The multiplier event by the UOC team took place between June 1st and 3rd and were characterized by involving very diverse actors, generating an interesting exchange of ideas and perspectives.
On the first day, we started with a round table in Sant Celoni, where after a welcome speech from the city’s Mayor, Dr. Martí Boada gave an initial reflection on the state of the forests and the changes they are experiencing due to both climate change and social and economic transformations. He emphasized the importance of equipping ourselves to understand and stay updated with knowledge to avoid unconstructive clichés. Following this, Jordi Pagès, a member of GRAF and forestal engineer, delved into the diagnosis of the situation, starting from the major fires of 1994 to future projections. He presented the current complex situation for firefighting bodies due to the profound transformation of the landscape and climate in the Mediterranean area, and the difficulties in continuing to apply previous solutions, emphasizing that we can only rely on creativity and imagination.
Next, Néstor Portes from the Pego Viu organization initiated a block more focused on the community perspective. He presented himself as a “representative of the future,” as Pego has recently experienced two devastating major fires, and the landscape has already undergone radical changes, such as the current extreme drought. From his collective, the commitment is to defend the territory through a wide range of activities and people involved, hoping that some of the options will eventually work. In line with this hope, Isabeau Ottolini, a researcher from the PyroLife project, also emphasized the importance of knowing and making visible these types of local initiatives that fight with a diverse repertoire of activities to keep these territories alive and thus address the underlying problems of forest fires, such as rural abandonment, the loss of fire culture, or speculative urbanism, among others. A hopeful projection towards the future was then continued by Kathleen Uyttewaal, also a researcher from the PyroLife project, presenting the adaptation paths for forest fires that she has co-created with multiple actors in the Montseny area. A guide to possible changes (social, educational, administrative, and economic) at different scales, from a model of anticipatory and creative governance that also recognizes and makes visible the actions already being taken in a positive direction.
To close these reflections towards the future, Martí Romaní, a member of the Edufire Toolkit team at the Pau Costa Foundation, presented the project along with the pilot experience carried out in Taradell, located in a rural environment that shares similarities with the other territories present at the round table. From here, he reflected on how education emerges as a key dimension in all these diagnoses and proposals, given the level of social and cultural transformation we need to address the challenges we face in terms of fires and climate change. And also placing hope in new generations who can help us imagine situations and find answers that do not yet exist.
After the round table and to close the day, we enjoyed a small tasting of local products from the Montseny and Pego areas—such as cheeses, beer, or chestnuts—in the Plaça de la Vila de Sant Celoni, also fulfilling the function of making visible and emphasizing the importance of consuming local and proximity products as one more strategy for preventing forest fires.
On Sunday, the Sant Celoni city council organized a trip to Can Terrades, part of ‘Nature Week’. Here, the forest and livestock owner Josep Maria Saurí showed us the role of extensive livestock farming in environmental services.
First, we visited a typical Montnegre forest that has been managed for many generations (since at least the year 1300!). Silvopastoral management is practiced, combining clearing with machinery and grazing by herds, creating open spaces within the forest. Transhumance, or short seasonal movements with the herd, is also practiced. In this way, the danger of forest fires is reduced, in addition to conserving biodiversity and traditional activities such as cork harvesting. Impressively, no tree on this property has died from drought despite years of accumulated impacts on the territory.
Then we went to the livestock farm, where Josep Saurí has approximately 600 Ripollesa sheep and 50 Rasquera white goats. He shared reflections on the challenges facing livestock farming today, but also on things that give hope, such as generational renewal to keep the rural world alive.
Finally, on the morning of June 3rd at the UOC headquarters in Barcelona, we continued exchanging ideas and experiences, this time with a more urban focus and centered on the role of education. We deepened the diagnosis of the current situation of forest fires, following the thread of conversations and conclusions from the weekend’s activities, but adding a more global perspective, led by Isabeau Ottolini and Kathleen Uyttewaal, in conversation with Alexandre Molina, also a researcher from the PyroLife project. Then, Martí Romaní shared in more detail the objectives and characteristics of the Edufire Toolkit project, along with the materials currently available on the project’s website, both for secondary school teachers and students.
The next block focused on the theme of community participation. Dr. Míriam Arenas, a researcher at Edufire Toolkit at the UOC, initiated it by sharing the process of developing and the basic contents of the community participation guide, which will be available on the Edufire Toolkit website. Clàudia Torrens, also a researcher at the UOC, presented the experience of setting up a community participation process within the framework of the project’s pilot test, conducted at a high school in Castelldefels. We learned more about this experience from two of its participants: Esther Gil, a teacher at the involved high school and coordinator of the Erasmus+ program, under which the project’s activities were organized; and Gerard Magín, a collaborator in the “Ramats de foc” project at Can Domènech farmhouse, one of the collaborating entities. Both shared their own experiences of the pilot test, and additionally, Esther discussed the continuity of the work on forest fires that had taken place so far and what is planned for the future, and Gerard highlighted the educational potential of activities such as those carried out at Can Domènech. The organizational, institutional, and economic challenges of organizing this type of educational activity were also brought to light.
In the last block, we expanded these reflections with the interventions of two professors and researchers from the UOC. Dr. Asun Pié situated the issue in a context of civilizational crisis in the West, rooted in colonial capitalism and sustained by violence against nature and certain human bodies. In this context, she proposed reorienting education towards fostering critical thinking, reconnecting with the community and other living beings, and based on care, where work from the body becomes central to recovering the resonance and innate feeling of vibrating and wanting to connect and network with our more-than-human environment. Dr. Isabel Ruiz emphasized the importance of overcoming instrumental visions of education based on the nature/culture dichotomy, to re-center its ethical dimension and from a pedagogy of hope, which helps us move away from catastrophic visions. A commitment to changing frames of reference, taking advantage of legislative transformations that open up new opportunities to address the ecosocial perspective, and recovering outdoor education practices and reintroducing nature into schools. All this, remembering the importance of evaluating practices, but not only in the short term if we want to respect and understand the rhythms of educational transformations.
The last round of questions and answers turned into a lively debate where topics such as the place we give to technology in new educational proposals and the intensive use that new generations make of it emerged. We closed the day with a small workshop led by the UOC team in the form of a dynamic debate. Participants were invited to position themselves on controversial statements about various issues, leading to small debates. This allowed for the exchange of opinions on the political objectivity of these topics in educational contexts; the difficulties for community actors without experience with this age group to work with adolescents; the role of teachers in education about climate change and forest fires; or how to address and accompany the negative emotions that these topics generate in such young students, among others. A very rich exchange, which we could not extend due to lack of time.
Therefore, as posed in the title of the days, the result was an active exercise of networking and mutual learning, where the enormous challenges we face in terms of fires and climate change were highlighted, as well as some of the paths we can take in the future from a hopeful education, rooted in the community and environment, that respects and enhances diversity, with the active participation of adolescents who need to be more connected with the world to help transform it.
