The International Savanna Fire Management Initiative (ISFMI) shows what is possible through our work. ISFMI is a standalone entity supported by Pollination Foundation to adapt and scale an Indigenous technology developed in northern Australia to savanna landscapes around the world.

www.isfmi.org

We have to find new ways to make this land healthy … Being the boss of fire was always the way. Not fires being the boss of us. That is the lesson from the old people.

— Dean Yibarbuk, ISFMI Advisory Committee Member,
West Arnhem Land, northern Australia

The attention of the global community continues to focus on the devastating impact of wildfire: California in 2018, Brazil in 2019 and Australia in 2020. These catalytic wildfire events are a part of a global trend fuelled by climate change. So often, headlines alert us to the destruction and displacement caused by out-of-control wildfires. But Indigenous custodians deeply understand that fire has a very different – and essential – function. So much so that without it, nature suffers devastating imbalance – new plants critical to biodiversity and feedstock cannot germinate, overgrowth creates dangerous fuel loads – and then uncontrolled wildfire outbreaks once again, wreak havoc, adding further to our emissions overload.

Despite the fact that we were living a nomadic life … we were using the veldt fires to keep wildlife in one place because when the veldt is burned fresh grass, tubers and plants grow … As the San we were conservers not poachers.

— Xontae Xhao, Tsodilo Hills Community Botswana

From 2013 to 2015, the Australian Government provided an initial grant to explore the global potential of traditional fire management. The project drew on the fire knowledge and practices of traditional owners across northern Australia who, in partnership with scientists, had developed a carbon method to measure reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from reintroduction of traditional fire practices.

The study established initial indications that methodologies developed in northern Australia could be successfully replicated in other savanna landscapes and deliver carbon emissions reductions as well as a suite of community and environmental benefits. Further community based pilot sites in Botswana, again supported by the Australian Government from 2018 – 2021, provided technical proof that this is indeed the case. Building on this success, new projects in Zambia, Mozambique, Angola and Central America – Belize and Guatemala, will commence shortly.

Today, the International Savanna Fire Management Initiative (ISFMI) works to support Indigenous and local communities globally, developing carbon methodologies that measure and verify emissions reductions achieved through these practices. In the future this will allow Indigenous and local communities and the biodiversity that supports them, to benefit from the emissions reductions they generate, through reinstating early dry season traditional fire management, through the sale of carbon offsets, and other corporate and philanthropic partnerships, as has been successfully achieved in northern Australia.

As Indigenous communities globally are supported to revitalise their traditional fire knowledge, restore the environment and reduce the emissions driving climate change, biodiversity and humanity at large are also reaping the benefits.

Traditional ecological knowledge is just as important as western knowledge, and if we can bring those two together in the work we are all trying to do in climate change, it is a win win for everybody.

— Cissy Gore Birch, ISFMI Advisory Committee Member, East Kimberley region northern Australia

The ISFMI showcases what is possible when community-based solutions are elevated, resources to scale nature-based solutions are unlocked, and practitioners are connected to share expertise. The scale and multifaceted success of emissions reductions from traditional fire management makes it one of the most promising and significant nature-based solutions on offer.