Elsevier

Journal of Environmental Management

Volume 114, 15 January 2013, Pages 461-469
Journal of Environmental Management

Forest management under climatic and social uncertainty: Trade-offs between reducing climate change impacts and fostering adaptive capacity

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2012.09.028Get rights and content

Abstract

The unabated continuation of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and the lack of an international consensus on a stringent climate change mitigation policy underscore the importance of adaptation for coping with the all but inevitable changes in the climate system. Adaptation measures in forestry have particularly long lead times. A timely implementation is thus crucial for reducing the considerable climate vulnerability of forest ecosystems. However, since future environmental conditions as well as future societal demands on forests are inherently uncertain, a core requirement for adaptation is robustness to a wide variety of possible futures. Here we explicitly address the roles of climatic and social uncertainty in forest management, and tackle the question of robustness of adaptation measures in the context of multi-objective sustainable forest management (SFM). We used the Austrian Federal Forests (AFF) as a case study, and employed a comprehensive vulnerability assessment framework based on ecosystem modeling, multi-criteria decision analysis, and practitioner participation. We explicitly considered climate uncertainty by means of three climate change scenarios, and accounted for uncertainty in future social demands by means of three societal preference scenarios regarding SFM indicators. We found that the effects of climatic and social uncertainty on the projected performance of management were in the same order of magnitude, underlining the notion that climate change adaptation requires an integrated social-ecological perspective. Furthermore, our analysis of adaptation measures revealed considerable trade-offs between reducing adverse impacts of climate change and facilitating adaptive capacity. This finding implies that prioritization between these two general aims of adaptation is necessary in management planning, which we suggest can draw on uncertainty analysis: Where the variation induced by social-ecological uncertainty renders measures aiming to reduce climate change impacts statistically insignificant (i.e., for approximately one third of the investigated management units of the AFF case study), fostering adaptive capacity is suggested as the preferred pathway for adaptation. We conclude that climate change adaptation needs to balance between anticipating expected future conditions and building the capacity to address unknowns and surprises.

Highlights

► We address climatic and social uncertainty in climate change adaptation in forestry. ► Social uncertainty was found equally influential as climatic uncertainty. ► We also investigate the relationship between different goals of adaptation. ► Trade-offs exist between reducing climate impacts and fostering adaptive capacity. ► Uncertainty assessment can be used to balance these trade-offs in adaptation.

Introduction

Since anthropogenic climate change is all but inevitable (Solomon et al., 2009), adaptation options need to be developed alongside efforts to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. In general, climate change adaptation is an adjustment in natural or human systems which moderates harmful effects or exploits beneficial opportunities in response to actual or expected climatic stimuli or their effects (Parry et al., 2007). Stern (2006), for instance, showed that for vulnerable systems timely and well-designed adaptation measures are economically favorable over delayed or no adaptation. Particularly in forestry, where the potential for rapid autonomous adaptation is strongly limited by the longevity of trees, proactive adaptation strategies need to be timely implemented in order to sustain the provisioning of multiple ecosystem goods and services also under changing future conditions (Spiecker, 2003; Lindner, 2007). While a number of conceptual studies on adapting forest management to altered climate have been presented (e.g., Maciver and Wheaton, 2005; Ohlson et al., 2005; Spittlehouse, 2005; Bolte et al., 2009; Seppälä et al., 2009), recent surveys among policy makers and practitioners revealed large prevailing gaps between planned and implemented adaptation measures (e.g., Eastaugh et al., 2009; Kolström et al., 2011). Blennow and Persson (2009), for instance, demonstrated how the prevailing wide variety in personal beliefs about climate change influences decisions on adaptation of individual forest owners. Furthermore, a recent survey in Austria documented large differences in the implementation of adaptation measures between ownership categories (Maierhofer, 2010). A common denominator in these surveys is that strategic management decisions with regard to climate change adaptation – frequently associated with an investment of considerable intellectual, human and economic capital – need to explicitly address uncertainties in order to be adopted into practical forest management.

Addressing uncertainties is thus a central aspect in climate change adaptation. While the mere fact of a changing climate is virtually certain, the magnitude and regional exposure over strategic planning periods in forestry (i.e., ranging from several decades to 100 years and more) are subject to substantial uncertainty (see Solomon et al., 2007). Also, future demands of society on forests and sustainable forest management (SFM, sensu MCPFE, 2003) are uncertain. Recent examples show that societal preferences and values can change drastically within short time frames (relative to forest management cycles), radically altering the social environment for forest management (e.g., Johnson and Swanson, 2009). In general, large uncertainties about the future, both in terms of climate change and social demands (henceforward summarized as future uncertainty, which is one important source of uncertainty in ecosystem management besides, e.g., data uncertainty, model uncertainty etc.), have the potential to substantially hamper the decision making process. Hoogstra and Schanz (2008), for instance, showed that decision makers confronted with increasingly complex and uncertain situations tended to neglect uncertainties altogether in their considerations, and resorted to shortcuts and predefined decision patterns.

