J. Troensegaard
Jan Troensegaard recently retired from his post as Senior Forestry Officer (Plantations and Protection) in the Forest Resources Division of the FAO Forestry Department.
This article is adapted from a paper presented by Mr Troensegaard at the First International Wildfire Conference, held in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, in July 1989.
Fire has been a useful human tool for millennia, but it also causes grave economic losses and intolerable harm to the environment. Paradoxically, despite the development of advanced techniques, particularly in fire detection and suppression, the incidence of ecosystem damage from forest fire appears to be increasing in most regions of the world.
FAO has been concerned with helping member countries mitigate the effects of unwanted forest fires since the creation of the Organization nearly half a century ago. For example, a manual called The elements of forest fire control was issued in 1953. The primary aim of the Organization in this field is to assist member countries in protecting themselves from the adverse effects of unwanted fires and in enhancing the use of fire as a tool in managing their limited natural resources.
Over the past two decades, in response to requests from member countries, the FAO Field Programme has provided US$12 million of technical assistance to 36 developing countries through 66 projects: 24 in Africa, 20 in Asia, 17 in Latin America and five in Europe and the Near East. The location of these projects reflects the major fire ecologies of the world. The savannahs of Africa (Burkina Faso, Benin, Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire, Guinea, Nigeria, Zaire, Kenya, United Republic of Tanzania, Zambia, Mozambique) represent 30 percent of the projects; the grasslands and dry open forests of Asia (India, Myanmar, Viet Nam, Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia) and Central America and the Caribbean (El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela) represent a further 23 percent each. The remaining 24 percent of the projects are equally distributed between the Himalayan conifer region (Pakistan, Bhutan, Afghanistan); temperate Asia (Mongolia, People's Republic of China, Republic of Korea) and South America (Argentina, Chile, Peru); and the Mediterranean/Near East region (Turkey, Greece, Syrian Arab Republic).
The largest portion of external support for these projects has been provided by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), which has been involved in 61 percent of the projects and 87 percent of the total expenditure in the period, followed by the FAO Technical Cooperation Programme (TCP) with 29 percent of the projects and 10 percent of the total expenditure, and Trust Funds with 10 percent of the projects and 3 percent of expenditure.
Projects may be efforts in which forest fire is the central issue; forestry development projects to which a forest fire specialist has been attached; or short-term consultancies. Projects of the first type, of which there have been seven over the past 20 years, account for 61 percent of the total expenditure of the period, providing an average of 31 work months of expert advice per project. Of these, the Modern Forest Fire Control Project in India (see article in this issue, page 21) is by far the most ambitious project that FAO has ever carried out in the field of forest fire protection.
FIRE DETECTION USING A FIREFINDER in Thailand
In the second group, there have been 12 projects, all funded by UNDP, accounting for 19 percent of the total expenditure for the period. These projects have provided a total of 268 work months of fire management expertise or an average of 22 work months per project. Fire specialists have been attached to many types of projects but the effect has been most positive when the effort was one of relatively long duration as part of an integrated forest management project.
In the last group are the 47 short-term consultancies mostly provided as a one-time-only input to various types of forest development projects or as assistance in emergency situations. In Honduras, for example, the 85 work months of expert advice provided between 1972 and 1980 to a relatively strong and dynamic institution have coincided with the creation of one of the most efficient forest fire services in Latin America and the reduction of the forest area affected by wildfires in that country from 30 percent in 1974 to less than 3 percent in 1982 (see interview with M. Salazar, Chief of Honduran Forestry Protection, in this issue, page 13). On the other hand, 69 work months of expert support for an equally strong institution in Asia did not provide the same positive results. But then the population density and the pressure on the forests were not the same in the two cases. Reviewing our work during the past 18 years, we find that there have been both successes and cases where consultancies repeated at regular intervals failed to stimulate positive development.
The reasons why a forest fire project has or has not been successfully followed up by the government or institution concerned are not easily determined. But failures to implement project recommendations appear to be linked to the fact that efficient forest fire control programmes including prevention, detection and suppression require substantial initial investments and are quite costly to run. Although the average per hectare cost of US$2.50 may not sound impressive, it amounts to a substantial, even impossible expenditure for many national forest services when the whole forest estate is taken into account.
