Research

INTRODUCTION

The summer 2023 wildfire in Alexandroupolis, Greece, near the Turkish border, was the largest recorded in the European Union (EU) by area burned (EFFIS 2024). This fire was not a solitary event; although summer wildfires are typical in Greece, the country has experienced a series of disastrous wildfires over the last two decades, particularly in the summers of 2007, 2018, 2021, and 2023 (EFFIS 2024). Wildfire is a growing concern globally, with climate change increasing the frequency and intensity of fires (Cunningham et al. 2024). The Mediterranean region is highly affected by this trend as climate change exacerbates hot and dry summer conditions (Ruffault et al. 2020, Senande-Rivera et al. 2022). Among eastern Mediterranean countries, Greece has both the largest area burned relative to the size of the country and the highest rate of fatalities per area burned (Molina-Terrén et al. 2019). Unfortunately, Greece continues to struggle with wildfire preparation and response (though this is a problem shared by many other countries). A recent article in Wildfire Magazine gave a damning assessment of the lack of focus on fire mitigation (or proactive actions taken to reduce the severity and negative impacts of fire such as clearing brush) and uncoordinated response to the summer’s fires, stating, “There do not seem to be any doubts about the firefighting doctrine and the failure of the one-sided emphasis on suppression. Little is understood and planned regarding the requirement for a co-ordinated effort to improve the resilience of the agricultural and forestry landscapes” (Xanthopoulos et al. 2023). These authors and others (Tsimitakis 2023) have called for clear-eyed and proactive adaptations to the longer, hotter wildfire seasons caused by climate change.

Adaptation to climate change impacts aims to reduce vulnerability and increase resilience of communities to new or larger environmental hazards (Smit and Wandel 2006). McWethy et al. (2019), in a perspective on wildfire resilience, encourage land managers and policy makers to take adaptive and even transformative approaches to increase fire resilience, especially when existing systems are insufficient to address the problem and historical conditions are unlikely to return. Adaptation decisions are made by individuals, communities, and government, influenced by interconnected historical, social, and biophysical dynamics, with consequences for the common good at all levels. Adaptations can be reactive (sometimes called “coping”), generally maintaining social-political status quo, or proactive, which often requires structural changes to address underlying causes of vulnerability (Klein et al. 2003). The effectiveness of adaptations depends on numerous factors including community acceptance, institutional change, microeconomics and market trends, and environmental response (O’Brien and Leichenko 2003, Owen 2020). Understanding why and how human communities adapt to an environmental hazard like wildfire requires social science research on individual and governmental action in addition to assessment of the biophysical hazard (McCaffrey 2015).

The concept of social capital, or the norms and networks that enable collective action (Putnam 2000, Adger 2003), is a useful lens through which to understand adaptation processes. Studies of social capital find that bonding social capital (or reciprocal family and community ties between people) and linking social capital (or ties with people external to one’s community; defined further below) may increase resilience to environmental hazards (Adger 2003, Pelling and High 2005). Within wildfire research, social capital has been associated with a higher likelihood of individual fire mitigation actions and support for collaborative planning (Bihari and Ryan 2012, Prior and Eriksen 2013, Dickinson et al. 2015), while social fragmentation can impede collective action on wildfires (Paveglio et al. 2019). Social capital has been studied extensively in the context of environmental hazards like wildfire, but most research focuses on its role in response and recovery, with less attention paid to how social capital affects vulnerability or adaptation prior to a hazard event (Meyer 2018). Furthermore, studies of social capital must contend with politics (Szreter 2002), which play an oversize role in wildfire narratives in Greece (Skouras and Christodoulakis 2014, Hovardas 2015). Politics can undermine the benefits of social capital by enacting political exclusion and corruption that limit certain groups’ access to power and resources (Roque et al. 2021). To explore the role of social capital in wildfire mitigation and response, we conducted and analyzed interviews with rural residents and officials in local and national government in three case study regions of southern Greece. The aim of this paper is to understand the roles of bonding and linking social capital in wildfire mitigation compared to fire response in this region. Our qualitative approach offers the opportunity to illuminate the context and nuance of social conditions driving, mitigating, or enabling adaptation to this environmental hazard (Bolin and Kurtz 2018). Our findings illuminate a complex relationship between social capital and wildfire adaptation. We find that overall, social capital, a critical variable in environmental hazard adaptation, has been eroded by depopulation of rural areas beginning in the mid-20th century and government management characterized by shifts in leadership and a culture of clientelism (or political quid-pro-quo). Bonding social capital influences villagers’ participation in volunteer fire brigades. However, bonding social capital is not sufficient to support proactive mitigation for increasingly severe wildfires. Linking social capital, specifically between villagers and government officials, is often undermined by lack of trust and the failure of outsiders (in the case of the Hellenic Fire Service) to utilize local knowledge.

