This is the published version of a paper published in Global Environmental Change.
Citation for the original published paper (version of record):
Klapwijk, M J., Boberg, J., Bergh, J., Bishop, K., Björkman, C. et al. (2018)
Capturing complexity: Forests, decision-making and climate change mitigation action
Global Environmental Change, 52: 238-247
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2018.07.012
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Global Environmental Change
journal homepage:www.elsevier.com/locate/gloenvchaCapturing complexity: Forests, decision-making and climate change
mitigation action
M.J. Klapwijk
a,⁎, J. Boberg
b, J. Bergh
c, K. Bishop
d, C. Björkman
a, D. Ellison
e,l, A. Felton
f,
R. Lidskog
g, T. Lundmark
h, E.C.H. Keskitalo
i, J. Sonesson
j, A. Nordin
k, E.-M. Nordström
l,
J. Stenlid
b, E. Mårald
maSwedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Department of Ecology, Uppsala, Sweden
bSwedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Department of Forest Mycology and Pathology, Uppsala, Sweden cLinnaeus University, Department of Forestry and Wood Technology, Växsjö, Sweden
dSwedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Department of Aquatic Resources and Assessment, Uppsala, Sweden eEllison Consulting, Baar, Switzerland
fSwedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Southern Swedish Forest Research Centre, Alnarp, Sweden gÖrebro University, School of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences, Örebro, Sweden
hSwedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Department of Forest Ecology and Management, Umeå, Sweden iUmeå University, Department of Geography and Economic History, Umeå, Sweden
jSkogforsk, Uppsala, Sweden
kSwedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Department of Forest Genetics and Plant Physiology, Umeå, Sweden lSwedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Department of Forest Resource Management, Umeå, Sweden mUmeå University, Department of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies, Umeå, Sweden
A R T I C L E I N F O Keywords: Global change Socio-ecological system Forest industry Forestry Governance Adaptation A B S T R A C T
Managed forests can play an important role in climate change mitigation due to their capacity to sequester carbon. However, it has proven difficult to harness their full potential for climate change mitigation. Managed forests are often referred to as socio-ecological systems as the human dimension is an integral part of the system. When attempting to change systems that are influenced by factors such as collective knowledge, social orga-nization, understanding of the situation and values represented in society, initial intentions often shift due to the complexity of political, social and scientific interactions. Currently, the scientific literature is dispersed over the different factors related to the socio-ecological system. To examine the level of dispersion and to obtain a holistic view, we review climate change mitigation in the context of Swedish forest research. We introduce a heuristic framework to understand decision-making connected to climate change mitigation. We apply our framework to two themes which span different dimensions in the socio-ecological system: carbon accounting and bioenergy. A keyfinding in the literature was the perception that current uncertainties regarding the reliability of different methods of carbon accounting inhibits international agreement on the use of forests for climate change miti-gation. This feeds into a strategic obstacle affecting the willingness of individual countries to implement forest-related carbon emission reduction policies. Decisions on the utilization of forests for bioenergy are impeded by a lack of knowledge regarding the resultant biophysical and social consequences. This interacts negatively with the development of institutional incentives regarding the production of bioenergy using forest products. Normative disagreement about acceptable forest use further affects these scientific discussions and therefore is an over-arching influence on decision-making. With our framework, we capture this complexity and make ob-stacles to decision-making more transparent to enable their more effective resolution. We have identified the main research areas concerned with the use of managed forest in climate change mitigation and the obstacles that are connected to decision making.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2018.07.012
Received 2 November 2017; Received in revised form 21 July 2018; Accepted 26 July 2018
⁎Corresponding author at: Ulls väg 16, 75651, Uppsala, Box 7044, 75007, Sweden.
E-mail address:maartje.klapwijk@slu.se(M.J. Klapwijk).
Global Environmental Change 52 (2018) 238–247
0959-3780/ © 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/BY/4.0/).
1. Introduction 1.1. Background
Issues that involve forest management and climate change mitiga-tion span social and ecological spheres with temporal and spatial di-mensions, as well as academic disciplines and value systems. Managed forests are often referred to as socio-ecological systems, where the human-dimension is an integral part of the system (Berkes and Folke, 1998). Decisions related to the use and management of forest resources are, both directly and indirectly, influenced by factors such as collective knowledge, social organization, understanding of the situation and values represented in society (Folke et al., 2016). When attempting to change these types of multifaceted systems, initial intentions often shift due to the complexity of political, social and scientific interactions.
