- Title:
-
Climate Change Adaptation, Disaster Risk Reduction and a Fire Management Policy Framework
- Date:
- September 2008
- Organisations
- BCRC
- Authors:
- K. Bosomworth
- Location:
- Australia, VIC, Australia
Overview
The International Bushfire Research Conference 2008 - incorporating The 15th annual AFAC Conference, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
Disaster risk reduction and sustainability are major imperatives for fire management. Now, fire management must also consider climate change. Viewed holistically, the sector is very large, with links into many policy issues. Its governance and policy framework must therefore be both integrated and adaptive. This relies on collaboration and institutional learning. Collaboration and learning are social processes. In a public policy context they depend on relations between public policy actors.
Policy is shaped by organisational structures, institutional settings, and by informal networks that are in turn the products of values and expectations –socio-politics. Yet, research and practice tend to focus on organisational structures or formal arrangements. Less considered are the relationships between policy actors, and the institutional settings and socio-politics that influence and are influenced by their networks. Learning and collaboration between the sector’s public policy actors likely depend (to an uncertain extent) on formal and informal networks between policy actors. It is not enough to just describe how “well-connected” a policy sector may be. The sectors socio-politics and how informal networks influence and are influenced by those contexts are also important.
This research seeks to understand the significance of all this in enabling integrated, adaptive governance of fire management.
