16  Suburbia on fire

Human security, climate change and emergency management

Jason Flanagan and John Handmer

Introduction

The observation by the US Department of Homeland Security that wildfires may have more impact than terrorism is no surprise to those working on climatic disasters – whether we think of the devastation resulting from floods on nearly every continent, evacuation of nearly a million people in California and the loss of thousands of homes to wildfire, or the loss of tens of thousands of lives in the European heatwave of 2003. In the wake of the “Black Saturday” fires that swept through the state of Victoria in February 2009, resulting in 173 deaths and the destruction of over 2,000 homes, there have been growing calls in Australia to treat wildfires as a security issue. Such calls reflect trends in other parts of the world, and are consistent with a long history of wildfire securitization in the United States. Securitization is a tempting option, given both the catastrophic impact of recent wildfires and the extraordinary response securitization would imply. This chapter will argue, however, that while there would be benefits to securitizing wildfires, these benefits would be outweighed by the problems that would logically flow from securitization.

Wildfires and security

Modern fire and emergency management have dual origins. In many countries, modern emergency management organizations have their origins in the “civil defense” or “home guard” units developed during World War II. After the war, it was not long before another military threat, the Cold War and the possibility of nuclear attack, created the imperative for maintaining civil defense capacities. These war-related organizations found themselves increasingly busy with more “everyday” emergencies and crises, and during the 1970s most civil defense organizations in western countries formally shifted to an emergency management rather than war-related focus. This was a significant shift, as civil defense was not about risk management as such – it did not attempt to reduce threat of war, but rather sought to protect the state and to a lesser extent the people. The second origin is completely different and concerns fire services, which evolved largely from a desire to protect property and for commercial reasons associated with insurance.

In many parts of the world we are seeing a reversal of this historical shift from war-related security logic to an emergency management focus on protecting people. This reversal is connected to a much wider effort to broaden and reconceptualize security. The end of the Cold War was seen by many as an opportunity to address both longstanding threats, overlooked during the superpower standoff, and newly emergent threats to people’s lives and welfare. It was recognized that citizens of states that were considered “secure” according to the traditional concept of security, were often quite insecure in terms of their daily existence due to nonmilitary threats. Recognizing that for most people “a feeling of insecurity arises more from worries about daily life than from the dread of a cataclysmic world event,” the concept of human security extended the security label to economic, food, health, environmental, personal, community and political issues (UNDP, 1994; Tadjbakhsh and Chenoy, 2007).

Wildfire is one of many non-military dangers that threaten communities and populations around the world, with local wildfire risk and occurrence on the increase due to a combination of global climate change and social and demographic trends. Climate change is likely to more frequently create those weather conditions that produce large-scale high-intensity wildfires, called “megafires” in the US lexicon (Goldammer and Price, 1998; Kitzberger et al., 2001; Flannigan et al., 2005; Hennessy et al., 2006; Moriondo et al., 2006; Karoly, 2009). Pyne (2007), among others, argues that the modern era of wildfire records, dating from the 1930s, occurred during a period of relatively benign climate, with the past no longer serving as a good guide to future fire weather conditions. The Californian fire season, for example, is perceived as longer today than a decade ago, with fire chiefs now speaking of low and high risk periods rather than fire and non-fire seasons (Sullivan, 2008). European Mediterranean countries are in a similar situation, and are likely to see longer fire seasons with increases in both the number of days of fire risk and the number of extreme fire weather events (Reinhard et al., 2005; Moriondo et al., 2006).

Wildfires are generally only considered a threat when they intersect with people and things we value. Unfortunately, these intersections are being rapidly expanded in scale by the growth of urban settlements and recreation into fire prone ecosystems. In the US and Australia we see relentless suburban sprawl into fire-prone rural and wildland areas, with growth in the most rapidly expanding cities occurring at the urban-rural fringe. For example, according to a study by the US Forest Service and the University of Wisconsin, between 1990 and 2000, 61 percent of the new housing in the states of California, Oregon and Washington was built at the urban-rural fringe (Boxall, 2008: para. 20). In Australia this strong urban sprawl is accompanied by an influx of people into smaller regional and coastal centers, driven by a mix of environmental amenity, lifestyle change, and the attraction of affordable housing. Such “sea-” and “tree-changers” often move into fire prone areas with no local livelihood basis and a lack of anything but the most basic of understandings of what fire risks mean for them. In other parts of the globe, socio-economic changes exacerbate such trends. In European Mediterranean countries, for example, changes from traditional land use have led to the abandonment of large areas of farmland and the regrowth and accumulation of vegetation as fuel for wildfires. Combined with the expanding urban edge and increasing tourist use, such factors have dramatically increased fire frequency (Dimitrakopoulos and Mitsopoulos, 2006).

