23rd. Annual Colloquium Sustainable Rural Systems : Smart Answers for a Smiling Future : IGU-CSRS Book of Abstracts and Programme

In rural-urban fringes across the Mediterranean biome there is increasing vulnerability of human settlements to dangerous bushfires.Risk from bushfires is growing as more people choose to live in these areas and therefore are becoming increasingly embedded in fire-risk zones.Through urban sprawl outer suburbs are becoming more wooded, whilst longer and more severe periods of drought are increasing the flammability of vegetation.The occurrence of more severe weather events, associated with climatic change, is resulting in higher average summer temperatures that extend fire-risk periods, often accompanied by more extremely hot wind events that can rapidly spread fires, as occurred in the 'Black Friday' fires in Victoria, Australia in 2009 (burning over 450,000 ha and killing 173 people) and in February 2015 in the Southern Algarve (killing 16 people and affecting 215,000 ha).This paper reports on the first findings of research funded by the Australian Research Council and conducted in three study areas: South Australia, California and southern France, examining key problems posed by this growing threat of bushfires.In particular, it looks at the motivations, values, beliefs and perceptions of rural-urban fringe residents faced by threat of bushfire, and especially in the context of a major environmental concern in these areas: the need for effective conservation measures to maintain important and unique biodiversity.High rates of biodiversity decline are being recorded in urban peripheries across the Mediterranean biome, so the challenge for policy-makers is to implement bushfire risk mitigation that could catalyse improvements in biodiversity management by favourably disposing residents towards land-use planning for conservation and risk management.Land managers face the problem of determining and implementing fire management appropriate for conserving biodiversity whilst also protecting life and property.Focus will be placed on analysis of 1000 household surveys conducted in two regions of South Australia: the Adelaide and Mount Lofty Ranges (AMLR), which form the eastern boundary of the state capital, Adelaide (population 1.2 million), and the southern Eyre Peninsula around the small port of Port Lincoln, where bushfires in 2005 burnt over 77,000 ha, with nine fatalities.The impacts on residents of the recent (January 2015) fire in the AMLR, which burnt 12,500 ha, destroying 27 homes but with no human fatalities, will be addressed.With such major risks to place, property and people, the management of vegetation for bushfire risk mitigation, for example through controlled burning, is highly contentious.The paper will argue that different groups of residents can be recognised on the basis of attitudes and behaviour, so that in formulating management strategies different messages may need to be delivered by planners and policy makers in order to develop desirable behaviour in the face of growing risk.There may also be a need for rethinking planning in order to restrict in-migration to those areas most at risk.The aim of the research is to provide opportunities to support policy development to promote behavioural change aligned with effective management of biodiversity.In this case 'effective' relates to appropriate reflexive and iterative governance to develop community acceptance of policy decisions.Such adaptive governance, linked to community understandings and ambitions, will be vital to guide environmental policy at a time when society is increasingly defined by individualism and uncertainty.

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