Forest management for the production of biomass affects CO2 con-centrations in the atmosphere through changes in carbon stocks in living biomass, soils and litter, as well as storage of carbon stocks in wood products. The use of forest materials to substitute for high‘CO2 cost’ products, for example concrete, reduces carbon emissions and improves the length of time that forest carbon is sequestered (Eriksson et al., 2011). In addition, the use of forest biomass for bio-energy production releases recently stored carbon into the atmosphere, but avoids the release of historic carbon from the burning of fossil fuels (Gustavsson et al., 2007). Substitution of fossil fuel-based products and energy can reduce the release of CO2into the atmosphere (Fares et al., 2015;Lundmark et al., 2014). The idea of using forest management to mitigate climate change was presented for thefirst time in the 1970s. Two decades later the large potential of forest management in climate change mitigation was emphasized and summarized in the assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The boreal forest, the focus of this article, accounts for more than one third of global forest carbon stocks (Bradshaw and Warkentin, 2015;Pan et al., 2011). Efforts are being made to incorporate these forests into climate policy frameworks, but progress has been slow.
Progressing from a general idea about the benefits of using forest management to mitigate climate change to realizing such ambitions in practice is far from straightforward. The IPCC has investigated what hinders the further use of forests in climate mitigation, and concluded that efforts to do so are, i) hindered by the complexity of interactions between the biophysical and social part of the socio-ecological system,
and ii) that effective use depends on the adaptive capacity, conditional states, complex interactions and limitations in both systems (Smith et al., 2014). Recognizing this complexity is one step toward facilitating the increased use of managed forest for climate mitigation, via the identification of key bottle-necks or ‘dead-locks’. Recognizing com-plexity will also allow for the identification of obstacles that are caused by interactions between what seems to be a social or biophysical hinder in the social-ecological system. In this study, we propose a systems-approach (Fischer et al., 2015) to identify decision-making pathways to move the socio-ecological system forward.
1.1.1. Aim and purpose
The aim of this paper is to explore a range of interacting obstacles which inhibit the increased use of forests as a climate change mitigation tool. To capture this, we present an heuristic framework to increase our understanding of the type of socio-ecological issues that influence ef-forts to establish possible pathways to increase the contribution of forests to climate change mitigation goals. We define components of decision-making based on previous sociological research, where Lidskog and Löfmarck (2015)have captured complexity related to de-cision-making by dividing uncertainty into four different dimensions. For our purpose, we extend these dimensions to identify the state of four components of decision-making– cognitive, strategic, institutional and normative.Lidskog and Löfmarck (2015) argue that this multi-dimensional approach to uncertainty makes it possible to identify, se-parate and understand different challenges, thus increasing the poten-tial for finding strategies to address them. Importantly, these components of decision-making do not act in isolation, but also interact; the cognitive component describes the knowledge that is needed to make a decision, the institutional component describes the political environment in which the decision is being made, the strategic com-ponent feeds in to the long-term consequences of a decision and the normative components are the values and attitudes that underlie a decision.
In order to help visualize these interactions, we connect the four components of decision-making to the key obstacles within each com-ponent which may restrict or prevent a system from moving from the ‘current’ state to a ‘target’ state using a conceptual figure (Fig. 1). Hence, by combining the four components of decision-making and the conceptualfigure, the heuristic framework first enhances the potential to grasp complex socio-ecological relations regarding forests and
Fig. 1. The conceptualfigure based on the underlying assumption that when the model is applied change is desired. The boxes represent the four categories of obstacles but translated to their desired state. By using the four categories of obstacles, the pathway to the‘target state’ can be identified and evaluated. In certain situations, the result might be that the solution is‘too costly’ or is not feasible, leading to a re-assessment of the initial goal.
climate mitigation, and second to identify strategic pathways to move the system in a desired direction.
