorial planning and fire prevention legislation, creating a structured framework for fire management

• Incorporate risk mapping into planning frameworks to identify, monitor, and address fire potential.

• Integrate fire management into a broader rural-urban planning strategy that accounts for the wildland-urban interface (WUI). Strengthen regulatory guidelines to address fire management as part of ecological conservation and restoration efforts.

• Collaborate with academic and research centers to develop and implement tools for territorial planning and monitoring at a landscape scale.

Ensure fire prevention planning aligns with regional regulations and integrates local knowledge

• Create processes for adapting planning frameworks to local contexts, including by incorporating local fire and land practices.

• Develop regulations that go beyond “banning” fire to account for local fire practices and contexts, creating more region-specific guidelines and protocols.

• Enhance the implementation of concrete fire prevention measures, such as firebreaks and electrical wiring safety.

• Empower local communities to engage in planning and governance reforms through education and organizational support.

Trust is a fundamental quality that helps to ensure people working across different sectors and levels of governance can effectively collaborate and coordinate fire prevention, response, and recovery practices. However, many participants and interviewees identified a mistrust of institutions as limiting social cohesion and cooperation. Robust and effective fire planning and practices depend on relationships built on trust, which enable sound communication and coordination, strengthening collaborative governance and multi-sector coordination. Trust also allows open discussion of different fire practices, land-use agendas, and land management practices, thereby facilitating candid and fair discussions on how to develop and adapt fire prevention, response, and recovery plans and practices.

Concrete actions that align with proposal three include:

Enhance institutional trust and accountability

• Address mistrust towards state institutions by creating transparent, inclusive, and participatory processes for fire management and environmental conservation.

• Engage communities in developing and implementing policies, ensuring they are culturally appropriate and aligned with local realities.

• Foster a collective sense of responsibility for fire prevention by involving all community members, including private entities, NGOs, and government agencies.

• Facilitate digital and in-person workshops and community events that build preparedness and promote shared responsibilities.

Promote cross-sectoral collaboration

• Form active alliances on forest care and fire prevention, including key actors such as CONAF, SENAPRED, municipalities, NGOs, and private-sector partners. These networks should be both horizontal (community-driven) and vertical (including public institutions) to ensure broad participation across sectors and to move away from paternalism within civil society.

• Foster multi-stakeholder collaboration through transparent forums and accountability mechanisms to build trust and resilience. Build on successful examples within disaster management (e.g., tsunamis, earthquakes) and translate these practices and relations to fire management.

• Ensure that governance bodies—local, regional, and national—are empowered to make binding decisions and that local leadership has a direct say in the planning and implementation of fire prevention strategies.

• Improve coordination among institutions to align strategies and avoid duplication of efforts.

• Strengthen local leadership and empower communities to actively participate in governance, recognizing community-based leadership as a crucial element of resilience and long-term prevention.

Local networks and knowledge are crucial to developing effective community-led action and involvement in fire prevention and response. To this end, communities should be involved in developing community-led fire prevention plans, actions, and decision-making processes. CONAF-based community fire-prevention plans are widespread and well established across Chile. However, these methods need to be adapted to local contexts to be effective. Robust processes for adapting a general, national-level methodology to local circumstances need to be developed so they can be implemented and sustained by distinct communities. At the same time, support is required to create and enable social infrastructures for community leadership, network building, and governance, which use localized and inclusive approaches. By building local democratic practices and resources, communities will be better placed to establish fire prevention, response, and recovery networks and actions.

Concrete actions that align with proposal four include:

Develop comprehensive community-led fire management plans

• Empower communities to take the lead in designing and implementing fire prevention strategies.

• Involve diverse stakeholders, including public agencies, private entities, community groups, Indigenous, and rural communities.

• Ensure that spaces for decision-making regarding fire prevention and environmental care are inclusive and democratized, involving not only government bodies but also community leaders and grassroots organizations.

• Incorporate mechanisms for participatory mapping, identifying high-risk areas based on vulnerability and exposure.

• Approach fire plans as an ongoing process that requires engagement across the fire lifecycle.

Strengthen community networks for fire prevention

• Institutionalize collaborative governance frameworks that include local and Indigenous leadership.

• Support communities in forming local organizations or alliances that collaborate on fire prevention activities, ensuring that these efforts are sustainable and self-reinforcing.

• Create associative firefighting networks that encourage neighbor-to-neighbor cooperation.

• Build stronger networks and collaboration between local communities, NGOs, academic institutions, and governmental bodies.

• Enable knowledge, resource, and experience sharing across networks, with a focus on co-creating solutions for fire prevention and resilience.

• Collaboratively develop emergency response procedures and simulation exercises.

• Join up networks across territories, while working across sectors and initiatives.

Engage and amplify local practices and knowledge

• Tailor fire prevention and response plans to specific environmental and cultural contexts.

• Amplify the role of community-driven fire prevention models that integrate local knowledge with modern fire management techniques to increase effectiveness.

