Vestal Fire: An Environmental History, Told through Fire, of Europe and Europe's Encounter with the World

Planets

PLANETS A world war fought on its soil and the postwar loss ofempire did little to diminish Europe's influence on global fire. In 1987, excluding the USSR, Europe contributed only 0.3 percent of the global biomass burned, and 90 percent of that was concentrated in Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Greece. Yet Europe remained omnipresent, if no longer omnipotent, throughout the planet. If, as a consideration of its authority, one includes the Neo-Europes and the power of Western science, then the European hegemony was greater than in the floodtide of imperialism. Like the heat within a fire, the transfer of European ideas, machines, practices , and institutions took several forms. Some spread by conduction, from direct contact with European fire specialists or Europe-sponsored programs. Much came from secondary sources, Europe's former colonies, now reradiating theirinfluence as majorcenters offire protection and fire science. IfEurope's fire practices and values were lost in the conversions, nonetheless the fire establishments of Australia, Canada, Russia, and the United States, for example, bore closer resemblance to Europe than to other civilizations. And then there was a kind of global convection by means of Europe's obsession with fireinduced atmospheric changes and the changing climate ofworld opinion those concerns affected. The end result was to install Europe's vestal fire as a global standard. CONDUCTION: THE EUROPEAN CONNECTION Through national aid programs, scientific education, international institutions like the United Nations, and contacts with former colonies, Europe connected to much ofthe world, and influenced conceptions about fire and fire practices. A portion of the contact involved fire practices directly, but most followed indirectly through ideas about proper agriculture, forestry, and nature con532 Conduction 533 servation, all of which determined how countries should think about fire and how they should apply and withhold it. Knowledge and technology flowed from Europe outward like heat transferred along an iron rod held at one end over a flame. Anyone picking up that rod felt the impact of Europe's distant vestal fire. Colonial contacts were rarely severed completely. France held the most fiercely to its possessions, to a relictpresence Franraise. Throughout its retained possessions and particularly throughout Francophone Africa, France continued to instruct as much in fire practices as in the enunciation of nasal vowels. A majorresearchprogram centeredinthe Ivory Coast. Meanwhile, the class ranking of Peninsular Spanish above South American creole asserted itself in fire. Why Latin America should look to Spain for guidance was puzzling, but that is what happened. So while fire scientists studied in the United States, administrators (and even field personnel) often trained in Spain, and Spain published a special fire newsletter. Britain had little to offer its former possessions once it lay down the burden of imperial forestry. With money from the Ford Foundation , the Commonwealth Forestry Institute microfilmed its entire holdings and sent the collection to the now-developing countries mostly in Africa as a kind ofintellectual dowry. More important, the Commonwealth countries communicated among themselves, so that there was an exchange of expertise between the English-speaking nations like Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and (even after it left) South Africa. What would happen with the states of the former USSR was unclear. Certainly units ofAvialesookhrana-fire centers at Minsk, Kiev, andAlma-Ata, for example--communicated freely with their old colleagues. More important, however, were foreign aid programs, some national, some under the auspices of the United Nations. Germany, for example, proud of its forest heritage, sponsored forestry missions to Mali and Indonesia and elsewhere which included programs in fire management. Typically, aid programs brought with them equipment manufactured by the sponsoring nation, further incentive to use firefighting hardware, which in tum influenced the software of fire policy. For the Third World, particularly for the nonaligned nations, the United Nations became a neutral source of expertise. But the Food and Agriculture Organization, which had responsibility for fire, was heavily staffed by west Europeans. So was the U.N. Environment Program, UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere Program, and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. So, too, were the major institutions of transnational science like the International Union ofForest Research Organizations, the Scientific Committee on Problems ofthe Environment, and the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program, all of which oversaw fire research. Like the heated iron bar, the flow ofinformation went one way, from Europe 534 PLANETS % Tg dm/yr (Thousands) 0 .... I\,) Co) .110 CI1 01 ,,/! lSI"", Europe and the...