Assessing the potential for forest management practitioner participation in climate change adaptation

Published Date
Forest Ecology and Management
15 January 2016, Vol.360:388–399, doi:10.1016/j.foreco.2015.09.038
Special Section: Forest Management for Climate Change

• Author 

• Harry W. Nelson ^a,,
• Tim B. Williamson ^b
• Casey Macaulay ^c
• Colin Mahony ^d

• aFaculty of Forestry, University of British Columbia, Forest Sciences Centre 4609, 2424 Main Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 1Z4, Canada
• bNatural Resources Canada, Canadian Forest Service, Edmonton, Canada
• cAssociation of British Columbia Forest Professionals, Vancouver, Canada
• dUniversity of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

Received 20 July 2015. Revised 22 September 2015. Accepted 23 September 2015. Available online 23 October 2015. 

Highlights

• •
  Forest management practitioners have a fundamental role in adaptation.
• •
  Understanding manager perceptions of constraints supports adaptation policy.
• •
  Most forest managers support adaptation however, a significant minority do not.
• •
  Adaptation barriers include knowledge, mandates, resources, and institutions.
• •
  Assessment, planning, and monitoring need to incorporate climate change.

Abstract

The sensitivity of forests to local climate and the long time periods involved in forest management combine to result in conditions where forests and forest management are vulnerable to climate change. Minimizing the risks and impacts of climate change on forest management outcomes and reducing the vulnerability of forest management systems requires adaptation. Forest management system adaptation is a multi-scale incremental process that involves diverse actors collaborating to define issues, develop options, and implement solutions. Enabling adaptation may require revising assumptions (e.g., assumptions about stationary climate), upgrading formal and informal institutions (including mandates), re-engineering governance, addressing knowledge gaps and information management issues, and changing practices. Given the heightened uncertainty associated with climate change, adaptation also includes enhancing capacities, reducing risks through diversification, increasing flexibility, and enhancing resiliency by creating decision environments conducive to learning, foresight, knowledge integration, and adaptive management. Forest management practitioners have a fundamental role in identifying, evaluating, and implementing climate change adaptation measures. This study develops and applies a framework (derived from recent scholarship on adaptation) for assessing the perceptions of forest management practitioners about issues, challenges, and factors that they consider important relative to their potential to contribute to climate change adaptation. The framework draws from, and ties together various aspects of adaptation process including psychological factors, knowledge management, forest management capacity, institutions and governance, and the state of information methods that support forest management (i.e., planning, monitoring, and assessment). The framework is applied utilizing the results of surveys of forest practitioners in British Columbia, Canada. The application provides an opportunity to test concepts and to identify key barriers from a practitioner perspective. Proof of concept is tested by evaluating the extent to which respondents were able and willing to provide answers to survey questions. In general, responses were robust suggesting some understanding and recognition of the importance and validity of the underlying adaptation concepts by forest professionals. The results suggest that forest professionals have diverse viewpoints about climate change. The majority is concerned and support adaptation. However, a significant minority do not support modification of current forest management. Discourse, education, and engagement are called for. Other key factors that from the perspective of professionals may reduce participation potential include knowledge deficits, lack of mandate to adapt, limited resources for adaptation, institutional barriers, inadequate assessment, and persistence of planning and monitoring approaches that do not account for climate change.

Keywords

Climate change

Adaptation potential

Forest management practitioners

Adaptive capacity

Barriers

Perceptions

Awareness

Beliefs

Knowledge

Learning

Human capital

Institutions

Partnerships

Planning

Monitoring

Adaptive management

Assessment

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• ☆
  This article is part of a special section entitled “Forest Management for Climate Change”.

• ⁎ 
  Corresponding author.

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