Climate Change and Decision-Making Under Uncertainty

Abstract

This paper highlights the main risks and uncertainties associated with climate change in forest management. The overarching challenge is the deep uncertainty about the future direction of changes in climate denoted by representative concentration pathways (RCPs). Moreover, climate change poses new sources of risk from frequent, more intensive, and even novel disturbances in forest ecosystems. Adaptation strategies have been developed to guarantee resistance of forests to climate change and impacts, but they are mostly valid for a restricted set of climate outcomes in the future. Therefore, alternative decision-making approaches should be found to overcome the deep uncertainty about future climate development and adapt forests to future environmental conditions. We propose two decision-making approaches; portfolio diversification and robust decisionmaking (RDM) to solve both problems. Portfolio management is an established concept in forest utilization and requires diversification of forest structures by e.g., admixing new species, or applying different sets of silvicultural interventions. Robust decision-making is a unique approach to deal with the deep uncertainty in general, but has rarely been applied to forest management. Recent adaptations of RDM to risk management under climate change provide a good basis for application in forestry. We outline the details of RDM to this end with an example, and highly recommend its application. Finally, a consensus among politicians on a climate target, e.g., Paris agreement, may diminish the deep uncertainty about the degree of climatic change at the end of the century. However, actions pathways, i.e., scenarios to meet the climate target would stay deeply uncertain for long.

Pertinence of reactive, active, and robust adaptation strategies in forest management under climate change

“…2, the uncertainty is so high that risk-averse decision-makers are very unlikely to choose BAU over a robust strategy. Yousefpour and Hanewinkel (2016) propose an application of robust decision-making approaches for planning the species composition of valuable stands in central Europe under deep climate uncertainty. Their result recommends selecting Scots pine (P. sylvestris) because its average economic outcomes under three different climate change scenarios outperform beech (Fagus sylvatica) and Norway spruce (Picea abies) which are optimal under specific climate change scenarios.…”

Catastrophic Climate Change and Forest Tipping Points: Blind Spots in International Politics and Policy

“…There is a substantial level of uncertainty regarding both the forests' responses to Global Policy (2018) Catastrophic Climate Change and Forest Tipping Points future climatic and atmospheric changes and anthropogenic disturbances (Lugo, 2014). Schou et al (2015) and Yousefpour and Hanewinkel (2016) drew attention to, in addition to the lack of knowledge about cause and effect in complex planetary systems, uncertainty in forestry also being related to uncertainty among politicians about efforts to reach agreements on GHG emissions or about specific pathways to achieve Paris Agreement targets. This political uncertainty makes it even more difficult for decision-makers to manage forests, and it is one of the most important and still unresolved problems regarding the protection of humanity's crucial biomes.…”

Tree Species Selection in the Face of Drought Risk—Uncertainty in Forest Planning

“…Moreover, in some special cases adaptive planning may be independent from climate uncertainty and equates to robust decision making, provided the decision maker is aware of the determining factors (e.g., [103][104][105]). …”