Lifting Voices and Sharing Promising Practices in Fire Education and Awareness Communications

Alongside air, land, water and space, fire exists in nature. Climate change, socioeconomics, land abandonment and wildfire management are exacerbating the frequency and intensity of wildfires; annually affecting millions of people. One of the first fire education and awareness campaigns was “The Smokey Bear” campaign in the USA which focused on wildfire risk behaviours. Adapted by many countries, this line of thinking resulted in “good fire” (a source of fire stewardship) being banned with strict law enforcement. “The Smokey Bear”-styled campaigns were typically designed by state-led agencies who rarely recognized Indigenous-led fire practices, rural traditional practices, geographic context and socio-economic priorities. While advances in ecology, forestry and risk analysis have shown that this line of thought decreases the number of ignitions, conditions were then created for larger and more extreme wildfires to occur due to fuel build up on the landscape. A shift in fire education is occurring from schools using interdisciplinary methods that engage neighbouring communities to grassroots-led knowledge resource development. This chapter presents five case studies: Indigenous fire stewardship in Canada; wildfire education in Australian schools; Portugal’s citizen-led fire prevention exhibition; a European student-teacher training course (Portugal, Spain, Ireland); and FireExplorer, a European platform promoting fire education through cultural, practical, and community-based approaches.