As a foundation for our assessment of the current state regarding the debate around managed forests and climate mitigation, we conducted a systematic review of the relevant literature, and used the framework to examine how different components influence decision-making and implementation at multiple scales. This review, in which we focused on Swedish research perspectives, enabled us to identify key obstacles within the separate components that perpetuate the main discontinuity between recognition of the importance of forests in climate change mitigation and acting to increase their contribution. We use our con-ceptualfigure to formulate the current and desired state of obstacles and discuss potential interactions between the different components of socio-ecological decision-making system. Our heuristic framework and the connected conceptualfigure aims to capture the complexity of the socio-ecological issues involved in a legible manner and assists the identification of pathways to aid effective decision-making.
1.2. An heuristic framework
We apply the proposed heuristic framework to the global role of managed forests in climate change mitigation negotiations and further extend it to the implementation of climate change strategies. To start we will describe thefirst element of the framework, which can be used to identify the type and properties of obstacles within each component (Cognitive, Institutional, Strategic, Normative) standing between the overarching agreement (e.g. Paris Climate Change Agreement) and associated action. After that we describe the conceptualfigure, which is a visual depiction of the model, where the observed state can be identified based on the literature and the desired state can be for-mulated through either scientific literature or through the content of the current debate.
1.2.1. Components of decision-making
As indicated in the introduction, we adapt an approach to managing uncertainty introduced by Lidskog and Löfmarck (2015)to the com-ponents of decision-making in the management of social and scientific constructs, perceptions and attitudes. We define the four different components of this approach as follows.
Cognitive component obstacles arise from a lack of knowledge, or the existence of inadequate, contingent or uncertain knowledge about the socio-ecological system, that make it difficult to reach decisions on appropriate interventions. Cognitive obstacles have often been em-phasized as crucial to decision-making on climate change, where lack of knowledge of the cause and effect of a particular problem increases uncertainty (van Bueren, 2003). They are also the type of obstacle that has been emphasized most frequently when focusing on knowledge development.
Within the Institutional component, obstacles describe limitations that derive from the organizational structure and framework of deci-sion-making and the facilitation of decision implementation. These types of obstacles are often represented by fragmented decision-making (Betsill and Bulkeley, 2004) that inhibit decisions and actions, and thus interventions (Lidskog and Löfmarck, 2015). Lack of allocation of au-thority/responsibility and coordination may lead to fragmented deci-sion-making within afield and when undertaking interventions. Also, institutional obstacles can arise when the dedication of an organization to a cause is strongly tied to a specific person. The obstacles are relevant to decisions managed under treaties (e.g. the Kyoto protocol), when determining responsibility and targets for climate change mitigation, or when allocating responsibilities within a country, e.g. through a Cli-mate Act.
Within the Strategic component, obstacles concern ambiguities about how other actors will interpret and evaluate a situation or an issue, and thereby how it is believed they will act. This means that even if an organization or actor is certain about how best to approach an issue,
they may nevertheless be uncertain how to handle the situation due to other actors’ potential interpretations of events and resulting responses. Because climate action requires coordinated efforts to be effective, from an individual actor’s perspective it can be considered futile to act unless others likewise undertake similar actions. This relates to the problem of free-riding, whereby non-participants obtain a benefit without paying a part or all of its cost; this can prevent positive actors from acting.
Within the Normative component, obstacles hinder decision-making due to the absence of shared values and norms that affect the inter-pretation of what the common good may be, and to difficulties in prioritizing among the shared objectives that do exist. Research has made it clear that views, attitudes and interests are a social force that influence the decision-making significantly (Eagly and Chaiken, 1993; cited fromLindkvist et al., 2012). While experts and regulators often, at least partly, agree due to their commitment to the common good or the public interest, many societal areas (including climate change) include varying interpretations of what this common good might be.
1.2.2. The conceptualfigure
The visual depiction of the heuristic framework helps to distinguish and thus clarify the observed and desired state, and thus assists the formulation of potential pathways for achieving desired outcomes. To do so we created a conceptualfigure to support the identification and understanding of obstacles represented within each component. It is not necessary that each component contains an obstacle in each scenario, as this will depend on whether aspects of that component thwart move-ment from the current to a target state. The desired states for each in-dividual component are visualized as weights capable of shifting the system. The coordination of more than one action can increase the likelihood of moving the socio-ecological system towards a new target state. This conceptualfigure illustrates the ‘systems’-approach we pro-pose to reduce complexity and help in the comprehension of complex problems.
