On January 7, the Stanford Social Innovation Review happened to publish an article about the increasing threat of wildfires. Co-authored by representatives from 17 organizations that focus on environmental threats and other factors involved in wildfire — organizations spanning philanthropy, government, science and business — the article outlined the problem’s international scope and proposed a range of avenues for study to better understand and mitigate its destructive impact on lives and property.
The very same day the article appeared, flames erupted in the Pacific Palisades and Altadena communities in Los Angeles. Driven by high winds, the firestorm consumed entire neighborhoods in minutes. In the days that followed, the fires spread, while other fires broke out across L.A. and Southern California.
By the time the flames died down, thousands of homes and other structures had burned to their foundations, while nearly 200,000 people were under evacuation orders. A recent report attributed 29 deaths to the fires. Some estimates put the financial toll of the fires upward of $50 billion.
Shocking as the L.A. fires were, they couldn’t have been a big surprise to the people who wrote the SSIR article — people whose job it is to think about the problem of wildfire. Drawing on recent years of data, the authors had stated: “The science is consistent and clear: Extreme wildfires have more than doubled in both frequency and magnitude over the past two decades, and this trend is expected to continue.”
Who’s working on wildfire-related policy and research?
When it comes to disasters such as wildfire, philanthropy has multiple roles to play, including, of course, providing funds for immediate relief and for rebuilding, as IP’s Wendy Paris wrote during the first frightening days of the Los Angeles conflagrations. And as Solidaire Network’s Rajasvini Bhansali argued in a recent IP op-ed, funders should also think about backing local power-building to strengthen community resilience, especially in underserved neighborhoods.
When the ash settles, policymakers have to consider how to live in a world where fire will always be a fact. There are a number of nonprofits working on wildfire topics, ranging from policy to research. Megafire Action, for example, is a nonprofit focused on enacting federal and state policy to lessen the fire threat. But effective policy needs to be rooted in science, and there’s much work to be done when it comes to understanding the factors that contribute to wildfire, as well as the changing behavior of fire, and how technologies like AI and satellite data can provide information to help people respond to fire effectively. One example of a science-oriented wildfire nonprofit is the Western Fire and Forest Resilience Collaborative, a research organization enabling multidisciplinary study of fires and forest ecosystems.
On the funding side, fire is finally attracting new philanthropic backing. Google.org, for example, has supported the development of new sensors for wildfire monitoring. And as we’ve written previously, perhaps the leading philanthropic funder in the wildfire space is the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, whose Wildfire Resilience Initiative is focusing on the problem of extreme fire in the western parts of North America. So far, it has made nearly $57 million in grants out of an initial budget authorization of $110 million; up to $200 million total funding is planned beyond the first six-year phase of the initiative.
Related Inside Philanthropy Resources:
For Subscribers Only
What kinds of wildfire research can philanthropy support?
The Moore Foundation’s focus is not all on technological or scientific solutions, according to Genevieve Biggs, program director of the Wildfire Resilience Initiative, but it’s an important aspect. While fire has always been a natural and even necessary part of forest ecology, decades of fire suppression combined with a hotter, drier climate has upped the risk of extreme fire. “For us, the long-term vision is having ecologically beneficial fire be the dominant contributor to what we see every year — in other words, more good fire and less bad fire,” Biggs said.
Moore’s grantmaking for wildfire science includes support for researchers like UC Berkeley engineer Michael Gollner, who leads the Berkeley Fire Research Lab. Moore has also supported the development of XyloPlan, a new company startup that uses data-driven modeling technology to assess fire risk and resilience for specific communities.
In general, more research support is needed to develop technology and science to understand how wildfires behave, methods to predict where and when fires will occur, and how building materials and design can make structures more fire resistant. Some of these topics, discussed by the authors of the SSIR article and others, include:
- Development of new fire detection technology to rapidly spot emerging fires and enable faster response during the critical early phase of newly sparked fires.
- Development of satellite-based fire detection, interpreted by AI systems to forecast fire risk.
- Research to understand how fire moves in different mediums, such as between vegetation and structures.
Funders need to grow the pie for wildfire support as climate threats escalate
While wildfire has always been a part of the natural world, climate change has altered the game entirely, experts say, and is driving the rise in its frequency, size and severity. “Wildfire is just one of the risk factors that we focus on, but it is in many ways the one which seems to be advancing the most rapidly,” said John Nordgren, managing director of the Climate Resilience Fund. “It’s far outpacing the ways in which sea level rise, or inland flooding or heat island issues are manifesting.”
To help philanthropic funders learn about wildfire and how they can best support research and other efforts, the Climate Resilience Fund has been helping to host the Wildfire Resilience Funders network. Representatives from approximately 80 organizations — around 180 individuals — regularly connect through the network, which conducts monthly meetings, bringing in scientists, and experts from NGOs and private companies to share information and resources. “We want to put members together who are interested in finding ways to collaborate and leverage each other’s resources and work together. It’s about learning and action,” Nordgren said. Interested funders are invited to join, he added.
None of this is to say that funders should redirect their funding from relief into research. “One of the things that I always try to underscore about the importance of upstream interventions for science and technology is to absolutely acknowledge the importance of philanthropy focused on disaster relief, recovery and emergency response,” said Biggs at the Moore Foundation. “What we are actually advocating is that the overall pie needs to increase. We need people to join us in developing these upstream solutions.”
A problem with the scale and impact of wildfire goes beyond the dollars and capabilities of philanthropy to address fully — remember that $50 billion figure for the L.A. fires? Dealing with fire will require the combined abilities of philanthropy, the academic and research community, local and national government agencies, the private sector and venture capital. But philanthropy is well situated to drive the kind of collaboration between these disparate groups that is most desperately needed.
