Wildfire has been an important process affecting the Earth's surface and atmosphere for over 350 million years and human societies have coexisted with fire since their emergence. Yet many consider wildfire as an accelerating problem, with widely held perceptions both in the media and scientific papers of increasing fire occurrence, severity and resulting losses. However, important exceptions aside, the quantitative evidence available does not support these perceived overall trends.

There is robust epidemiological and clinical evidence of the harmful effects of unemployment on psychological well-being, but the mechanisms through which this occurs is still strongly debated. In addition, there is even less evidence on the impact of underemployment on mental health. Using longitudinal data collected from a cohort of 20–24 years old, the present study examines a range of employed states and investigates the role of mastery, financial hardship and social support in the relationship between labour status and depression.

Living with fire is a challenge for human communities because they are influenced by socio-economic, political, ecological and climatic processes at various spatial and temporal scales. Over the course of 2 days, the authors discussed how communities could live with fire challenges at local, national and transnational scales. Exploiting our diverse, international and interdisciplinary expertise, we outline generalizable properties of fire-adaptive communities in varied settings where cultural knowledge of fire is rich and diverse.