Modelling adaptation strategies for Swedish forestry under climate and global change
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Date
03/07/2017Author
Blanco González, Víctor
Metadata
Abstract
Adaptation is necessary to cope with, or take advantage of, the effects of climate change on
socio-ecological systems. This is especially important in the forestry sector, which is sensitive
to the ecological and economic impacts of climate change, and where the adaptive decisions
of owners play out over long periods of time. These decisions are subject to experienced and
expected impacts, and depend upon the temporal interactions of a range of individual and
institutional actors. Knowledge of, and responses to, climate change are therefore very
important if forestry is to cope with, or take advantage of, the effects of climate change over
longer timescales.
It is important to understand the role of human behaviour and decision-making processes in
the study of complex socio-ecological systems and modelling is a method that can support
experiments to advance this understanding. This study is based on the development of
CRAFTY-Sweden; an agent-based model that allows the exploration of Swedish land-use
dynamics and adaptation to climate change through scenario analysis. In CRAFTY-Sweden,
forest and farmland owners make land use and management decisions according to their
objectives, management preferences and capabilities. As a result of their management and
location characteristics they are able to provide ecosystem services. To explore future
change, quantitative scenarios were used that considered both socio-economic development
pathways and climatic change. Simulations were run under the different scenarios for the
period 2010-2100, for the whole of Sweden. Furthermore, because institutions (i.e.
organisations) also influence socio-ecological systems through their actions and interactions
between them and with land owners and the environment, a conceptual model of
institutional actions applied to socio-ecological systems was developed. The application of
this conceptual model was explored through a model of institutions that can act, interact and
adapt to environmental change in attempting to affect ecosystem service provision within a
simple forestry governance system.
I found that forestry in the future will likely be unable to meet societal demands for forest
services solely on the basis of autonomous adaptation. A northward expansion of agriculture
and especially of forestry proved positive for both sectors to adapt to changing conditions,
under several scenarios, given the substantial land availability and the improved
environmental conditions for plant growth. Legacy effects of past land-use change can have
a great impact on future land-use change and adaptation processes, especially in forestry.
Also, greater competition for land may lead to shorter forest rotation times. Socio-economic
change and land owner behavioural differences may have a larger impact on owner
competitiveness, land-use change and ecosystem service provision than climate-driven
changes in land productivity. Different owner objectives and behaviour resulted in different
levels of ecosystem service provision. Also, particular forest types were differently suitable
for adaptation depending on the sets of objectives under which they were managed. Owners
implementing particular management strategies can be differently competitive under
different future scenarios, and the suitability of such strategies for adaptation is not a static,
inherent characteristic of a system. Instead, it evolves in response to changing contexts that
include both the external global change drivers and the internal dynamics of agent
interactions. Additionally, institutional conceptual models as presented here can support
better understanding of the key institutional decision-making dynamics and their
consequences, endogenously, flexibly across different socio-ecological systems. Finally,
study limitations, future research and the policy relevance of findings are discussed.