Model Forests and Wildfire
Globally, wildfires are emerging as a leading threat to forests. As climate change continues to further alter weather patterns and disturbance regimes, the severity and frequency of wildfires are predicted to worsen. Subsequently, there is an urgent need to implement integrated fire management into forest stewardship strategies. Model Forests provide valuable lessons and case studies on how to successfully execute wildfire management strategies that are centred around Nature-based Solutions, community engagement, and knowledge sharing.
This technical brief—prepared for the 30th Conference of the Parties to the United Nation Framework Convention of Climate Change (COP30)—provides background on the connections between forests and wildfires, then presents lessons and a case study from the International Model Forest Network (IMFN). As countries, communities, civil society, and the private work to address wildfires, it is essential to carry forward these lessons from Model Forests, translating them across contexts and scales. Model Forests have demonstrated successful wildfire response and IFM across regions, and their experiences prove that uncontrolled wildfires do not need to be inevitable—they can be proactively planned for, responded to, and recovered from through community-based approaches.
This publication has been produced with financial support from the Government of Canada’s Global Forest Leadership Program and through the International Model Forest Network (IMFN) Secretariat's IMFN Climate initiative.
Citizen science, also called community science, is a common term for a wide range of participatory…
