Citation

Partidário M, Saad G, Monteiro MB, Dias J, Martins R, Ramos IL, Ribeiro H, Teixeira M, Freitas MBC, Antunes C. Fire (Basel) 2022; 5(5): e146.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022, MDPI: Multidisciplinary Digital Publications Institute)

DOI

10.3390/fire5050146

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Local knowledge and communities' active role in disaster risk areas are recognized in the literature as key conditions to better understand risks, enhance adaptive capacities and foster local resilience. A participatory action research project in forest fire-prone areas in Monchique, Portugal, is aligned with the literature and adopts participatory mapping as a method that can bring evidence to the importance of local knowledge and communities' agency. In the BRIDGE Project, different types of knowledge are integrated, triggering local/collective agency and fostering a forest fire community-based disaster risk reduction (CBDRR) approach. An innovation laboratory (InnoLab) provides the space for dialogue and knowledge sharing for different actors that manage forest territories. In the InnoLab, participatory mapping is used as a method to engage landowners where risk factors and local vulnerabilities were identified. Their active engagement enabled a collective perception in the assessment of vulnerability and led to the identification of strategic measures for risk reduction. This paper shares the process and outcomes of this participatory mapping, highlighting the benefits of a community approach and the importance of local knowledge and practices as recognized in the literature. It also reveals how the active role of local stakeholders can help drive a CBDRR process.

Language: en

Keywords

community-based disaster risk reduction (CBDRR); forest fire risk reduction; participatory mapping; social learning; transformative change