Over the past few weeks, we’ve thought about water resources, food and agricultural systems, and the intimate connections between resource systems and human livelihoods and well-being -- whether this relates to fishing livelihoods or questions of sufficient access to food and water. This week we will begin our transition into thinking about climate and energy systems. One bridge to get us there are considerations of land use. How land is used not only shapes human livelihoods and well-being but also closely affects the global climate. This fact has come into stark relief over the past few years with news of major fires everywhere from California to the Amazon. Such fires not only reflect a warming planet, they also send tons of carbon into the atmosphere as CO2-absorbing forests go up in flames. This week I invite you to engage with some recent news coverage of fires in the Amazon and a critical read of mega-fires in California. What is at stake? For whom?

As you engage with these readings, I would like you to draw on some of the themes you have already begun to address throughout the course: the complex web of factors shaping environmental change, and the socially constructed nature of environmental ‘problems’ and ‘solutions,’ and the importance of biophysical dynamics and conditions in shaping resource challenges and possibilities. One thing to take away from these readings is that even though a dramatic spike in forest burning is a cause for concern -- and likely a product of a warming climate -- it is not unprecedented, and it is not solely reducible to a changing climate. Rather, it also reflects the socio-political circumstances permitting (and arguably incentivizing) fire in the Amazon and California, including the role of the Bolsonaro regime in permitting land clearance in and around indigenous reserves and the role of the insurance and construction industries in developing fire-prone areas throughout California.

Beginning to deconstruct the extent to which fires are “natural” shouldn’t be discouraging. Rather, if fire is as much a product of power and politics as it is the product of a changing climate, it is possible to govern and address. How and in what ways do these readings suggest existing institutions might be reformed to better address and prevent both the social and environmental costs of wildfires?