All fired up: The inseparability of nature and culture in disaster risk management

In this chapter, I argue that the separation of nature from culture, and more specifically natural heritage from cultural heritage, is futile and unnecessary in the work of disaster risk reduction and management since both are intimately entwined in the histories, heritages, lives, and identities of local, regional, and national places and communities. I use the example of wildfire to illustrate this argument, in part because of the prevalence of bushfire in Australia, my home country. I emphasise the ways in which fire is both natural and cultural and, therefore, that disaster risk management connected with fire needs to consider the ways in which both domains are entangled. I find that, in the context of disaster risk reduction, neither the terms hazard nor risk are useful where they are applied in ways that distinguish between nature and culture, natural and cultural heritage, tangible and intangible heritage.