The idea is based on the leverage points concept suggested by Meadows (1999), which have been applied to problems of sustainability often related to social-ecological problems (Fischer et al., 2015). However, the leverage points explicitly range from shallow (easy to influence but little impact) to deep leverage points (difficult to influ-ence but large impact) (Abson et al., 2017). Using our component-ap-proach and the connected conceptualfigure, and in order not to rank the components, we have intentionally put all the obstacles at the same distance on the lever. The notion of leverage points, at different dis-tance on the lever; would appear to indicate a relationship between effort and distance (Ives and Fischer, 2017). While we agree with this in a general sense, if we want to use a systems approach to identify the obstacle standing in the way of change within a social-ecological system, the effort that is required might not always be the highest for change in the normative component [as seems to be assumed by a re-cent discussion betweenManfredo et al. (2017a,b) andIves and Fischer (2017)].
Instead, we argue that specific obstacles are context dependent and relational. Sometimes lack of knowledge is the main obstacle and sometimes it is a lack of shared values, of a supportive institutional context or mutual trust and commitment. Moreover, the four categories of obstacles are never‘pure’, they are interconnected and obstacles can ‘spill over’ reinforcing each other. Hence, both a holistic system un-derstanding interdisciplinary research are necessary to capture the mutual relations and identify pathways to avoid potential dead-locks. 2. Material and methods
2.1. Forests for climate change mitigation from a Swedish perspective Our study takes research developed from a Swedish perspective as a basis for a general understanding of relevant difficulties. In Sweden, and other regions with boreal forests, there is a strong tradition of
M.J. Klapwijk et al. Global Environmental Change 52 (2018) 238–247
managing forests to sustain the long-term provision of forest products (Moen et al., 2014;Warkentin and Bradshaw, 2012). As a consequence, forest and forestry research is a well-established scientific area within Swedish academic disciplines (Mårald et al., 2017). Thus, an extensive multidisciplinary scientific literature discussing different components is available from which to identify which potential obstacles at interna-tional and nainterna-tional level will affect climate change mitigation via managed forests.
In Sweden, as a result of the active management of its forest re-sources, growth and potential forest harvest has increased since the 1920s. This has resulted in an increase in both theflow of wood pro-ducts from forests and the amount of carbon stored in forests (Skogsstyrelsen, 2016). This focus on the intensified production of forest biomass has the potential to be further developed to enhance climate change mitigation (Ellison et al., 2011,2017). This expectation is underpinned by the fact that the long-term net annual growth and product-use strategies in managed forest systems are integral to climate change mitigation (Lundmark et al., 2014;Poudel et al., 2012). With strong institutions, a high level of knowledge production, widespread public awareness of climate change, and a well-developed governance system, Sweden should presumably, and if desired, have a high capacity to adapt forestry to an even more active role in climate change miti-gation (Claesson et al., 2015). Action directed at the more efficient use of Swedish forests in climate change mitigation, however, must be considered in terms of the net costs and benefits to other ecosystem services (Beland Lindahl et al., 2017). As in many other countries, Swedish forest research encompasses a range of relevant considerations including, for example, the diversity of state, corporate and private forest owners, the management of forests for multiple goals (Beland Lindahl et al., 2017), and the increasing number of associated trade-offs that need to be considered when prioritizing for distinct goods or ser-vices (Felton et al., 2016b). Finally, Swedish research perspectives focus on forest management systems that are embedded in a national and international hierarchy of governance structures that affect decision-makers; i.e. compliance to global conventions, regional agreements (in this context the EU) and national policies and the forest owner’s man-agement decisions at the local scale.
2.2. Literature review
We used the relevant published literature to build a solid foundation for an heuristic framework and identified obstacles with regard to the role of forestry in climate change mitigation.
