Introduction
We Cannot Separate Forests and Climate Change
Thank you for checking out this Forest Future inaugural post. To set the stage though, we are going to shift our attention away from forests and to climate change.
When we think about climate change and its impacts, we might imagine major hurricanes, floods, wildfires, deadly heat waves, and droughts. Climate scientists remind us that climate change does not cause these things, but makes them more frequent, more intense, more extensive, or longer-lasting.
I’ve been a reader and occasional contributor to the scientific research on climate change over the past three decades. If I had to point to a single study that affected my thinking on climate change the most, I would point to a 2019 paper led by Professor Petra Tschakert that delved into the lived experience of climate change impacts. This climate impact study was rare in that it did not attempt to quantify ecological or economic losses. Instead, it explored various dimensions of intangible climate change damages—how extreme weather affects our psychological well-being, sense of identity and safety, physical health, social ties, freedom and autonomy, and dignity.
For decades, I would read new studies as they were published. I might, for example, read about the accelerating rate of ice mass loss in Greenland with a sense of alarm, and intellectually grapple with predictions about the timing of tipping points and rapid sea level rise. Dr. Tschakert’s paper hit me differently, because it is not future-looking speculation. We come face to face with people’s lived experience of climate impacts. Some of the voices of those affected by catastrophic flooding continue to haunt me.
“They are saying, ‘I’ll take you for one night.’ I had visions of having to carry my belongings round every bloody different night because no one, nobody will take you. I was becoming homeless, there was nowhere else to go”
The whole family has fallen apart so many times since then ... the toll it’s taken on my family, my husband especially, myself and my children, it’s just been horrendous”
“[There is] this awful sense of menacing foreboding … every time there’s heavy rain”
“It takes your security away, your confidence in what should be a safe environment. Your home should be a safe, comfortable haven for you but it isn’t any more.
A few months after reading this study, I knew I needed to do something more. I left a 20-year career as a university professor, teaching about forest conservation and climate change, to start a new career in forest conservation and climate change mitigation. This article was just one of several catalysts prompting my mid-career change, but a profound one that I continue to re-read from time to time.
Forest Future is about how our forests are changing and how the way we manage forests needs to change in the coming years and decades. I’ll explore how climate change and forests interact, how forests might be managed to better respond to growing environmental stressors, and how the carbon capturing power of forests can be harnessed to slow the pace of climate change.
The planet is warming, and our last best hope for halting climate change is decarbonizing our energy economy. Natural climate solutions—managing natural systems to reduce or absorb greenhouse gas emissions—can help reduce the rate of warming we will experience. My hope and expectation is that our forests of tomorrow serve as a line of defense, making it less likely that we experience the climate-related traumas so many of us have already experienced.