LITERATURE REVIEW

In this study, we seek to understand the role of social capital in how rural communities in Greece adapt to more frequent and intense wildfires. We draw on Putnam’s conception of social capital, which comprises three components: social norms and obligations, trust and other social values, and social networks (as expressed through voluntary associations; Putnam et al. 1994, Putnam 2000). Effective wildfire governance requires shared norms regarding fuel reduction and fire response (Steelman 2016). Studies have found that messages leveraging social norms can increase wildfire preparedness (Howe et al. 2018, McCaffrey et al. 2020), though these messages may be ineffective outside close-knit communities (Dickinson et al. 2020) Social trust is required to anticipate that others will follow social norms. Trust here is generally conceived of as “general trust,” in which individuals do something for the common good because they trust their action will be rewarded through the positive maintenance of those shared norms (Fukuyama 1995). Trust among community members plays an important role in disaster preparation (Reininger et al. 2013). Trust in agencies and their staff is also frequently documented relative to effective fire governance (Bodin et al. 2019, Ghasemi et al. 2020). Finally, in Putnam et al.’s conceptualization (1994), participation in civic associations develops and reinforces norms and trust, where associations discourage defections from expected actions, foster reciprocal norms, and facilitate communication. Civic associations for fire management exist around the globe, and the Mediterranean region has a history of volunteer fire brigades (Górriz-Mifsud et al. 2019). These three components of social capital are difficult to identify and analyze separately, as Putnam (2000:137) puts it, “causal arrows among civic involvement, reciprocity, honesty, and social trust are as tangled as well-tossed spaghetti.”

Three types of social capital are commonly defined in analysis (Woolcock 2001). Bonding social capital is characterized by strong social ties between dense local networks, often family, friends, and homogeneous neighbors. Bridging social capital is characterized by weak ties between people of a similar status, for instance links with people in neighboring villages. Finally, linking social capital typically describes weak but reciprocal links to people outside a village with more political or economic power, such as between villagers and national government officials. Bonding social capital is especially important to provide people coping support and solidarity during times of crisis (Jordan 2015), yet it does not necessarily drive proactive adaptation because these local social norms may create insular communities with a bias toward preserving the status quo (Newman and Dale 2005). When coupled with bonding social capital, bridging and linking social ties can increase local resilience to hazards through additional support and access to resources (Granovetter 1973). In Greece, social capital is often found to be low compared to other European countries, specifically lower levels of trust in political parties and lower levels of active participation in formal social networks (Jones et al. 2008, Papanikolaou et al. 2012). Scholars including Danopoulos (2015) and Bitros (2013) argue that the long history of clientelism and lack of transparency and accountability that undermine democratic institutions in Greece are to blame for overall low social capital.

Interactions with the state influence social capital and adaptations. When people have high levels of both social and political trust, they are more likely to believe in the efficacy of climate change interventions, take individual action, and comply with state policy requirements (Lorenzoni et al. 2007). Indeed, where social capital is documented in Greece, higher bonding and linking social capital has been associated with support for climate adaptation policies (Jones et al. 2014). When political trust is low, bonding social capital and informal collective action can sometimes be stronger to compensate; however, cross-boundary governance may be less effective (Adger 2003, Ostrom 2009). Because wildfire is a cross-boundary hazard, trust, cooperation, and resource-sharing between communities, with government, and between governmental entities is crucial for both mitigation and response (Nowell et al. 2022).

Unfortunately, cooperation is challenging when social capital is undermined by undemocratic or corrupt applications of political power (Szreter 2002, Roque et al. 2021). Studies of social capital around the world demonstrate how developing or leveraging social capital can be undermined by politics of colonialism (White and Smucker 1998), racism (Lopez and Stack 2001), and other forms of corruption (Woolcock 2001). In Greece, wildfire narratives and government responses are deeply political. Hovardas (2015) documented how the national government blamed arsonists to distract the public from larger failures in fire mitigation and management. Skouras and Chistodoulakis (2014) found that, over the period from 1955 to 2007, the area burnt by fires was significantly larger during election years compared to non-election years. They reasoned that wildfires may benefit incumbents in election years because they can favor special interests by selectively granting building permits in the fire’s aftermath. Because of, in part, documented misgovernance, public perception research has historically found low levels of trust in government by Greek residents (Papanikolaou et al. 2012). Greek political parties tend to rely on clientelist linkages more as compared to other Mediterranean countries, like Portugal (Afonso et al. 2015), and these conditions persist even under tight fiscal conditions (Trantidis and Tsagkroni 2017). Clientelism is sometimes associated with the so-called “dark side” of social capital in which ties between certain individuals concentrate power and favor at the expense of others (Putzel 1997), which could lead to uneven access to resources for fire mitigation and response.

BACKGROUND AND METHODS

Study context

The present study is part of a larger project focused on the connections between agricultural land use change and fire risk in southern Greece. Southern Greece is highly agricultural and accounts for greater than 66% of olive production in the country (Hellenic Statistical Authority 2024), though tourism is also an important industry (Kasimis and Papadopoulos 2013). Wildfires are common in the summer because of hot and dry climatic conditions and fire-prone coniferous forest in the mountains and evergreen shrublands in lower elevation areas (EFFIS 2024). Recent landcover changes across the Mediterranean region, including agricultural abandonment and expansion, are raising concerns that these changes are exacerbating wildfire activity. For example, the expansion of unmaintained and abandoned agricultural land can aid wildfire spread by increasing fuel continuity and load (Moreira et al. 2011, Pausas and Fernández-Muñoz 2012). Conversely, maintained (e.g., tilled, mowed, or grazed) agricultural land may reduce wildfire spread by decreasing fuel continuity and load (Nunes et al. 2005, Xanthopoulos et al. 2006, Palaiologou et al. 2018, Oliveira and Zêzere 2020).