A major challenge for science supporting adaptation to climate change is thus to explicitly address future uncertainties (Millar et al., 2007; Ascough et al., 2008; Prato, 2008). Uncertainty from different climatic futures has been accounted for by means of scenario analysis in a number of previous studies (e.g., Lasch et al., 2005; Briceño-Elizondo et al., 2006; Garcia-Gonzalo et al., 2007; Nitschke and Innes, 2008; Seidl et al., 2008). Societal uncertainties have received less attention in the context of developing climate change adaptation strategies for forest management (but see Fürstenau et al., 2007; Keskitalo, 2008; Ogden and Innes, 2009). This focus on environmental processes in climate change adaptation is at odds with the recently emerging insight that an integrated view of social and ecological aspects is central to the sustainable stewardship of ecosystems under changing conditions (Tompkins and Adger, 2004; Chapin et al., 2009).

Using the Austrian Federal Forests as a study system within this conceptual frame of social-ecological systems, our specific objectives were twofold: First, we assessed the respective contributions of climatic and social uncertainty to the variation in projected future provisioning of forest ecosystem goods and services. Given the previous focus on climatic uncertainty our goal was to shed light on the roles and relative importance of uncertainties in the context of climate change adaptation in forestry. Adaptation may in general aim at (i) reducing adverse climate change impacts, and/or (ii) increasing the adaptive capacity of a system (see Millar et al., 2007; Lindner et al., 2010). The former results in specific actions, i.e., introducing measures to remedy expected negative climate change effects. The latter is a prime approach to dealing with uncertain futures, i.e., in planning situation where our understanding of future changes is limited (Bormann and Kiester, 2004; Tompkins and Adger, 2004). It can be hypothesized that trade-offs between tackling expected climate change impacts and increasing the adaptive capacity exist (Holling and Meffe, 1996; D'Amato et al., 2011). Our second objective was to quantitatively test this hypothesis by scrutinizing a wide variety of adaptation measures with regard to trade-offs between reducing impacts and increasing adaptive capacity. In combining uncertainty analysis and trade-off assessment our overall goal was to contribute a quantitative and operational approach to the challenge of developing balanced and robust climate change adaptation strategies in ecosystem management.

Section snippets

Study design

We start by giving an overview over the study design in general (Section 2.1), and describe the individual components of our study in more detail in the following sections (Sections 2.2 Assessment framework, 2.3 Austrian Federal Forests case study, 2.4 Analysis). To illustrate the role and effect of uncertainty in climate change adaptation we used an adaptation strategy (AMS) recently developed for the Austrian Federal Forests (AFF) as example (Seidl et al., 2011a). To quantitatively evaluate

Analysis of the variability introduced by uncertainty

For 97.5% of the study entities (managed under both strategies) sensitivity (i.e., the x dimension of the vulnerability surface) was significantly influenced by climatic uncertainty. Preference uncertainty had a slightly smaller effect on this vulnerability dimension, influencing 75.9% and 69.6% of the study entities significantly under BAU and AMS, respectively. The adaptation measures implemented in AMS reduced both the variance related to climatic uncertainty (−44.1%) as well as the variance

Discussion

Future uncertainty is a major issue in developing long-term forest management strategies, and needs to be taken into account explicitly in forest management decision support. Uncertainty management is a core component of a science-based approach to management planning (Bormann and Kiester, 2004; Ascough et al., 2008). Whereas uncertainty about future climate is increasingly acknowledged in studies evaluating potential forest management pathways (e.g., Lasch et al., 2005; Garcia-Gonzalo et al.,

Conclusions

Climate change adaptation strategies are urgently needed to prepare managed forest ecosystems around the world for a changing future. The adoption of science-based adaptation strategies into forest management practice will to a large extent depend on their ability to resolve, document, and reduce uncertainties associated with such strategic decisions. In this regard our findings highlight the importance of considering environmental and social uncertainties in adapting SFM to climate change,

Acknowledgments

This study was in part funded by the Österreichische Bundesforste AG and the Austrian Federal Ministry for Agriculture, Forestry, Environment and Water Management (grant LE.3.2.3/00009-IV/2/2006). We thank H.S.J. Zald and three anonymous reviewers for comments on an earlier version of the manuscript.

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