First, we included the terms ‘mitigation’ and ‘adaptation’ in the
search, as often adaptation and mitigation are interlinked. Combining these search terms increased the range of relevant articles found. The terms ‘manage’, ‘govern’ and ‘policy’ were also included, since these terms are frequently used within the humanities and social sciences when discussing adaptation to, and mitigation of, climate change. Five databases were searched (the Web of Science®Core Collection, Scopus, Proquest, Biosis and CABI) on October 20th, 2016 (detailed search terms are given in Suppl. material Table 1). The search was restricted to English language scientific peer-reviewed articles, and publications from 1992 onwards (following the establishment of the UNFCC in Rio de Janeiro) and refined to Sweden as the country/territory. We proceed from the assumption that this limitation does not exclude the interna-tional context of Swedish forestry, as Swedish forestry is embedded within EU agreements and legislation, and Sweden has ratified the Kyoto and the Paris Climate agreement (Adger et al., 2005). After the elimination of duplicates, incorrectly classified papers and non-peer reviewed work, a total of 715 articles remained.
Next, these articles were reviewed based on title, abstract and keywords. This step allowed us to eliminate papers that did notfit the topic of the study and left us with 265 suitable articles. We divided the articles into three categories:‘adaptation’, ‘mitigation’ and ‘adaptation & mitigation’.
Finally, as the aim of the literature review was to investigate climate change mitigation rather than adaptation, we narrowed the selection further by excluding articles classified only as focusing on ‘adaptation’, resulting in afinal selection of 97 articles. The rationale behind this decision was that‘adaptation’ can be achieved without including ‘mi-tigation’ while ‘mitigation’ cannot be achieved separate from ‘adapta-tion' (Stehr and Rhomberg, 2011). The selected articles were categor-ized based on the aim stated by the author(s) and on their main conclusions. This meant that it was possible for papers to be re-presented in more than one category, i.e. describing cognitive, in-stitutional, strategic and /or normative components (Supplementary materials Table 2).
3. Results
Approximately half of the reviewed articles described issues that could be classified as ‘cognitive components’ (Fig. 1; Supplementary materials Table 2). Articles describing‘institutional components’ were the second most common, followed by ‘strategic’ and ‘normative’ components, respectively. The categories were not exclusive and many papers addressed more than one component category. However, none of the articles addressed all four components. Interestingly, no article
Fig. 2. A Venn diagram showing the four categories of obstacles perceived to prevent more efficient use of production forests in climate change mitigation and the numbers of articles identified as describing components and processes that contribute to each obstacle in the reviewed literature pertaining to Swedish forestry.
(according to their stated aims) was found to address both cognitive and normative components (Fig. 2).
The articles that were included in the literature review highlighted the variety of components contributing to climate change mitigation in a forestry context. Two areas of research were represented in all four categories, carbon accounting and bioenergy use. For this reason, we focus our analysis on these two areas of research to explore in detail how the four components addressed progress, or the lack thereof, towards the further use of forests in climate change mitigation.
3.1. Obstacles within the cognitive component
With respect to carbon accounting, the reviewed literature fre-quently highlighted continued international disagreement regarding the optimal method for estimating carbon emissions and sinks within separate countries (Petersson et al., 2012). Several articles stressed the importance of harmonizing methods and acknowledging uncertainties (Danielewska et al., 2013;Fridman et al., 2014;Petersson and Melin, 2010;Ståhl et al., 2014). Accurate estimation of carbon sinks in forests has a direct bearing on confidence in the reporting of climate change mitigation efforts (e.g.Lövbrand, 2004;Ståhl et al., 2014).
With respect to bioenergy production, key uncertainties were fre-quently raised in the literature. These related to the actual contribution from using forest biomass as a source for renewable energy, and con-clusions regarding the net effect often varied, especially with respect to the substitution of fossil fuels (e.g.Grelle et al., 2012). Many articles also argued that the substitution of energy-intensive building materials, such as concrete, would make the greatest contribution to climate change mitigation (Börjesson and Gustavsson, 2000; Eriksson et al., 2011;Poudel et al., 2012;Sathre and O’Connor, 2010). Furthermore, estimates of the actual contribution to climate change mitigation vary depending, in part, on core assumptions regarding both temporal (Hammar et al., 2015;Ortiz et al., 2016;Sathre and Gustavsson, 2011a, b) and spatial scales (Cintas et al., 2016), whether or not the decay of soil organic matter was included (Ortiz et al., 2014), the technical so-lutions addressed (Creutzig et al., 2015), or whether associated land-use change was included (Berndes et al., 2013).