Rural Greek landcover and land use change has a long history tied to population trends. Significant rural depopulation in Greece occurred in the 1950s to 1970s as a result of political unrest and the junta regime that prompted over a million Greek people to leave (Papadopoulos and Baltas 2024). Although about half returned, most moved to urban areas. Other reasons for rural population declines include low fertility rates and inadequate employment opportunities in rural areas (Papadopoulos and Baltas 2024). Remotely sensed data that allow detailed analysis of land use change are only available starting in the 1980s. Sparks et al. (2022), as part of this project, used remote sensing to assess agricultural landcover change in our study region and found that annual crop extent decreased from 1986 to 2002 and then increased again (though not returning to previous levels) between 2009 and 2020. The authors posited annual arable (or annual cropland) land loss could be attributed to cereal crop subsidy reductions in the European Union (EU) Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). The replanting of these crops aligned with the economic crisis and associated austerity measures beginning in 2009, when job losses in urban areas were greater than those in rural areas, and many unemployed people joined the agricultural sector (Kasimis and Papadopoulos 2013, Benessaiah and Eakin 2021). Perennial crops (e.g., olives and grapes), on the other hand, increased linearly in the region starting in the early 1990s, attributable to factors including global demand for olive oil and increased CAP subsidies (Scheidel and Krausmann 2011). Beyond policy and economic influences, the complexity of agricultural land management is associated with highly fluid movement of people between rural and urban areas in Greece compared to northern Europe (Gkartzios et al. 2020). People who move from rural to urban regions often keep ownership of their land because part of the family remains in the village and can check up on relatives’ holdings (Koutsou et al. 2011, Benessaiah 2021, Benessaiah and Chan 2023), though management may not be as intensive as is needed to reduce fire risk.

Our three study areas are located in the northwest Peloponnese peninsula (area A), the southeast Peloponnese (area B), and central Crete (area C) in southern Greece (Fig. 1). We chose these three areas because their differences in historical landcover change and fire regimes provide a good opportunity for comparing community preparation and response to wildfires. The three areas are predominantly rural, but each has a primary population center (Pyrgos, Sparti, and Rethymno in areas A, B, and C, respectively). There are 84 villages/towns with a median population of 54 (range: 7–291) in area A, 39 villages/towns with a median population of 189 (range: 8–3067) in area B, and 180 villages/towns with a median population of 111 (range: 8–35,763) in area C (Table A1.2).

All three study areas have experienced substantial landcover change in the last few decades (~1986–2020), with conversion of shrubland to agriculture being one of the primary landcover changes in terms of total area. Over this time period, permanent agriculture area (mainly olives) increased by 24.6% in area A, 51.1% in area B, and 19.7% in area C (Table A1.3; Sparks et al. 2022). Arable cropland area decreased in area A (-8.2%) and increased in areas B (37.4%) and C (114.2%) and shrubland decreased in all study areas (-24.1%, -17.7%, and -23.6% for study areas A, B, and C, respectively). Although there is evidence that maintained agricultural land (e.g., tilled, mowed, or grazed) reduces wildfire spread and intensity by decreasing fuel continuity and load (Nunes et al. 2005, Xanthopoulos et al. 2006, Oliveira and Zêzere 2020), unmaintained or abandoned agricultural land and olive orchards are associated with greater fire activity and risk (Moreira et al. 2011, Pausas and Fernández-Muñoz 2012, Sparks et al. 2024). In addition to agricultural land change, densification of the remaining shrubland (i.e., accumulation of biomass resulting in greater fuel loads) was observed over the same time period for study areas A and B, increasing the fire exposure risk to human communities and economically important crops like olives (Sparks et al. 2024).

Fire regime characteristics derived from the NASA Earth observation record (2001–2023; Table A1.4) are more similar between study areas A and B than study area C (Table A1.4), likely owing to climatological differences that result in higher biomass accumulation and fuel continuity on the Peloponnese peninsula versus Crete (Feidas et al. 2014). Fires in study areas A and B are more intense, in terms of radiative energy release (fire radiative power, FRP, units: Megawatts km^-2), on average (mean FRP: 78-97 MW km^-2) than study area C (mean FRP: 50 MW km^-2) and are typically larger in size (mean size 3–19 kha) than area C (mean size 0.6 kha). On the other hand, wildfires in areas A and B occur less frequently (coefficient of variation, CV, of annual burned area: 3.2–4.3) than study area C (CV of annual burned area: 1.7; Table A1.4).

Multiple entities in the Greek government are involved in wildfire management. The Ministry of Climate Crisis and Civil Protection was established in Greece in September 2021 to provide and support a coordinated resource system where several institutions and actors at different scales (e.g., national, regional, and local authorities; civil protection volunteers) work together to address, among others, wildfires. Wildfire management is overseen by the Hellenic Fire Service, under the Ministry of Climate Crisis and Civil Protection, based in Athens (FIRE-RES 2024). Wildfire suppression is a collaborative effort involving the Fire Service, Air Force, Army, and local volunteer firefighters (sometimes called fire brigades). The Forest Service handles wildfire mitigation through fuel management, or clearing brush and other understory growth that can burn, in natural areas, and municipal authorities are responsible for fuel reduction in and around settlements. Although the Forest Service historically managed wildfire response as well as mitigation, response authority and funding were shifted to the Fire Service in 1998 in the aftermath of several large wildfire events whose management was criticized. However, as Morehouse et al. (2011) document, the transfer of responsibility was done without sufficient wildfire training for the Fire Service and created a rift between the Fire and Forest Services, inhibiting necessary coordination. Indeed, the average area burned has stayed the same following the transition (Xanthopoulos and Nikolov 2019), leading to frustration with the Fire Service. Critiques of the Fire Service include a focus on reducing fuel load near roads and communities rather than taking a larger regional approach (Palaiologou et al. 2021). People also perceive poor coordination between the Fire Service and other agencies (Palaiologou et al. 2021) and dislike the increasing tendency to evacuate rural areas (Xanthopoulos et al. 2023). Because Greece has experienced a higher death toll due to wildfires than other European countries, Civil Protection has been aggressive with evacuation orders since 2018 fires in East Attica caused 102 fatalities (Xanthopoulos et al. 2022).

