Climate Change, Fire and Land-Use Planning

With the Los Angeles fire still fresh in my memory, and driving around my own turf in the Western Cape, South Africa, I am astounded at the fancy homes climbing ever further up mountain slopes into the Fynbos fire zone, and the informal settlements and townships springing up in mountain wilderness areas with a known fire regime of 12 to 15 years.

Do we really believe we are immune to the conflagrations that in recent months and years swept through parts of California, Australia, Greece and Chile, amongst others? Africa, it seems, is no exception. I recently read in a United Nations Environment Programme Report (2022) that 30% of Angola's land surface burns every year. Other countries in Central Africa are not far behind. The same Report indicates that, besides changing climate, wildfires can be attributed to land use change and poor fire management practices. Urban expansion, including suburban sprawl, increase the wildland-urban interface, where wildfire risks are more pronounced – one of the major reasons for the recent Los Angeles fires.

Urban development at this interface generally requires that fire-risks be managed, meaning that fire needs to be suppressed, which changes the natural fire regime in fire-adapted vegetation types. This results in a build-up of fuel load and more intense fires. In an article by Shannon and Kaufman (2018), it is stated that in the U.S., California has the highest number of houses in the high-risk wildland-urban interface (WUI). Wildfires now even occur in the winter season after a long period of drought, which means that a whole new approach to land management and urban planning with the help of fire ecologists is becoming essential.Vulnerability to fire at the interface will increase if local authorities continue to approve developments in this zone, and such agencies may need to be held accountable for the increased fire protection costs.

Measures, such as wider firebreaks, including the use of water bodies, sports fields and appropriate fire-resistant planting on the edge of urban areas, as well as controlled burns of the adjacent vegetation, as practiced by indigenous people in the past, should be considered. Another strategy would be to encourage infill development, as well as increased densities in urban areas, in order to divert development from pristine rural areas, in this way reducing exposure to fire-prone landscapes. A rethink of settlement in high-risk zones is needed because it is often the poorer communities that are located on the periphery where land is cheaper. To this end, landscape architects could play a role in ensuring that land use planning becomes more ecologically responsive and landscape design more resilient.The diagrams below indicate how detailed vegetation mapping (Diagram A), together with potential fire risk (Diagram B), can inform future development and landscape management for a particular site.