Is wildfire a “security” issue?

On 7 February 2009, devastating wildfires swept through the state of Victoria, Australia. These fires – the so-called “Black Saturday” fires – had a catastrophic impact upon local communities, destroying over 2,000 homes and resulting in 173 deaths (Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission, 2009). Due to their destructive magnitude, some have since called for wildfires to be treated as a national security issue. This logic is part a larger trend where securitization is justified in quantitative terms. For example, at the January 2000 meeting of the United Nations Security Council on the issue of HIV/AIDS, the then United States vice president Al Gore declared:

Gore’s remarks reflect not only the central argument for securitizing AIDS, but the underlying logic of most securitization efforts – that the enormity of the issue’s real or potential death toll warrants its elevation to the realm of security.

The use of the security label, however, is not a simple and direct reflection of the magnitude of a given danger. The so-called Copenhagen School of security studies has convincingly argued that securitization – the framing of an issue as a security concern – can best be understood as a level of politicization. Ole Waever, Barry Buzan and Jaap de Wilde have asserted: “It is a choice to phrase things in security … terms, not an objective feature of the issue” (Buzan et al., 1998: 211). Security, in this view, is an extreme form of politicization, with the Copenhagen School suggesting a three level spectrum of politicization. On the first level are non-politicized issues, which are not issues of state action or of public debate or decision. On the next level are politicized issues, which are part of public policy, requiring government decision and the allocation of resources. Finally there are securitized issues, which are “presented as an existential threat requiring emergency measures and justifying actions outside the normal bounds of political procedure” (Buzan et al., 1998: 23–24). Securitization theory helps us pose the question as to whether “it is a good idea to make this issue a security issue – to transfer it to the agenda of panic politics – or whether it is better handled within normal politics” (Buzan et al., 1998: 34; Waever, 1999).

There are obvious benefits to securitizing an issue like wildfire risk. First and foremost it serves to generate attention and mobilize national and international economic, social and political resources. Along with the inherent benefits, however, securitization brings with it a number of pitfalls. It can remove an issue from cosmopolitan and altruistic frameworks and place it within a state-centric one, thus relieving states of their obligation to address issues remote from their own national borders and interests (Caballero-Anthony, 2006; Elbe, 2006). Defining an issue in security terms may also be counterproductive when its security implications are far from compelling. For example, in her study of epidemic disease and national security, Susan Peterson, has rightly argued that from a national security viewpoint “AIDS poses a far smaller threat to most states than it does from almost any other viewpoint” (Peterson 2002/3: 79).

Securitization can also bring with it zero-sum thinking and an “us vs. them” mentality. The dangers of such logic have been evident in the widespread securitization of migration, where an “us vs. them” logic has, among other things, served to block social integration processes and thus threaten the social cohesion of host countries (Huysmans, 2000; Ceyhan and Tsoukala, 2002). In a slightly different vein, Daniel Deudney has argued that conceptualizing climate change as a security concern “risks undercutting both the globalist and common fate understanding of the situation and the sense of world community that may be necessary to solve the problem” (Deudney, 1990: 486). Even when strict “us vs. them” thinking is not evident, securitization necessarily involves the “threat-defense” logic of traditional security thinking (Buzan et al., 1998: 29). While securitization can give issues greater profile, defining issues as a “threat” that must be “defended” against is not always conducive to finding solutions.

Securitization can also transfer the responsibility for addressing an issue from civil society to security institutions. This can be a tempting option. The securitization of HIV/AIDS in Africa, for example, has served to move the issue away from struggling health ministries to better resourced and more influential security-related ministries (Altman, 2000; Piot, 2000). Security institutions, however, are poorly equipped to address such “non-traditional” threats. They are prepared, through very specialized equipment and training, to fight conflicts and protect the nation from external violence. It is very difficult to successfully transfer such equipment and skills to non-military dangers. Moreover, at least in the developed world, military threats are generally delegated to the military and other organs of national security in totality, with nothing being required of the average citizen, except in those rare incidents of total war. In contrast, issues such as climate change require all people to change their daily behavior (Deudney, 1990), and for wildfire safety all those at risk need to change. Such issues cannot simply be delegated to the national security apparatus, leaving citizens to carry on as before. Issues such as climate change are not crises in the foreign policy sense of the word. Crises, like conflicts, generally only mobilize short-term action and support. Crises call for resolution, just as wars call for victory. Issues such as climate change cannot be resolved in the short term, but rather require long-term changes in lifestyle and patterns of behavior. While crisis rhetoric can motivate people in the short term, failure to bring about a relatively speedy solution to a declared crisis generally leads to the evaporation of initial support (Deudney, 1990; Bostdorff, 1994).