Unclear land tenure is another challenge for wildfire mitigation and response. The Forest Cadastre of Greece has long been incomplete. Lack of clear tenure may incentivize speculators to set arson fires on forested land in order to stake a claim (Karanikola et al. 2011). Today there is a process under way where citizens can file an objection for corrections to the local Forest Service, so 90% of Forest Maps have now been validated (Ministry of Digital Governance 2023). Additionally, the government passed legislation in 2024 increasing penalties for arson, and the law has already been applied to people who allegedly started fires (Smith 2024) .

The establishment of the Ministry of Climate Crisis and Civil Protection, the near-completion of the Forest Maps, and changes in legislation targeting arson demonstrate recent governmental action on wildfires in Greece. Despite these initiatives, state policy for fire management remains largely focused on fire suppression at the expense of fire mitigation (Tsimitakis 2023). Unfortunately, fire suppression is one of the conditions that spur mega-fires, along with climate change and previous disturbance (Stephens et al. 2014).

Data and analysis

We recruited participants purposively by region and occupation, starting with officials of the municipal government and the Forest and Fire Service offices located in each region. (In Greece, municipalities are fairly large regions, similar to counties in the United States, with multiple villages located within each.) Government officials were purposively selected based on their position as a regional leader and their familiarity with wildfire. We used snowball sampling for farmer contacts, asking these officials for names of farmers in villages and then using additional chain referrals from farmers to recruit respondents. We conducted interviews in three villages in each of the three study areas (nine villages total). We included farmers who had fire experience and continued until we reached theoretical saturation regarding views of land and fire governance. Most interviews were conducted in-person by one or both of the study’s lead authors in spring 2022. Four interviews with government staff were conducted online. Three of our interviews were with groups, two with five farmers each, and one with three forest rangers. We used the same interview protocol for group interviews, but in the groups, the interviewer ensured that each interviewee was able to provide direct answers to interview questions and prompted all participants to express their views during general conversation.

We completed 33 interviews (4 of which were group interviews, for a total of 44 people), with 13 interviews (n = 18) in the northwest Peloponnese, eight interviews (n = 12) in the southeast Peloponnese, and 12 interviews (n = 14) in central Crete (Table 1; Table A1.1). The slightly lower sample size for area B in the southeast Peloponnese was caused by earlier saturation of information as it was the second location in which we conducted interviews after the northwest (area A). Interviews were conducted with staff or elected officials of municipal governments, the Greek Forest Service, the Greek Fire Service, and farmers. People in municipal government held roles including municipal mayor, vice mayor, and agronomist. Farmers primarily grew olives and grapes on their land, while several had goats and one had bees. Most farmers were also involved in volunteer leadership positions in their village; most had volunteered with fire brigades and six were current presidents of village councils. Some government officials also had family land planted with grapes or olives.

We asked interview participants about experiences with and perceived drivers of wildfire, and perceptions of the roles of local and governmental action in fire management and mitigation (see Interview Guides in Appendix 1). Our study complied with Institutional Review Board protocol # 019227 for ethical treatment of human subjects from the University of Idaho. Interview participants were given unique IDs to maintain confidentiality. To gain additional context, we also attended several community meetings and dinners while visiting rural villages, and we reviewed relevant news and policy documents to understand fire context.

Interviews were conducted in Greek, recorded and transcribed, and then translated into English. Qualitative coding and data analysis was conducted using the NVivo 14 software. We constructed our codebook with deductive codes based on our interview guide. Theoretical codes interpreted transcripts based on social capital theory, focused on the role of social capital in land and fire management at different levels (i.e., bonding, bridging, and linking social capital). We also allowed for inductive emergent codes to be added in the first round of coding. We analyzed individual and group interviews in the same way. Below, when we state that a theme came up in a certain number of interviews, we mean at least one person mentioned it in a group interview. We acknowledge that group interviews are different than the one-on-one interview. Group dynamics can sometimes allow extroverted or more vocal participants to dominate the conversation, which may not fully capture the diversity of views present in the wider community (Parker and Tritter 2006). However, in the case of the two farmer groups and one forester group, the conversations brought up new ideas and discussions that we may not have otherwise elicited and allowed for the involvement of multiple interested participants who wished to join during the short time we had to collect data in each community.

