The human drivers of wildfire - a focus on policy makers' incentives

The project will investigate how officials' and politicians' reflection and promotion incentives determine wildfire occurrence, and how incentives generated by international, jurisdictional, and ethnic borders impact wildfire.
The new decade started with a series of devastating wildfires across the world, from the one in Australia, which was declared the worst wildlife disasters in modern history, to California. In 2020, the number of fire alerts have raged with unprecedented ferocity worldwide, releasing 244 million tons of CO2. Budgetary constraints have gradually pushed many governments away from proactivity to reactivity, prioritizing fire suppression over fire prevention.
This distortion of the management incentives will increase as much as the residential development extends further to rural areas, since more homes and businesses will face the threat of wildfires. The reason behind the human expansion into the wildlands, such as suburban and rural regions, especially in and near forests, is explained by the demographic growth and the following population's preference to inhabit nonmetropolitan areas. However, the population's proximity to natural fuels in wildlands makes the threat of fires even greater. This proximity creates a distortion of the management incentives, since wildfire managers prioritize the protection of private properties, at the expenses of wildfire prevention practices in other wild areas. The effects of climate change, which reduce the fuel moisture levels, together with the continuing significant housing growth create an urgent need to understand and manage fire risk in these areas. The trends show that WUI is expected to grow in the future, which makes its exposure to fire even more critical for governments at all levels.
Now more than ever, the promotion of effective adaptation and fire prevention strategies will be crucial to lessen the danger of wildfires. Fire prevention and forest regulations requires an active commitment and strict enforcement from governments at different levels. Therefore, this study aims to understand if and how policy-makers' incentives and commitments to promote sustainable forest management and wildfire regulations and policies change around election periods, showing the presence of political cycles, and along the international borders. Specifically, this research will investigate whether the incentives of politicians change before and after the election periods and across the political borders, analysing the wildfire occurrence. The research will empirically analyse the relationship among election, property rights, national and international borders, and wildfire occurrence. More specifically, the study is going to deal with the following questions:
Do politicians' re-election incentives affect wildfire occurrences?
Are fires more likely on State, Federal or private wildlands?
Do we obtain similar wildfire outcomes with both a Republican and a Democrat candidate running for re-election?
Do we experience similar wildfire occurrence at the international/federal borders?