In the last few years, extreme wildfires have risen to international prominence, with widespread media coverage and political attention triggered by devastating fires in many places of the world, e.g. France, Greece, Italy, Brazil (the Amazon), and California. Such fires get out of control and devastate large areas causing unprecedented losses of biodiversity, emitting huge quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, causing human losses and smoke-related diseases, and ravaging entire neighbourhoods, villages, or even towns. Climate change is among the key drivers of such wildfires. At the same time, wildfire regimes have been profoundly modified by direct (e.g. land-use change, fire suppression policies) and indirect (e.g. climate change) anthropogenic actions. Integrated Fire Management (IFM or sustainable fire management) has been identified by the international fire community as one of the key solutions to address the problem, requiring an interdisciplinary approach. IFM includes sets of actions aimed at reducing the extent and severity of undesired wildfires while maintaining (or improving) biodiversity, ecosystem services and human wellbeing. FIRE-ADAPT aims at addressing the full diversity of fire types and their different contexts by bringing together expertise from across regions from the Mediterranean Basin and Latin America for the purpose of improving our understanding of the role of IFM for wildfire prevention and for enhancing natural and cultural ecosystem services. The consortium has set up six Study Hubs in Mediterranean countries (Spain, France, Italy) and Latin America (Brazil, Mexico, Argentina), to facilitate science-practitioner exchanges and to enhance collaborations and networking. The ultimate intention of FIRE-ADAPT is to contribute to improving knowledge on what practices of IFM can enhance carbon abatement and nature-based solution potential, as well as wildfire risk mitigation, in culturally just and meaningful ways.

The Covid-19 crisis has revealed the stark inequalities in UK society. Many vulnerable people have had more difficulty accessing food, so third-sector organisations have mobilised emergency food provision. They have also expanded community food-growing initiatives, which enhance participants' well-being, strengthen social cohesion, localise food provision and thus build future resilience. This project will investigate the expansion of community cultivation during the Covid- 19 crisis, its benefits, social barriers and means to overcome them, especially for more vulnerable marginalised social groups, with the aim to strengthen third-sector capacities for such inclusion. Through participatory digital story-telling, this project will work with third-sector partners in community cultivation to elicit participants' feelings, aspirations, social connections and multiple benefits from community food activities. This knowledge will identify the most effective strategies that have been deployed during the Covid-19 crisis, and devise ways to share and promote them. Thus the digital story-telling process has a dual purpose: a research method and a means to promote better practices through our third-sector partners. As a practical impact, food growing activities will strengthen their engagement with vulnerable marginalised people, thus helping to overcome inequalities. Based on the digital assets and research insights, the project will provide an open-access online capacity-building programme for community food programmes, so that they can outscale similar benefits around the country. This impacts will promote better mental health, well-being and better access to healthy food; they will also spread agri-food practices that enhance social resilience, and thus provide an alternative to the unhealthy, unsustainable agrifood system.