Three people on the research team coded transcripts. We conducted a formal intercoder reliability check, where three transcripts (10% of total) were coded in parallel by the three team members conducting coding and a kappa coefficient was calculated to assess their proportion of agreement on code assignment. We achieved an agreement level of 0.73, indicating substantial agreement between all coders (O’Connor and Joffe 2020). Coders discussed areas of disagreement that informed the remainder of the transcript coding process. We subsequently held weekly discussions until the coding was completed to discuss coding decisions and ensure continued alignment between the three team members.

Our data and analyses cannot lead to generalizable claims regarding fire management or climate adaptation. Although we attempted to recruit representative members of villages and government offices, we did not take a random sample. Second, the particular social, governance, and biophysical context of southern Greece is different from other places researchers might investigate these issues. Instead, we seek to offer transferrable findings, because lessons learned from people in this region may be theoretically relevant in other contexts (Tracy 2019).

RESULTS

All interviewees were familiar with wildfire mitigation and management practices, and all except two municipal officials had personal experiences with fire. Most participants had experience with multiple wildfires, with many citing the 1995, 2007, and 2021 events . These fires contributed to significant loss in rural communities including large losses of olive trees in regions where olive oil has been the leading source of revenue. Though all rural residents interviewed have remained on their land, people in five interviews mentioned other community members abandoning land after experiencing multiple fires because of mounting economic burdens and loss of productivity. A farmer on Crete told us: “Many have returned the first and second time and have replanted their vineyards and fields. But after the third fire, they gave up and did not attempt it again; they abandoned [their land]” (FARM23). Another Cretan farmer explained many of his friends’ and families’ feelings leading to abandoning olive groves: “It is a product for which you must battle once a year to harvest olives and grind them into oil. When you realize that your efforts from one instant to the next have been wasted ... this endeavor will become unprofitable at some point. Because of the risk posed by the regular fires, people gradually abandoned both the olive groves and the village” (FARM26). The frequent fires were described as exhausting and demoralizing by many respondents.

We describe how social capital within (and, to a certain extent, between) communities affects land management to prevent fires and fire response, and describe perceptions of the role of different government entities in fire mitigation and response: municipalities, the Ministry of Rural Development and Food, the Fire Service, and the Forest Service. We focus primarily on bonding and linking social capital because bridging social capital (links between villages) was not brought up frequently and was closely associated with bonding social capital. We present our summary findings regarding bonding and linking social capital influencing fire mitigation and fire response in Table 2.

Bonding social capital and wildfire mitigation

Interviewees described increasingly isolated and shrinking village communities. Migration of rural residents to cities was mentioned in 12 interviews as a driver of reduced land management leading to fuel accumulation. Perceived reasons for migration and abandoned agricultural lands mentioned included job opportunities, a disinterest in the rural lifestyle, increasingly challenging farming conditions, and contested land ownership. Prior to this migration trend, interviewees described the importance of a critical mass of residents for managing the land through livestock grazing, active understory trimming in olive groves, and forest management for the tree resin industry. A municipal mayor in the northwest Peloponnese described what he observed as an abandonment of his rural area:

Many have abandoned our villages to move to the city ... where formerly there were 100 and 150 households, there are now five and ten. You understand what that means: preventing people from cultivating the region .., and there is no forest management ... The production process has ended and there is a problem (MUN11).

Many remaining residents are aging and cannot effectively maintain their properties. Although a number of people who have migrated to the city retain their olive groves and vineyards, they do not manage them actively, returning only once or twice per year for pruning, harvesting, and understory clearing, which may increase fire risk to nearby communities and olive groves because of greater surface fuel continuity and load (Sparks et al. 2024). Some rely on family members still living in the village to check on their land, but local people can only oversee so many acres. Conversely, two interviewees had permanently moved back to their home region because of the economic crisis and a desire to return to family land.

In more than half of our interviews with farmers (including those holding village and municipal government positions), people described low levels of local social norms to encourage fire-preventing land management practices such as brush clearing around olive trees, cleaning ditches, and maintaining rural roads. Multiple people said reciprocal land management norms existed in the past but have eroded over time. An agronomist in a southwest Peloponnese village told us the following:

Today, we were discussing with the village president the fact that producers do not clean the ditches. Formerly, this was inconceivable. Now he is attempting to obtain the funds necessary to clean the ditches himself ... Unfortunately, ... certain forces have educated the producer not to interact with the one next to him. Under the unusual phrase “mind your own business, do not interfere,” we socially distance ourselves from one other (MUN16).

The last point above refers in part to policies such as the EU’s CAP incentives introduced after Greece joined the European Union in 1981. New subsidies and other support programs may have increased linking social capital but decreased bonding social capital as farmers relied less on mutual aid.

We heard very few descriptions of local cooperation to prevent wildfires in a positive light, but the exceptions were in small villages with a critical mass of farmers living locally. A Cretan farmer described the advantage of living in a small village:

It is one thing to be from a village with an electoral list of 50 people and quite another to be from a village with an electoral list of 1000 people. The smaller the settlement, the greater freedom of action there is, in the sense that good deeds are possible. You do not utilize the clientelist system because the government does not care about you (FARM24).

This perspective implies bonding social capital within a small village is crucial to its survival, given the lack of material resources and connections to higher levels of power. It also explicitly recognizes the clientelist system, which tends to benefit areas with larger voting rolls.

