Promises and dilemmas in forest fire management decision-making: Exploring conditions for community engagement in Australia and Sweden

- Forest fire management involves contested practices and multiple dilemmas.
- Sweden and Australia have different experiences with community engagement in forest fire management.
- Community engagement connects to policy, planning and governance of forest fires in the two countries.
- Expectations on transformative community engagement in forest fire management will increase.
- Both local knowledge and technical expertise should have a place in transformative processes.

Prescribed burning, to prevent larger fires or to encourage ecological restoration, is a highly contested practice, raising both complex practical questions relating to safety and techniques, and deep philosophical questions about the relationship between people and nature. Previous research either analyses conflict in forest fire management, or argues for social learning but does not discuss how this might happen. We explore what community engagement in fire management might contribute, and how policy conditions enable or constrain deliberative practices in fire management in two very different countries, Sweden and Australia. In Sweden, burning is gradually emerging on foresters' and nature conservationists' agendas, whereas in Australia, prescribed burning has been practiced and debated on a relatively broad scale for some time. Both countries rely much on technical expertise, while merging this with local knowledge in transformative processes in which conflicts and difference have a place could enhance the quality of the debates.