Community-Based Fire Management in East and Southern African Savanna-Protected Areas: A Review of the Published Evidence

Abstract

The introduction of fire suppression policies and expansion of exclusionary protected areas in East and Southern African savannas have engendered a wildfire paradox. Outside protected areas, livestock have replaced fire as the dominant fuel consumer. Inside their boundaries, wildfire intensity has increased due to accumulating flammable biomass. Community-Based Fire Management (CBFiM) is recognized as an alternative fire management strategy to address the wildfire paradox and promote equitable fire governance across conservation landscapes. Yet, there has been little investigation into the implementation and effectiveness of CBFiM across East and Southern Africa's savanna-protected areas. Here we employ a social-ecological systems framework to develop a systematic map of the published literature on the framing and features of CBFiM in this context. We characterize the challenges and opportunities for their design and implementation, focusing on the relationship between governance systems and community participation in fire management. We find that CBFiM projects are commonly governed by the state and international non-governmental organisations who retain decision-making power and determine access to savanna resources and fire use. Existing CBFiM projects are limited to communal rangelands and are developed within existing Community-Based Natural Resource Management programs prioritizing fire prevention and suppression. Planned CBFiM projects propose an exclusive early-dry season patch mosaic burning regime to incorporate indigenous fire knowledge into modern management frameworks, but evidence of indigenous and local peoples' involvement is scarce. To provide equitable fire management, CBFiM projects need to address inequalities embedded in protected area governance and centralized suppression policies, and account for changing state-society and intra-society relations across the region.