Another case on Crete suggests that strong bonding social capital may not be sufficient to address severe fire risks without external help. A young back-to-the-land farmer who has created a successful wine business on Crete has worked hard to increase community cohesion and proactive land management in her town (FARM 21). She endeavored to gain the trust of local families when she arrived, tailoring her grape-buying practices specifically to local customs. She and others have formed a growers’ association that recommends best practices for vineyards, including constructing a water storage tank and maintaining certain groundcovers. However, these practices have not been sufficient to withstand fire spreading because of very high winds. Furthermore, at a community meeting we attended, the growers’ association complained that they could not afford crucial equipment to reduce brush (namely a wood chipper) without external funding.

Bonding social capital and wildfire response

Compared to proactive mitigation through land management, bonding social capital was much higher when it came to responding to an active fire. Subjects in 16 interviews shared positive perceptions of resident and volunteer group responses to fire. Individual farmers living in rural areas described volunteering time, water, and equipment to fight fire on their own and their neighbors’ land. People also described working with neighboring communities to contain fire spread. For instance, a farmer and village president in the northwest Peloponnese described how he and other volunteers responded to fires in the area. Similar to other interviewees who volunteered locally, this participant described a norm of mutual protection in the absence of sufficient outside help:

We help. We may even go to the neighboring village. The village adjacent to us may also come to our aid. We saved an area of the village from fire ... We’re not asking for payment. Just appreciation regarding what is happening at some villages (FARM30).

Volunteer fire brigades (or civil protection volunteer groups) exist in most communities and they have the advantages of knowing local roads better than outsiders and mobilizing quickly. Although interviewees mentioned feelings of social obligation, most respondents attributed the high level of local involvement in fire response to self-protective motivations and a recognition that collective action is often the only way to prevent damage without sufficient government response. A municipal agronomist on Crete summarized: “In reality, it’s their properties that are in jeopardy and must be preserved, regardless of whether or not the community is in danger” (MUN4).

Local response was constrained by multiple factors, including insufficient fuel and equipment because of a lack of funding or municipal mismanagement, increasing reliance on the national fire service over local response, and top-down evacuation orders that leave villages with no one to fight fires. Although most participants wanted more government involvement in firefighting, participants in two interviews (MUN1 and GOV31) observed lower participation among villagers, or a reduced norm of mutual protection because of the increased formalization of fire response in recent decades. We heard about municipal leaders occasionally undermining grassroots villager fire response. For instance, in an interview (FARM 23) and subsequent community meeting in a village on Crete, grape and olive growers described how their collective effort to write a fire response and evacuation plan was stymied by municipal officials because he wanted to take credit for a different plan he had written without local input. Additionally, residents in the same municipality in Crete and a municipality in the Northwest Peloponnese (MUN11 and FARM24) described politically driven diversions of municipal firefighting resources away from rural areas and toward more populated political or tourist centers. Evacuations, mentioned negatively in 10 interviews, were particularly frustrating to residents and local government officials. Regarding 2021 evacuations in the Northwest Peloponnese, one local official asked, “How many buildings and villages would have been preserved and how many villages could be occupied at this time if the population had stayed?” (MUN3). As noted above, the national government has been aggressive with evacuation orders since 2018.

Linking (community-government) social capital and wildfire mitigation

Interviewees described some level of cooperation between villagers and municipal government, but there was an overall lack of compliance with municipal regulations. Private landowners are responsible for maintaining their land to prevent brush buildup and other hazardous conditions. Municipalities monitor private land management and send an invoice to the landowner of the property if clearing is not done. However, land abandonment, lack of trust, and clientelism complicate this task. Six interviewees ascribed lack of compliance to economic hardships and living away from one’s land (though several others simply thought people were lazy). Lack of trust in municipal authorities also played a role in lack of compliance. We heard about municipalities failing to clear brush from vacant lots and not maintaining rural roads in 10 interviews. As described above, there is sometimes a tension between village and municipal leadership, with villagers across our study regions reporting instances of elected municipal leaders neglecting rural villages, or even undermining their governance decisions. Interestingly, some villagers appear just as invested in corrupt governance. For instance, a Municipal Vice Mayor in the Pelopponese said villagers threatened to withhold their votes when he tried to ascribe responsibility for understory management: “Client politics between voters and politicians ... has brought us to this point. When I approach a village and say, ‘Sir, you will pay such-and-such a sum for the plot,’ the first thing I hear is, ‘I will not vote again’” (MUN 11).

National agencies with influence over land management include the Forest Service and the Ministry of Rural Development and Food. Rural Development, which distributes funds from the European Union by means of Rural Development Plans, has the potential to assist farmers to stay on their lands and actively manage them with best practices. However, the organization was characterized negatively in all six interviews where it was mentioned. Our interviewees did not trust this process largely because they perceived benefits distribution to be unfair: people in four interviews talked about landowners who do not actively cultivate their land benefiting from support programs. For instance, a Peloponnese farmer mentioned a local official who directed the money toward his own operation and a Cretan farmer described lack of oversight in funding distribution to shepherds. Independent research affirms our participants’ perceptions that agricultural payments are unevenly distributed, with disproportionate funding going to large farms in Greece (Karanikolas et al. 2024).

