The Politics of Wildfires: A Review and Research Agenda

This review synthesizes political and social science research on wildfire politics focused on the Global South, offering a multi-scalar framework encompassing four proposed levels of analysis: supra-politics, state-politics, para-politics, and infra-politics. Challenging dominant technocratic and Global North-centric paradigms, the article emphasizes how power, knowledge systems, and socio-economic practices, alongside international and national norms and institutions, shape fire regimes and management strategies. The analysis highlights the complexity of wildfire politics by examining how fires are governed, contested, and symbolically charged across diverse landscapes and socio-political contexts. Following the review of 147 peer-reviewed articles published between 2000 and 2024, the article calls for a multidisciplinary, decolonial, and context-sensitive approach to fire governance. We ultimately argue that wildfire politics cannot be fully understood without recognizing the socio-ecological interdependencies and political dynamics that structure land use, livelihoods, and environmental justice in fire-prone regions.