Abstract
Information helps decision makers to address and to decide about environmental problems. In the context of climate change adaptation, often knowledge is missing on how the available information from impact models affects the decision-making process. The main aim of this study was to explore the extent of ambiguity and how new climate change information influenced decision of forest planners. We investigated changes in decisions of planners about forestry actions representing species choice and forest tourism and expiry dates of these actions leading to environmental constraints in the provision of ecosystem services. Forest planners evaluated expiry dates using four forest ecosystem services: forest production, stand yield class, sequestered carbon, and potential tourism. Data were collected during workshops with eleven forest planners from three forest districts in Scotland. Presented climate change information modified the understanding and frames of planners about forestry actions assessed with accompanying expiry dates. Changes in the frames of planners often result in both earlier and later expiry dates. Ambiguity of planners was found to be dependent on diversity in frames and difficulty in evaluating multiple ecosystem services. These findings imply that due to ambiguity forest planners might find it hard to choose climate change adaptation measures and researchers can struggle to convince planners with new research findings.
Highlights
Editor: Elena Bennett.Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.Climate change will have an impact on both socio-economic and environmental systems, but whether or not, and how exactly, society should adapt is still a discussion in many public and research debates (Adger et al 2009; IPCC 2007, 2014)
If the planners perceived no ambiguity about specifying expiry dates for forestry actions, we would expect the same expiry dates without and with the new climate change information
This study of ambiguity in forest planners’ decision-making—in the context of climate change adaptation—found changes in frames about expiry dates for forestry actions. These changes were due to the new information resulting in a shift of expiry dates and in alternations of expiry dates
Summary
Editor: Elena Bennett.Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10113-015-0827-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.Climate change will have an impact on both socio-economic and environmental systems, but whether or not, and how exactly, society should adapt is still a discussion in many public and research debates (Adger et al 2009; IPCC 2007, 2014). Climate change uncertainty influences the decision makers’ perceptions of climate change-related risks, as was the case for forest planners (Petr et al 2014a). Decision makers managing ecosystems, such as forests, will have to decide which suitable climate change adaptation measures to apply (Lindner et al 2010). The factors influencing their decisions in applying adaptation measures are, for example, climate change risk perceptions (Etkin and Ho 2007; Petr et al 2014a), beliefs about climate change (Blennow and Persson 2009), and the framing of climate change as a problem (Dewulf 2013; Morton et al 2011). Knowledge is still missing on how does new climate change information modifies a decision maker’s understanding and a decision about delivery of ecosystem services
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