Climate change through natural phenomena is already having dramatic effects on forests, natural resources and people's livelihoods. We know, during the past century, the Earth has warmed by approximately 0.7°C. Unless we take measures to address climate change, temperatures could rise even more rapidly, by between 1.4°C and 5.8°C, during the next 100 years. Poor people in developing countries are particularly exposed to the effects of climate change, not least because they often live and work in the very areas where natural disasters most often occur: flood plains, drought, mountainsides and deltas.
We face two major challenges. We must reduce the vulnerability of those sectors which are most sensitive to climate variability, namely forests, energy and water resources. And we must “climate proof” future development activities. Most countries have already defined adaptation plans or projects, but few are considering forests in adaptation. We need to include forests in climate change adaptation policies for two reasons:
• because they are vulnerable;
• because they play a key role in reducing the vulnerability of society to losses from climate change.
Our twin goals are to ensure that forestry policy and practice adequately address the need to protect forest-dependent livelihoods from adverse climate change and to ensure that adaptation strategies adequately incorporate improved forest management. Within 5 years, CIFOR's research will have informed the UN's Framework Convention on Climate Change on how it can adopt a set of tested methods for forest-related vulnerability assessments, set criteria for adaptive management of forests. We also will influence forest-related adaptation policies in at least five countries.
I've been thinking about adaptation in forests, particularly in forests where long-lived trees are a key objective of management, such as forests managed for biodiversity. My conclusion is that in these circumstances adaptation is NOT a particularly helpful concept for us. Why? Simply because of the difficulty of answering the question "adapting to what?".
Here's an example. Part of my job relates to semi-natural pine forests in Scotland, where we need at least some of the trees to reach ages of 300-400 years. So unless someone can convincingly tell me what changes will occur in the growing environment of these trees over 3-400 years, how can I plan any adaptation? How can we reach any useful conclusions about the way we should modify our forests to 'pre-adapt' them to future stresses, when we don't know what those stresses will be - particularly the interaction of pests/pathogens with climate change?
I'm coming to the conclusion that in the absence of knowing what to adapt to , the best thing we can do is add redundancy to our forests - principally by making them more diverse, so that we do not rely on any single species to provide the ecosystem functions we want to protect. This is a conclusion that relates specifically to the growing of big old trees, where the rate of environmental change is faster than the required lifespan of the individuals we're growing.
Climate change through natural phenomena is already having dramatic effects on forests, natural resources and people's livelihoods. We know, during the past century, the Earth has warmed by approximately 0.7°C. Unless we take measures to address climate change, temperatures could rise even more rapidly, by between 1.4°C and 5.8°C, during the next 100 years. Poor people in developing countries are particularly exposed to the effects of climate change, not least because they often live and work in the very areas where natural disasters most often occur: flood plains, drought, mountainsides and deltas.
We face two major challenges. We must reduce the vulnerability of those sectors which are most sensitive to climate variability, namely forests, energy and water resources. And we must “climate proof” future development activities. Most countries have already defined adaptation plans or projects, but few are considering forests in adaptation. We need to include forests in climate change adaptation policies for two reasons:
• because they are vulnerable;
• because they play a key role in reducing the vulnerability of society to losses from climate change.
Our twin goals are to ensure that forestry policy and practice adequately address the need to protect forest-dependent livelihoods from adverse climate change and to ensure that adaptation strategies adequately incorporate improved forest management. Within 5 years, CIFOR's research will have informed the UN's Framework Convention on Climate Change on how it can adopt a set of tested methods for forest-related vulnerability assessments, set criteria for adaptive management of forests. We also will influence forest-related adaptation policies in at least five countries
Forests occur in a range of ecosystems, therefore management is diverse and environmentally-dependent. I just heard a talk by Dr. Anne Nolan (Oregan State Univ.), titled "Vulnerable Mountains in the face of climate change". She discusses the impact on forest vulnerability, in the Pacific Northwest, when seasons shift and snow abundance changes. This is particularly important when thinking about fires and pest abundance. Forest management planning is often many years out, 50 plus years is typical. Adaptive management will thus need to be highly informed. I would think there is a much higher risk in making some detrimental mistakes in management of forests in particular.