Furthermore, foresters have had difficulty in convincing government officials that the services provided by an efficient forest fire management programme will save more money than it spends. It would therefore seem advisable that future technical assistance in the field should, whenever possible, include damage evaluation and forest fire management planning, where priorities are set and future expenditures are balanced against the corresponding benefits, in the same units of measure.
An additional constraint relates to the lack of adequate numbers of postgraduate-level professional forest fire staff in the developing countries. This tends to impede full implementation of specific project activities and, perhaps even more important, leaves a gap in communication between field and administrative levels, thus limiting high-level understanding and support of project recommendations. In this context, a clear indication is given by the fact that practically none of the consultants and technical advisers specializing in forest fire control comes from the developing countries. Technical assistance projects on forest fire control should therefore give higher priority than heretofore to advanced or high-level training.
Regardless of the number of trained professionals, however, without the active participation of local people, effective control of forest fire is impossible. Therefore, increasing efforts must be directed toward greater understanding of local people's use of fire and development of programmes to ensure that their needs and desires are taken into consideration.
GRASSLAND FIRE IN KENYA FAO has provided assistance in its control
An issue in all technical assistance projects is the technological level of the recommended methodology as related to the absorptive capacity of the country concerned. This problem is particularly relevant to forest fire management, as projects usually require use of sophisticated communication equipment and, in more advanced cases, hi-tech aircraft operations. There is no universal answer to this problem except that it should always be seriously considered.
FAO headquarters-based activities related to forest fire control cover programming and planning, the formulation of projects and their implementation and evaluation. The increased concern for forest protection and, in particular, forest fire prevention and control expressed at recent meetings of the FAO statutory bodies has led FAO to assign more resources to this field. In the approved work programme for 1990-91, a new post has been created at FAO headquarters to deal exclusively with forest protection.
FAO receives regular requests for information on forest fires from all over the world. Many of these requests concern statistical information on fires at the national, regional and global levels. Unfortunately, adequate statistics concerning number of fires and area burnt are available only for the members of the European Economic Community, Canada, the United States and a few others. To help fill this gap, some preliminary studies have been carried out by FAO in West Africa and Brazil, employing satellite imagery produced by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The NOAA images have proved effective with regard to location and number of fires at a very reasonable cost. However, the minimum area coverage of one square kilometre makes them inappropriate for estimating area burnt, and other types of remote sensing will have to be tested. The next step of the investigations will be to develop a cost-efficient methodology for estimating annual numbers of wildland fires, showing location and areas at different levels of geographic resolution. Once this stage has been reached, it will be possible to compile reliable fire data reasonably fast, and to give fire statistics at the national, regional and global levels should FAO be asked to do so and be provided with the necessary funding.
Meetings and seminars
During the past decade three major seminars and technical consultations were organized by FAO (in collaboration with other international organizations) where fire was the key subject, and there were several others where fire was an important component. FAO and Unesco held a joint Technical Consultation on Forest Fires in the Mediterranean Region in 1977, and ECE, FAO and ILO held seminars on Forest Fire Prevention and Control in Warsaw in 1981 and on Methods and Equipment for the Prevention of Forest Fires in Valencia, Spain, in 1986 The ECE/FAO/ILO Joint Committee on Forest Working Techniques and Training of Forest Workers also held seminars where forest fires were one of the main issues in the Federal Republic of Germany in 1977, in Spain in 1980, in Norway in 1982 and in Turkey in 1984.
Consideration of how to deal with questions related to forest fires and the resulting damage is an ongoing part of the work of the six regional Forestry Commissions of FAO, the FAO Regional Conferences, and "Silva Mediterranea", which normally meet every two years. For example, the ECE/FAO/ILO seminar on Methods and Equipment for the Prevention of Forest Fires (Spain, 1986) recommended that efforts should be made to increase the collaboration with North African and Near East countries in future training activities on forest fires taking place in the Mediterranean region. This recommendation was followed by the development of regular forest fire training courses in Spain.