Securitizing wildfire

Wildfires pose a significant threat to numerous rural and peri-urban communities around Australia, and in the wake of the Black Saturday fires we have seen what the Copenhagen School calls “securitizing moves” on the issue (Buzan et al., 1998: 25). Anthony Bergin of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), published a piece in The Age newspaper entitled “Defending the home front is top priority,” in which he declared: “In the aftermath of Black Saturday, it’s time to rethink the protection of the Australian people … We now need, as the Prime Minister noted last December, to face up to climate change as a fundamental national security challenge” (Bergin, 2009). Bergin went on to discuss how “defending” against climate change at home might require different “battle tactic and skills,” outlining how Australian intelligence and military equipment and personnel should play a direct role in addressing natural disasters. An August 2009 ASPI report similarly recommended that climate change be “acknowledged by Australian security planners as a significant homeland security threat,” thus giving “security agencies … a stronger mandate to contribute to addressing climate change impacts” (Yates and Bergin, 2009: 2–3).

Even without conscious efforts to securitize the issue of wildfire, the language used to describe them is already militarized. Most obvious are the terms “firefighting” and “fire-fighter.” Moreover, we hear of fire-fighters “battling” and “fighting” fire “fronts,” which “destroy” and “devastate” land and homes. In 2003, the then Prime Minister John Howard, with deliberate allusion to terrorism, spoke of the “terror from the bush.” At least figuratively, Australia is already fighting a war on wildfire. This in part represents the projection of urban concepts onto rural and wild settings. In an urban landscape fire is indeed threatening and dangerous, whereas in rural and wild settings fire is often a vital force of ecological maintenance and renewal (Dimitrakopoulos and Mitsopoulos, 2006; Smith, 2006; Pyne, 2007).

Limited knowledge and cultural conditioning, linked to a 24-hour news cycle increasingly driven by sensationalism, entertainment and opinion, serve to reinforce the threatening image of wildfires. Stories of terrible fires destroying pristine wilderness and threatening lives are very reportable, whereas discussion of the vital ecological role of wildfires lacks drama, is generally outside the expertise of reporters, has less cultural resonance, and cannot be easily reduced to brief sound bites. The public’s tendency to think of wildfires as “threats” that need to be “fought” and defeated is thus reinforced by the media’s desire to report them as such (Smith 1992, 2006). In turn, this creates political pressure for an emphasis on fire control and suppression, rather than on the protection of assets, livelihoods and in some cases, individual safety. Politicians and other actors cannot afford to be perceived as failing to directly confront the threat of destructive wildfires. Les AuCoin, examining the American example, describes what he calls the “Mr. Goodwrench” syndrome, in which “pressured legislators feel compelled to act as problem solvers even though they may be making matters worse” (AuCoin, 2006).

The United States, and particularly California, provide an instructive point of comparison with the Australian experience. Like south-east Australia, California has regular fire seasons, as well as significant property destruction and mobilization of fire fighting forces. While Australia employs similarly militarized language and media framing as the United States, its fire suppression efforts have not yet been likewise securitized. The American “war” on wildfire – originally declared by the US Forest Service in the early 1900s (Dombeck et al., 2004) – reveals many of the elements feared by the Copenhagen School. For example, large fire suppression incidents are often declared as a “state of emergency,” which gives the US Forest Service sweeping emergency powers, allowing it to suspend or ignore its own conservation strategies and forest plans, as well as fundamental national conservation laws (e.g. see Barnard, 2005). Note that while we draw on US Forest Service examples – as it is the National US fire fighting agency with significant global influence – we recognize that the situation varies greatly by Forest Service Region and by state, and that our argument probably applies best to California. Moreover, just as it is fundamentally unpatriotic to reduce expenditures on soldiers in battle, so too vast sums of money continue to be spent on fire-fighting. This long-standing blank cheque approach is, however, now being critically scrutinized with attempts to control the spiraling costs of fire fighting in the US (Cabán, 2007; O’Toole, 2007; US-GAO, 2007).