• Prioritize culturally relevant strategies that recognize traditional ecological knowledge and local fire relationships.

• Support community-led initiatives that include storytelling, sensory experiences, embodied engagement, and art-based practices to build collective relationships with fire.

Robust, diverse, and creative environmental education is crucial to building knowledge, skills, literacy, and awareness of fire as a significant force within Chilean territories and beyond. As our many conversations with collaborators in the Araucanía region documented, education through transdisciplinary and trans-sectoral engagement and knowledge exchange is needed to advance and improve understandings of fire prevention, response, and recovery. Environmental education should be comprehensive, engaging with ecosystems, climate change, and the impacts of land-use disruptions. Public engagement should shift from awareness-raising campaigns characterized by fear-based messaging to more nuanced, relational, and action-oriented understandings of fire, especially as caused by humans in changing environments.

Concrete actions that align with proposal five include:

Foster environmental education and build local capacities

• Integrate environmental education and fire awareness in all levels of learning, from early to adult education.

• Develop educational programs that engage with environmental experiences, technical knowledge, and local practices.

• Support community training programs, workshops, and environmental certifications through local institutions.

• Create broader networks for fire education by connecting with universities, research centers, and government organizations.

• Facilitate the dissemination of educational materials to the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Science to ensure coordinated educational efforts.

Design experiential and creative learning programs

• Reframe environmental education to emphasize coexistence, regeneration, and long-term care.

• Integrate local, traditional, ancestral, and Indigenous knowledges of fire prevention and land practices, while creating space for inclusive peer learning and horizontal learning models.

• Build programs that engage communities through storytelling, arts, ritual, and embodied practices alongside formal education and training.

• Incorporate fire walks, observation practices, and collective events that foster environmental attunement and intergenerational knowledge sharing.

• Provide regular training sessions that include extended land histories and connect to wider conservation efforts.

Create national campaigns for fire prevention and environmental awareness

• Launch long-term, multi-channel public awareness campaigns focusing on fire prevention and climate change.

• Emphasize the importance of responsible land management, safe fire practices, and disaster preparedness, while addressing the hazards of intentional fire-setting.

• Continuously communicate, educate, and sensitize publics on fire prevention strategies and the importance of collective action.

• Highlight the need for prevention efforts to achieve broader environmental goals, such as addressing climate change and restoring the landscape.

• Provide resources for new residents and visitors to rural areas, who may be unfamiliar with fire risks and traditional land practices.

Fire technologies are now developing rapidly, most often to monitor and alert fire agencies to fire events and to coordinate more rapid, effective responses. At the same time, fire technologies are increasingly used to model and predict fire risk, to identify areas for potential intervention and land management, and to develop strategies for conservation and recovery.Miranda et al., “Evidence-Based Mapping of the Wildland-Urban Interface.” Given the wide range of uses for fire technologies and their potential impacts on communities, there was a general sense that technologies should be developed and used in ways that are accessible, transparent, legible, and shareable. Fire technology infrastructures should be open to publics, non-proprietary, and present data in easy-to-understand formats to ensure that technologies do not marginalize communities. Real-time and early warning systems were seen to be important technologies for managing fire. Still, these should be implemented and used in ways that are accountable and fair, taking into account potential inadvertent or dual uses related to surveillance.For examples and proposals, see CONAF, «Reporte de incendios forestales en el día de hoy»; FAO, “Forest Fires and the Global Fire Platform.” Participants and interviewees also noted it is important to ensure technology does not displace existing and local knowledge systems, but instead is used in ways that complement and advance different ways of understanding environments.

Concrete actions that align with proposal six include:

Co-design technologies to support diverse knowledges

• Co-design fire technologies and infrastructures for the widest possible use and effectiveness.

• Support the development and use of technologies tailored to each territory’s specific needs.

• Combine traditional and scientific knowledge with technologies, including mapping, early detection, and communication systems, to enhance fire management.

• Ensure that technologies support, rather than replace, local expertise and sensory knowledge.

• Ensure communities are not marginalized in the development of technological systems.

• Incorporate more-than-digital technical practices and skills, including conservation and recovery, to ensure a broad engagement with technical know-how.

Strengthen and integrate communication systems

• Strengthen communication planning across all levels, ensuring emergency communication systems are established, maintained, and effective.

• Make resources and tools, such as communication networks and data, open and available to communities to disseminate and receive fire-related information quickly.

• Create community-based fire networks that enable easy collaboration between residents and external experts, using platforms and tools such as mobile technologies, messaging apps, social networks, community radio, and real-time satellite imagery.

• Set up observation points and early detection systems to monitor fire risks in real time.

• Expand the use of technologies for community-based monitoring and detection of forest fires and fire risks.

Enable fair access to technology and training resources

• Facilitate and increase community access to critical technologies and tools.

• Prioritize developing digital tools and infrastructure that enable all community members, regardless of location or resources, to access fire-related data and early warnings. This includes technologies such as satellite data, drones, GIS, and social media platforms for communication.