The courses are organized by ICONA (Instituto Nacional pare la Conservación de la Naturaleza) of Spain in collaboration with FAO and CIHEAM (International Centre for Advanced Mediterranean Agronomic Studies), which is the main sponsor, at its facilities in Zaragoza. The theoretical portion of the course covers ecological effects of forest fires; fire behaviour; prevention; detection; suppression; planning; and legislation. The field exercises deal with prescribed burning; use of communication equipment; use of ground tankers; and use of air tankers. The courses are at present open to professional foresters from the countries of Europe, the Near East and North Africa, with preference given to participants from the developing countries of the subregion; in future they may be opened to foresters from other countries as well.
Publications
Most of the FAO publications on forest fires are country-specific and produced in the context of field projects; a total of 106 field documents have been published over the past two decades. These reports provide valuable information and guidance for national or international foresters and planners working in the countries concerned, and cover a wide field of subjects: work plans; prescribed burning; legislation; planning; protection of industrial plantations; damage valuation; relationship between fires and resin production and insect damage; fire simulators; and fire protection in general. Several manuals have also been produced on prevention (Mozambique, Nigeria, 1979); suppression (Nigeria, 1979); and prevention and control, and prescribed burning (El Salvador, 1975).
FAO's Regular Programme publications on fire tend to focus on international issues. For example, Wildland fire management terminology (FAO Forestry Paper No. 70) of 1986 provides a basis for a more precise understanding of forest fire management literature and discussion and thus for sharing concepts among countries with similar fire problems.
Two regional forest fire studies were carried out in 1986, one covering the Mediterranean and the other dealing with Central America and the Caribbean. The reports draw attention to the wildland fire situation within the two regions and describe the measures currently in use and those that could be adapted in the future. Particularly in the case of the Central American study, the potential for regional collaboration emerges clearly.
FAO has dealt with the problems of protection against forest fire through international meetings, publications and field projects under a wide range of socioeconomic and ecological conditions. Although the situation in each country is different, the wider applicability of a number of basic principles has become apparent. First, technical assistance in forest fire control is much more effective when implemented on a continuous basis over a relatively long period. Short-term, single focus consultancies have tended not to achieve the "critical mass" needed to provoke long-term positive results. Conversely, projects of longer duration, for example those in Honduras and India, have been highly successful. It has also become evident that demonstration or pilot efforts need to be complemented by assistance in fire control planning, if initial small-scale successes are to result in wider improvements.
Economic analysis of the costs and particularly of the benefits of fire prevention and control must be more fully integrated into programmes and projects. Although the cost of fire control on a per hectare basis is relatively low, when multiplied by the total forest area requiring protection the investment is substantial. Therefore, the projected benefits (or the cost of inaction) must also be quantified if high-level support for fire control is to be obtained.
FAO-assisted projects have generally not provided opportunities for postgraduate training in fire control. This position may need to be re-examined in the light of the notable dearth of forest fire administrators in many developing countries. High-level national professionals are essential if countries are to assume control of fire protection activities. They are also the key advocates within national governments for the allocation of appropriate financial and technical resources to forest fire control.
The availability and cost of fire-fighting equipment have been a limiting factor in many national programmes. Even simple hand-tools can become inordinately expensive if they must be imported from producers in the developed countries and paid for in foreign currency, when benefits achieved through their use are calculated in local values. Development of national capability to produce fire-fighting equipment must receive increased consideration in technical assistance projects. The success recorded in this context by the Modem Fire Control Project in India provides a good indicator of the potential of locally produced equipment.
Finally, it is apparent that efforts based exclusively on professional fire-fighting forces and punitive legislation cannot hope to be effective in the long term. Since most fires are deliberately set, the participation of local people in forest fire prevention and control is essential.
As concern for protection and wise use of forest resources continues to increase, control of fire damage will become a progressively more important part of national forest management efforts. The experience and knowledge in fire control that FAO has acquired over the years are at the disposal of all countries and institutions.
REMOTE SENSING methodologies for fire detection need to be further developed