In parts of the United States wildfire policy is not only framed as a “war” on fire, but is actually fought with military equipment and tactics. In some cases fire-fighters, for reasons of access, fuel reduction and attempts at containment, destroy some of what is being protected. Containment lines in particular may have a number of adverse environmental impacts, such as killing and removing vegetation, compacting and eroding soil, degrading water quality, and fragmenting forest stands (Ingalsbee, 2005; Ingalsbee, 2006). More dramatically, fire-fighters, like soldiers on the battlefield, often call in air support – in this case planes and helicopters dropping water and fire retardants. While aerial fire-fighting appliances are promoted by the media as a solution – and have likely become politically unavoidable – Australian research has shown that aerial suppression is generally no more effective in stopping a fire’s forward spread than ground crews with tankers and bulldozers (Loane and Gould, 1985). The use of aerial suppression measures is often considered to be as much a public relations exercise as an effective fire-fighting measure, with fire officials in the United States referring to them as “CNN drops” (Cart and Boxall, 2008). Fire retardants have a fleeting effect on wildfire, but a lasting effect on ecosystems, being particularly dangerous to aquatic wildlife (Kalabokidis, 2000).

In addition to water bombing aircraft, fire-fighters rely on a wide arsenal of incendiary weapons in their war on fire. Such equipment is not only used in backburning operations, aimed at strengthening containment lines and changing the fire’s direction, but also in burning unburned “green islands” in the interior of fires. The use of fire can be the most effective and environmentally sound way of managing wildfires. Such effectiveness and environmental benefits, however, are negated when combined with a war-like mindset. At this point the use of fire becomes merely one tactic in the single-minded pursuit of fire suppression. While the burning of “green islands,” can shorten the time period needed to declare a wildfire under control, it also destroys refuges for flora and fauna that are vital to natural post-fire recovery processes (Ingalsbee, 2005; Ingalsbee, 2006).

Wildfire security or safety?

The “war on wildfire” approach has its winners: large agencies use this approach; it creates heroes, helps enlarge budgets, and creates a clear mission. While individual fire fighters are celebrated as heroes, the organizations have also recently been subject to intense negative scrutiny as a result of escalating cost, issues of effectiveness and perceived commercial imperatives (for example see Boxall and Cart, 2008). The approach may create significant commercial opportunities, especially in aerial fire fighting. In the United States we have seen the emergence of what has been labeled a “fire-military-industrial-complex” (Ingalsbee, 2006; Wuerthner, 2006: 261–282), with suggestions that commercial interests are driving approaches that return profit as a first priority rather than address fire risk management objectives. Profits are best generated by the use of expensive technologies. They are not as easily generated by low-cost community resilience and risk reduction activities. When seen from the perspectives of cost, practicality and use of science, such an approach may not be well aligned with a policy objective of community safety. The emphasis is all too often only on fighting fire, despite the fact that the limits of fire suppression are well known to wildfire scientists and fire agencies (Luke and McArthur, 1978). Thus the threat-defense logic inherent in securitization triumphs at the cost of what we would argue should be the central objective of fire policy: improving safety and reducing all types of loss.

A better approach to wildfire risk management is one where the objective is the protection of people and key assets – with an emphasis on individual safety. The focus is explicitly on the people at risk, who can themselves become part of the solution instead of being part of the problem. This focus on individual safety can be addressed through the concept of human security, and indeed we have seen a growing use of the “security” label with explicit reference to this concept. Use of the concept of human security, however, does not address the problems associated with securitization, but rather merely complicates the issue. One must remain cognizant of the dangers of the “security” label, which are not resolved merely by adding the term “human.” As Ole Waever has discussed, the term “security,” at least in the public sphere, “carries with it a history and a set of connotations that it cannot escape. At the heart of the concept we find something to do with defense and the state. As a result, addressing an issue in security terms still evokes an image of threat-defense, allocating to the state an important role in addressing it” (Waever, 1995: 47). Looking at the lessons of the American example, it is clearly counterproductive to brand wildfires a security issue in Australia. Using the Copenhagen School’s spectrum, wildfires have already achieved a very high level of politicization both in Australia and the United States. This high level of politicization delivers all the benefits of securitization – public attention, political and economic resources, etc. – without the associated problems of militarization. We must recognize wildfires as a significant and indeed growing danger, while at the same time adopting an approach defined by the concepts of resilience, risk sharing and a focus on the safety of the people at risk. While securitization is a tempting option, we cannot hope to win a “war on wildfire” like that being fought in the United States. Wildfires are not an enemy to be defeated, but rather a risk to be reduced and a set of consequences to be managed.

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