“Climate change is the most compelling global issue of this and future centuries,” says David Cleaves, the former climate change advisor to the U.S. Forest Service. “The relationships between forests and people are being profoundly affected by the changing climate.”
The changing climate is introducing new challenges to natural resource management, intensifying and complicating traditional threats and presenting an increasing array of public policy issues and conflicts, adds Cleaves, who was at his alma mater MSU on October 3 to give a talk titled, “Forests, people and climate change: a new “no-normal” world – Explain “no-normal.”
“These changes are not likely to settle down into some new normal in this century, says Cleaves. “The evidence is mounting that we certainly have a changing climate, and that changing climate is changing more rapidly than it ever has. So trying to keep up with it and get ahead of it presents a whole set of challenges.”
Professional resource managers will develop their careers and make contributions in a context where there will be no normal. Leaders and managers will increasingly be faced with climate change effects, emerging policies, political controversies, a rapidly developing science base and a workforce concerned and educated in sustainability and climate change issues.
The next 10 years will be a critical period in defining relationships between forests and people, and how professionals in many areas help adapt those relationships in the most positive ways.
“As the forests change in response to the changing climate, the options that are available for people to use and enjoy the forests are changing, too.”
To understand the scope of the issue, our national forests include tropical rain forests as well as conifer forests “from Hawaii to Maine”. Given such diversity, tackling the climate change threat is a challenge.
“There are things we can do to respond to a changing climate,” says Cleaves. “Partnerships, science and priorities will give us some solutions that give us hope about a changing climate.
“I don’t like discussions about climate change being all gloom and doom. There may even be opportunities in a changing climate. Uncertainty isn’t necessarily good or bad until we frame it as good or bad. As we move forward we’re going to have to use our creativity.”
Greening of the Great Lakes airs inside MSU Today Sunday afternoons at 4:00 on AM 870.