Experiences and lessons learned in the construction of a new paradigm of integrated fire management in Venezuela.

Under the current changing climate and social governance conditions, wildfires occurrence in Latin America has become a critical issue, trespassing academic and technical disputes, and reaching sensible socio-political arenas. Developing a new vision and capacities for the integral and intersectoral management of wildfires instead of only fighting them requires the inclusion of multiple perspectives, actors and the rescue of the adaptive knowledge and practices of local communities that inhabit natural spaces. This paper summarizes the main results and advances achieved during more than 20 years of learning and working with the Pemón Indigenous peoples in northern Amazonia and the escalation towards new fire management policies in Venezuela. Our results reveal a sophisticated Indigenous knowledge system on using fire in the main subsistence activities, especially shifting cultivation and collaborative burning practices at the savanna-forests transition to protect forests from catastrophic wildfires. In addition, long-term fire experiments demonstrated that fire exclusion practices promote more severe wildfires by fuel accumulation, enhanced by the drier and warmer weather conditions. Through the inclusion of Indigenous peoples, firefighters, public officials and academics in field research and joint experimentation, as well as in debates and dialogues on socio-ecological aspects, a paradigm shift was successfully negotiated of fire that values the relevance of the ancient Pemón culture in Venezuela in the sustainable management of resources, as well as adaptation and mitigation capacity to climate change. Currently, these experiences are being capitalized to create a national integrated fire management policy preserving the same participatory, intercultural and intersectoral principles.