• Address digital and accessibility gaps in rural and marginalized areas through inclusive design and participatory digital literacy initiatives, ensuring that communities can effectively use digital tools for fire prevention and response.

• Provide ongoing education and technical training to ensure genuine community engagement and reduce digital exclusion.

Limited resources, both financial and personnel, are a frequently identified problem, preventing robust and comprehensive engagement with fire ecologies. While many participants and interviewees had expansive proposals for how best to manage and adapt to increased fire risk, a lack of dedicated resources can make it difficult to realize visions for prevention and resilience. Fire practices often depend upon skills and capacity available in local networks, which become foundational for preparing for and responding to fire events. However, local resources can be unevenly distributed and depend upon committed volunteers who may not always be available to address fire risks and events. In this sense, increased and more consistently available resources are needed to develop sustainable and ongoing fire practices, networks, and infrastructures.

Concrete actions that align with proposal seven include:

Secure sustainable funding

• Develop mechanisms to secure consistent funding for fire prevention efforts, including planning, training, technology acquisition, and infrastructure development.

• Create sustainable, long-term financing models for fire prevention, response, and recovery that integrate public, private, and community resources.

• Position fire prevention as a priority to attract new funding opportunities across policy, practice, and research.

• Increase funding, resources, and recognition for community-based prevention networks.

• Ensure that financing is equitably distributed across urban and rural areas.

Empower communities with resources

• Ensure fire plans and protocols have adequate financial and human resources for effective implementation, tailored to local needs and risks.

• Ensure that all areas, including mountain regions, receive locally appropriate attention and resources.

• Recognize and support the efforts of territorial managers, who often operate without formal backing.

• Invest in building local capacity for fire prevention and forest conservation through training and recruiting fire management professionals and community volunteers.

• Facilitate equitable access to essential resources, such as equipment, technology, and knowledge, so that local communities can effectively contribute to fire prevention.

• Identify and implement firebreaks and water resources, undertake vegetation maintenance and controlled burning where appropriate, and provide resources for home hardening and infrastructural resilience.

When fires occur, there can be a lack of clear plans for how best to recover, whether through landscape regeneration, community rebuilding, or addressing loss and trauma from disasters. Restoration and resiliency plans are needed for post-fire recovery to address the repair and regeneration of landscapes, communities, infrastructure, homes, and livelihoods.Keating et al., “Transformative Actions for Community-Led Disaster Resilience”; González et al., «Incendios forestales en Chile». Fire planning across all levels of governance, including community planning, should incorporate proposals for managing post-fire conditions, ensuring adequate resources are available, and evaluating recovery efforts to make necessary adaptations in environments that can be irrevocably changed. Such an approach can help transform fire risk by improving connections between communities and environments.Iglesias et al., “Fires that Matter.”

Concrete actions that align with proposal eight include:

Create plans for post-fire recovery

• Use post-fire periods to build resilient land practices, planning, and education, which align with climate adaptation and biodiversity goals.

• Treat recovery as a time to deepen human-nature relationships and reflect on how communities and landscapes can regenerate together.

• Incorporate strategies for ecological restoration as part of community rebuilding in fire-affected areas.

• Evaluate and adapt recovery efforts based on local knowledge and changing environmental conditions.

• Involve community members, particularly those with traditional ecological knowledge, in shaping post-fire landscapes.

Engage with fire ecologies and lifecycles

• Ensure that fire life cycles are fully addressed across conservation, prevention, response, and recovery.

• Promote governance and land-use models that reflect humans as part of, not separate from, ecological systems.

• Explore regenerative practices that restore ecological balance while respecting the agency of natural systems.

• Develop fire plans that are future-oriented and attentive to environmental conditions, changing land uses, and emerging risks, so they are not just reactive.

These proposals grow out of our many conversations and exchanges with community members and stakeholders in the Araucanía region. Fire professionals, university researchers, environmental NGOs, foundation personnel, scientists, artists, conservationists, and local leaders contributed to the rich and diverse range of suggestions included here, which we have distilled into key themes. We see these proposals as complementary suggestions for developing an expansive and engaged approach to changing environments. The proposals are not meant to replace existing practices but rather to identify and advance critical areas to respond effectively to the increasing impact of wildfires.

In this respect, we hope this collection can serve as a resource to advance fire practices within integrated and changing ecologies. Such a move requires shifting from primarily combating fire to cultivating more expansive understandings of fire ecologies. Fundación Mar Adentro continues to work on this topic in the Palguín watershed by creating a community fire prevention plan. The Smart Forests research project and the Planetary Praxis research group are investigating community engagement in landscape regeneration in the UK and farther afield. While this concludes this stage of our collaboration, we hope you will find this collaborative and co-authored collection useful for developing ways of living with fire in a time of planetary change. The next and final section includes references and resources for communities and key actors to learn more about fire practices in Chile and worldwide. We have also included links to materials from the Smart Forests research project and Fundación Mar Adentro initiatives that expand on and align with the material in this collection.