TY - JOUR
T1 - Transforming fire management in northern Australia through successful implementation of savanna burning emissions reductions projects
AU - Edwards, Andrew
AU - Archer, Ricky
AU - De Bruyn, Phillip
AU - Evans, Jay
AU - Lewis, Ben
AU - Vigilante, Tom
AU - Whyte, Sandy
AU - Russell-Smith, Jeremy
N1 - Funding Information:
Landscape-scale fire management has proven problematic given the very sparse regional population density (0.14 persons km?2 outside of towns), associated limited infrastructure and management resources, and generally flat to undulating terrain with few natural (e.g. permanent water courses) and built (e.g. roads, tracks) barriers restricting fire spread, especially under relatively severe LDS fire-weather conditions and limited finances to support recurrent annual operations (Dyer et al., 2001). In many cases aerial burning using an incendiary machine is the only effective way to apply fire across large remote areas.Over the past decade significant policy, methods development, and project implementation advances have been made concerning savanna burning activities in Australia. In 2012, establishment of a national emissions trading scheme, the Carbon Farming Initiative (CFI), enabled savanna burning projects utilising Australia's first nationally approved savanna burning methodology for seasonal savannas receiving >1000 mm MAP (Commonwealth of Australia, 2013), to trade accredited carbon credits to large industry polluters requiring offsets. In 2014, the current Australian Government replaced the CFI with the taxpayer-funded Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF), which offers long-term (7?25 years) public contracts to registered projects delivering GHG emissions abatement or C storage utilising approved methods.From the outset, however, we acknowledge that savanna burning projects do not provide a fire management panacea for a variety of significant regional conservation, production, and cultural management issues. Savanna burning projects simply apply a method to calculate the difference in methane and nitrous oxide emissions in a given year against the pre-project baseline for a given project area. Hence, although savanna burning projects can help provide a landscape-scale framework for managing the incidence and extent of LDS and other unwanted fires through strategic prescribed burning to reinforce natural (e.g. watercourses) and built (e.g. roads, boundary fences) barriers, they are not designed nor funded to address the finer-scale habitat requirements of threatened fire-vulnerable biota including vertebrate fauna with restricted home ranges, and poorly dispersed obligate seeder taxa with non-dormant seed banks?such intensive management priorities require targeted additional investment (Evans and Russell-Smith, 2020).Corey et al. (2020) argue that biodiversity conservation targets should be incorporated into the design, implementation, and monitoring of savanna burning projects and outline a number of potential ?bioperverse? outcomes of the methodology. While we concur that it is entirely reasonable and possible to incorporate broader ancillary targets (biodiversity, waterways, soil conservation), it is important to ensure that positive and negative outcomes are tied to LDS wildfire mitigation and measured against the business-as-usual scenario. Co-benefits that may be achieved as a result of application of a savanna burning methodology, particularly related to LDS wildfire mitigation, should not be confused with other potential biodiversity outcomes achieved from additional fire management methods where resources are available to support them, including additional PES schemes such as biodiversity credits.Part-funding of research presented here was provided through the Bushfire & Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre, East Melbourne Vic 3002, Australia, and Charles Darwin University, Darwin NT 0909, Australia.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Elsevier Ltd
Copyright:
Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2021/7/15
Y1 - 2021/7/15
N2 - Savannas are the most fire-prone of Earth's biomes and currently account for most global burned area and associated carbon emissions. In Australia, over recent decades substantial development of savanna burning emissions accounting methods has been undertaken to incentivise more conservative savanna fire management and reduce the extent and severity of late dry season wildfires. Since inception of Australia's formal regulated savanna burning market in 2012, today 25% of the 1.2M km2 fire-prone northern savanna region is managed under such arrangements. Although savanna burning projects generate significant emissions reductions and associated financial benefits especially for Indigenous landowners, various biodiversity conservation considerations, including fine-scale management requirements for conservation of fire-vulnerable taxa, remain contentious. For the entire savanna burning region, here we compare outcomes achieved at ‘with-project’ vs ‘non-project’ sites over the period 2000–19, with respect to explicit ecologically defined fire regime metrics, and assembled fire history and spatial mapping coverages. We find that there has been little significant fire regime change at non-project sites, whereas, at with-project sites under all land uses, from 2013 there has been significant reduction in late season wildfire, increase in prescribed early season mitigation burning and patchiness metrics, and seasonally variable changes in extent of unburnt (>2, >5 years) habitat. Despite these achievements, it is acknowledged that savanna burning projects do not provide a fire management panacea for a variety of key regional conservation, production, and cultural management issues. Rather, savanna burning projects can provide an effective operational funded framework to assist with delivering various landscape-scale management objectives. With these caveats in mind, significant potential exists for implementing incentivised fire management approaches in other fire-prone international savanna settings.
AB - Savannas are the most fire-prone of Earth's biomes and currently account for most global burned area and associated carbon emissions. In Australia, over recent decades substantial development of savanna burning emissions accounting methods has been undertaken to incentivise more conservative savanna fire management and reduce the extent and severity of late dry season wildfires. Since inception of Australia's formal regulated savanna burning market in 2012, today 25% of the 1.2M km2 fire-prone northern savanna region is managed under such arrangements. Although savanna burning projects generate significant emissions reductions and associated financial benefits especially for Indigenous landowners, various biodiversity conservation considerations, including fine-scale management requirements for conservation of fire-vulnerable taxa, remain contentious. For the entire savanna burning region, here we compare outcomes achieved at ‘with-project’ vs ‘non-project’ sites over the period 2000–19, with respect to explicit ecologically defined fire regime metrics, and assembled fire history and spatial mapping coverages. We find that there has been little significant fire regime change at non-project sites, whereas, at with-project sites under all land uses, from 2013 there has been significant reduction in late season wildfire, increase in prescribed early season mitigation burning and patchiness metrics, and seasonally variable changes in extent of unburnt (>2, >5 years) habitat. Despite these achievements, it is acknowledged that savanna burning projects do not provide a fire management panacea for a variety of key regional conservation, production, and cultural management issues. Rather, savanna burning projects can provide an effective operational funded framework to assist with delivering various landscape-scale management objectives. With these caveats in mind, significant potential exists for implementing incentivised fire management approaches in other fire-prone international savanna settings.
KW - Biodiversity conservation
KW - Carbon market
KW - Fire regimes
KW - Woody thickening
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85104288810&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.jenvman.2021.112568
DO - 10.1016/j.jenvman.2021.112568
M3 - Article
C2 - 33887642
AN - SCOPUS:85104288810
SN - 0301-4797
VL - 290
SP - 1
EP - 12
JO - Journal of Environmental Management
JF - Journal of Environmental Management
M1 - 112568
ER -