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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
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1
1,2
1,4
1,6
1,8
2
Can Prat Can Robert
any 2009
any 2008
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ader
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year: p < 0.0001site: n.s.
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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?