Peasant memory for building resilience to wildfires in Matadepera

(Barcelona province)

Iago Otero

In 2003 a wildfire kills 5 people and devastates thousands of hectares of forests nearby Matadepera.

Courtesy of GRAF and Matadepera fire-fighters

Sotabosc, 5: 5-6 (2005)

Scheme for the prevention of large wildfires

Association of Forest Defense (2005)

City Archives

Sotabosc, 5: 8 (2005)

Local knowledge of forest and fire

Sotabosc, 5: 10-11 (2005)

Enhancement of regressive habitats and species

20071940

Why wildfires?

Why habitat regression?

Why wildfires?

Why habitat regression?

0

2000

4000

6000

8000

10000

1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

inh

abit

ants

Estany et al. (2010) Global Environment

Otero et al. (2011) Ecological Economics

Urbanization is not a spontaneous process...

« Matadepera… given its geographical conditions…

calls for the assignment of a signal-function: a place

for resting and summer vacations »

Plan de Ordenación de Tarrasa y Matadepera (1951)City Archives of Matadepera, box 540

... but the outcome of political choices and struggles

« We did nothing and they kicked us

out from our home… The owner

[town’s Mayor] told to my father ‘it does

not matter whether you have a

contract, it is useless, the houses are

the houses’, exactly this way »

Mingo Comasòlivas (1930), 26/11/2007

... with winners and losers

Sotabosc, 6: 4-7 (2007)

Against urban expansion: narrative

Against urban expansion: empirical evidence

Badia et al. (2008) Documents d’Anàlisi Geogràfica

Against urban expansion: peasant heritage

Courtesy ofQ. Vancells

Against urban expansion: social movement

0

,2

,4

,6

,8

1

1,2

1,4

1,6

1,8

2

Can Prat Can Robert

any 2009

any 2008

Pre

ssió

ram

ader

a

year: p < 0.0001site: n.s.

Gra

zin

g p

ress

ure

Monitoring of integrated agrosilvopastoral management

Monitoring of integrated agrosilvopastoral management

Environmental education and dissemination

Avui Terrassa, 20/2/2009

Final remarks

• Insider scientists work together with the local community to produce a knowledge that facilitates socio-ecological transformation in the desired direction...

• ... to increase the resilience of the social-ecological system to wildfires, thus from the fire suppression paradigm to the fire management paradigm...

• ... through a proper reconfiguration of the practices of management of natural resources performed by the dispossessed peasantry.

• Science and action, formal and informal knowledge travel, meet, labour and co-produce change, through the real people that embody them.

Final remarks

• Totally biased selection of study area/case.

• The method is the particular way of living in the place.

• Our implication in the actions renders difficult the definition of external criteria for evaluating their transformative character.

How do evaluate the SE transformation in which we are engaged?

• This type of political action including knowledge generation is supposedly done for the community, a very problematic notion.

Who are we working for?