Dissertation
Transforming Human-Fire Relationships: Co-creating landscape changes from Honduras to Sweden
University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland
Doctor of Philosophy, University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland
2025
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25907/00895
Abstract
Human-fire relationships have been and continue to be a pivotal part of human and planetary development. In the mainstream news, we see and hear how fire drives the global economy through internal combustion and how it, in its "wild form", engulfs landscapes. However, mainstream culture often forgets how fires also regenerate, rejuvenate and enable life to thrive. This thesis departs from the diverse, existential, multifaceted relationship between humans and fires. Specifically, it delves into two case studies with different human-fire relationships, exploring transformation pathways to enable landscape regeneration.
In the La Mosquitia case in eastern Honduras, annual fires uncontrollably spread across the landscape. This undermines the regeneration of Caribbean Pine, transforming large swaths of the savannah into grasslands and amplifies vulnerability amongst the Mosquito communities. In the Voxnadalen case, in the central parts of Sweden, fires are virtually extinct from the forest landscape and entangled in the struggle between traditional forestry and biodiversity loss. As illustrated throughout this thesis, human-fire relationships are contextually unique, diverse, multifaceted, shifting, and manifest across multiple scales - or, in other words, wicked. This thesis departs from the La Mosquitia and Voxnadalen contexts with a twofold aim: (1) Support and enable ongoing change processes to regenerate the landscapes, and (2) Explore the role of, and approaches to, co-creation in facilitating these transformations.
Details
- Title
- Transforming Human-Fire Relationships: Co-creating landscape changes from Honduras to Sweden
- Authors
- Carl Whitman - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Law and Society
- Contributors
- Neil Powell (Principal Supervisor)Sara Holmgren (Co-Supervisor) - Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
- Awarding institution
- University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland
- Degree awarded
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Publisher
- University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland
- DOI
- 10.25907/00895
- Grant note
- This research was supported through the Mistra Environmental Communication programme.
- Organisation Unit
- School of Law and Society
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 991095743202621
- Output Type
- Dissertation
Metrics
36 File views/ downloads
65 Record Views