The Forest Service is tasked with most public forest land management. The Forest Service has little control over private lands, so their jurisdiction only goes so far in reducing fire threats across a landscape. Despite this limited jurisdiction, perceptions of this organization were favorable, in part because many foresters have been embedded in local communities for their entire careers. Also in contrast to rural development, the Forest Service has not traditionally distributed funds to individuals, thereby avoiding concerns about allocative fairness. One forester we interviewed described the importance of dialog in their role:

I’m ... going out and speaking with people who value what I say. At least within the context of the dialogue, they get my purpose and what I do. You must constantly keep your ears open to hear what they have to say, hence pay attention to their feedback (GOV31).

Concerns about the Forest Service were largely focused on the organization’s lack of funding to adequately carry out fire mitigation because of the reorganization of the Forest and Fire services in the late 1990s. There is also concern about staffing of the Service—some foresters were reassigned to the Fire Service during the reorganization, and others are on the verge of retirement—leading to a loss of experience and local trust in specific long-serving individuals.

Linking social capital and wildfire response

Southern Greek villages have a history of collective action for fire response, including volunteer fire brigades. As described above, local action is primarily constrained by lack of funding for equipment and shortages of residents who can respond (either because they moved to the city or because they were evacuated). Because fires have grown in number and severity, villagers rely on municipal and national governments for help. We heard mixed opinions of the Fire Service, the national entity tasked with fire response. People liked the Fire Service when they coordinated with villagers, but did not think this happened enough. The majority of interviewees had experienced a lack of effective coordination between the Fire Service and local people, which reduced trust in the agency. In six interviews, people ascribed ineffective response to a lack of embeddedness within communities. One forester in the southeast Peloponnese said,

Aid frequently arrived from Athens and Tripoli to put out a fire in Sparta. Numerous times, firefighters and resources were transported to us from Fthiotida [north of the Peloponnese]. Even having a GPS in Fthiotida, what kind of knowledge does this firefighter have? (GOV26).

A farmer in the northwest Pelopponese and president of the village council expressed his frustration that the Fire Service failed to tap into local knowledge, particularly when it came to road access to fight fires: “When the Fire Service and firefighters from Corinth come here, it is difficult for them to navigate through the village roads” (FARM30). At the same time, people described too many different entities tasked with fire response without a clear chain of command. Multiple interviewees believed the lack of effective coordination could be traced back to the splitting of the Fire Service from the Forest Service, which severed local relationships. Furthermore, many village participants’ perceptions of the Fire Service were framed negatively because of their dislike of evacuation orders.

DISCUSSION

Because global wildfire regimes are altered by changing climate, ignitions, and landcover or land use, it is crucial to understand the social determinants and barriers to fire adaptation. Our study of three case areas in southern Greece investigated the role of social capital and perceptions of the role of government in how individuals and communities reduce fuels and respond to fires. Interviewees described more shared purpose and collective action in fire response compared to proactive fire mitigation activities. Collective action for fire mitigation was perceived as most feasible in small, tightly bonded villages, but it was hindered by rural depopulation and changing social norms. Uneven distribution of funds to farmers and a clientelist culture have led to low levels of trust between villagers and municipal leaders, which has reduced the effectiveness of local government to incentivize or enforce fire adaptation. Among national agencies, farmer and local government participants largely trusted the Forest Service because foresters have long lived and worked within communities. However, this organization lost its primary role in fire response in 1998, when the mandate for fire suppression was transferred to the Fire Service. Village farmers largely perceived the Fire Service to be uncoordinated and failing to utilize local knowledge.

Low levels of adaptive landscape management to prevent detrimental impacts of fire in southern Greece is cause for concern because studies in the Mediterranean region have shown that maintaining agricultural land can reduce wildfire activity by decreasing fuel continuity and load (Nunes et al. 2005, Xanthopoulos et al. 2006, Zirogiannis 2009, Oliveira and Zêzere 2020). A companion study focused on the same areas as this study used wildfire simulation modeling to understand the impact of agricultural land maintenance on the fire exposure of, and risk to, rural human settlements and economically important crops such as European olive (Sparks et al. 2024). Although European olive is a fire adapted plant that can resprout following fire (Catry et al. 2010; Pausas, 2016 blog, https://jgpausas.blogs.uv.es/?s=olive+tree), resprouting and replanted olive can take over a decade to develop a commercially significant olive crop (Zirogiannis 2009), which represents a significant economic loss to the landowner. This study found that community exposure and modeled olive tree loss (i.e., fire intensity sufficient for olive tree topkill) increased with an increasing proportion of unmaintained agricultural land. All of our three study areas saw increases in olive grove land area since 1986, with area B showing the greatest increase, and all three areas have experienced significant wildfire events; although the northwest Peloponnese had the largest burned area, the southwest Peloponnese had the most intense fires, and Crete had the most frequent fires. We did not find significant differences across study areas in terms of participants’ perceptions of social capital or governance in relation to wildfire, likely because they share so many similarities in fire experiences, national demographic trends, and national government wildfire management.

People in our study area have experienced repeated wildfires over the last decades. Many of these fires are caused and/or exacerbated by humans, because of climate change, arson, landscape change and mismanagement, referred to as “technological disasters” (Silei 2014). Technological disasters give rise to loss of trust in institutions and a loss of ontological security (Straub et al. 2020), which describes having confidence in people, systems, and routines (Giddens 1991, Wakefield and Elliott 2000). Diminishment of trust came across in our interviews when people talked about changes in social capital over time, exacerbated by population loss in villages. In Greece, clientelist politics can further undermine people’s trust in institutions. For instance, villagers across our study areas perceived elected municipal leaders neglecting or undermining fire response. Analysis of wildfire and election cycles by Skouras and Christodoulakis (2014) supports our participants’ views; they find increases in wildfires in election years, which they suggest is due to a combination of politicians paying less attention while campaigning and favoring special interests who receive building permits following a fire. Low trust in governmental institutions also helps explain why people are so unhappy about evacuation orders as residents would prefer to fight fires themselves because they don’t trust the government to save their property. Furthermore, evacuation orders can signal a lack of trust by government in citizens. Although lack of trust in government is not a new condition in Greece, the advent of more frequent and larger fires means that a disconnection between the government and residents can be deadly. Greek institutions for fire management and response may benefit from mechanisms that insulate them from politics, for instance, transparent rules for funding allocation and programs administered by non-elected bureaucrats (Sanderson et al. 2022).

Despite historic trends in trust and misgovernance, social capital was clearly present in our study area. We heard descriptions of local volunteerism and expectations of reciprocity, though some participants thought these had declined over time. This finding aligns with past literature where social cohesion is associated with greater preparedness and response for disasters generally (Norris et al. 2008) and fires specifically (McCaffrey 2015). In our study, we heard consistently about bonding and linking social capital associated with fire response. However, social norms, reciprocal ties, and linking ties between villagers and government officials were only sometimes described in association with fire mitigation actions. It could be that social capital is easier to call upon in times of immediate crisis relative to preparation periods, and the type of bond likely matters. Bonding social capital is most often employed to react to or cope with a disaster after the event has occurred (Osbahr et al. 2010). Jia et al. (2020), studying organizational resilience to an earthquake, found that linking capital increased the likelihood of proactive measures while bonding social capital only improved reactive resilience. Our interviewees also more often described leveraging linking social capital for fire response compared to fire mitigation. It may be that the hierarchical structure of fire response creates a clearer pathway for communication between local and non-local people, relative to fire mitigation, even when that structure is perceived as ineffective.

Local collective action for wildfire was best on display in the volunteer fire brigades composed of villagers committed to fire response, though they spent little time on proactive mitigation activities that could reduce the detrimental impacts of fire. Volunteer activities were hampered by a lack of regional coordination and low access to external funds. Gorriz-Mifsud et al. (2019), in a review of volunteer fire associations in the Mediterranean region, found that compared to Catalonia and Portugal, the Greek volunteer brigades spent significantly more time on suppression activities relative to preparedness activities. Part of this difference may be explained by funding: 80% of volunteer group funding came from public sources in Catalonia and Portugal, whereas only 50% came from public sources in Greece. Also, Greece has no umbrella organization for its volunteer brigades, unlike in Portugal and Catalonia, which can help provide training and support for otherwise isolated village groups. Greece could consider the example of neighboring regions and provide funding and support infrastructure for communication among volunteer fire brigades to encourage proactive fire adaptation. Additionally, the national government could foster relationship-building between the Fire Service and local fire brigades to facilitate local knowledge transfer. Although recent efforts have been made to encourage coordination between national agencies and lower levels of government, these top-down efforts have failed to substitute for linking social capital between villagers and officials that take time to build (Bodin et al. 2019).

CONCLUSION

In this article we highlight the opportunities and limits of social capital to facilitate adaptation to wildfire. We found that bonding social capital played an important role in local fire response, while linking social capital was generally weak. The overall level of social capital was often not sufficient to drive proactive adaptations to fire. One promising arena of collective action is village volunteer fire brigades. Models in other Mediterranean countries with more state resources demonstrate that volunteer fire brigades can take on proactive fire mitigation (Gorriz-Mifsud et al. 2019). Other countries offer models of relationship building between local residents and national fire agencies that can build on the knowledge and capacity of local volunteers. For instance, Rangeland Fire Protection Associations in the Western United States provide a formal mechanism for ranchers and other landowners to respond to fires, provide local knowledge to government agencies, and receive funding and equipment (Abrams et al. 2018). National investment in volunteer fire brigades, including an umbrella organization, with purview over wildfire mitigation and response, has the potential to increase wildfire adaptive capacity.

Recent national surveys in Greece have indicated that residents and landowners are willing to pay for fire risk reduction activities including agency-led land management and education campaigns (Burton et al. 2024). Although social capital and trust in government may be low in some places, these results indicate an appetite for government intervention among the general population. Increased engagement by government through direct management and outreach, tailored to local conditions, could in turn open opportunities to build relationships and enhance linking social capital in service of adaptation to changing fire activity. For instance, municipal and federal governments could coordinate to create fire breaks along roads in rural areas or conduct outreach to absentee landowners about the importance of fire mitigation activities, such as understory clearing in olive groves.

Our work points to numerous avenues for future research. First, we could not give specific attention to the role of bridging social capital or the larger regional dynamics of relationships across villages. Understanding these bridging relationships would provide crucial information to support an umbrella organization of village fire brigades and other regional coordination efforts. Second, many other countries exhibit clientelism and low accountability in the context of disaster preparedness and response (Sanderson et al. 2022). Comparative studies could better illuminate how these dynamics affect social capital and what opportunities exist to reestablish trust and build relationships to increase future resilience. Finally, additional historical and longitudinal work is needed to reveal factors that lead to social capital change over time, and its effects on wildfire adaptation.

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