The lack of consistent results from the scientific community re-garding management practices was seen as an obstacle to taking prac-tical decisions. The reviewed literature included studies that investigate different silvicultural strategies (Lundmark et al., 2016), different forest management intensity levels (Akselsson et al., 2007; Poudel et al., 2012) and other specific management practices, e.g. fertilization or tree species selection (Mjöfors et al., 2015;Rytter et al., 2015;Sathre and Gustavsson, 2011b;Sathre et al., 2010), their implications for produc-tion, carbon sequestration and carbon emissions. Some studies suggest that forestry's contribution to climate change mitigation could be sig-nificantly increased if management were to focus on increased biomass production and the highly efficient utilization of harvested biomass (Gustavsson et al., 2017;Lundmark et al., 2014; Poudel et al., 2012; Sathre and Gustavsson, 2011a). However, other studies highlight the fact that more intensive forestry or the increased use of forest biomass may result in negative effects on other ecosystem services and biolo-gical diversity (Berndes et al., 2013, 2003;Díaz et al., 2009; Egnell et al., 2015;Felton et al., 2016a;Laudon et al., 2011; Lavoie et al., 2005; Ortiz et al., 2014; Roberge et al., 2016). The strength of miti-gation effects and the extent of undesired side-effects from a shift in forest management remain unclear from a cognitive perspective (Bouget et al., 2012;Köhn, 2009). This hampers the possibility of for-mulating actions that are acceptable and align with current goals for forests in Sweden.
3.2. Obstacles within the institutional component
The obstacles within the institutional component refer to the efforts of the international community to negotiate agreements on climate
change mitigation, and thus the enablement of decision-frameworks. Within our literature review one of the main institutional obstacles that came forward was harmonization of methods used for carbon ac-counting (Lövbrand, 2004,2009) that are institutionalized by different countries to keep track of commitments of emission reduction by each country. Since different methods are used for quantification of sources and sinks for carbon, comparing the effort made to reduce emissions by different countries is challenging. For individual countries, this makes it difficult to select an internationally comparable method and procedure for carbon accounting (Dunger et al., 2012;Gren et al., 2012;Nabuurs and Sikkema, 2001). Several obstacles were further identified regarding the use of managed forests for climate change mitigation at the inter-national level, including subsidiarity or sovereignty among countries and UN rules or independent negotiation processes (Edwards and Kleinschmit, 2013).
A third obstacle raised in the literature concerns whether the in-ternationally recognized potential to use forests and forest management to offset carbon (Zhang, 2011), could discourage the reduction of emissions in countries with an abundance of carbon sinks (Zhao et al., 2013). In contrast, it was argued by other authors that inclusion of these carbon sinks makes the economic costs of mitigation actions more equal across countries (Pohjola et al., 2003). Moreover, when more countries join, the overall costs of emission reduction will decrease for all countries involved (Olsson et al., 2016).
Consequently, a multitude of suggested methodologies combined with institutional disagreement over how to include existing carbon sinks led to a lack of incentives to implement international treaties that employ forests to reduce carbon emissions (Ellison et al., 2011,2014, 2013). In addition, international mitigation strategies are primarily focused on conserving forests in the tropics, while other forested areas of the world are mostly ignored, and the potential to combine con-servation and mitigation has largely been neglected in international agreements (Moen et al., 2014).
Another obstacle within the institutional component that was re-cognized in the literature regarding the use of bioenergy is that the use of wood for energy is seldom directly encouraged or assumed in na-tional systems (Stupak et al., 2007). Whether or not the potential for renewable energy is harnessed depends on the policy direction (Nyström and Cornland, 2003) and on whether shifts towards different bioenergy production methods, like short rotation coppicing, are sup-ported (Di Corato et al., 2013). The calculation of a product’s carbon efficiency is usually not included, making it difficult for policy to sup-port the development and use of products with the lowest climate im-pact (Røyne et al., 2016). In addition, the limited understanding of how market forces act upon products from wood (i.e. energy, pulp and paper) was described as hindering the development of more encoura-ging policies (Ericsson et al., 2011).
3.3. Obstacles within the strategic component
The forestry sector is challenged to adapt to changing national and international demands (Beland Lindahl and Westholm, 2010;Rist et al., 2016). The literature demonstrates difficulty in initiating change within any single country in the absence of international agreements. One obstacle to long-term planning and decision-making at national gov-ernance levels and across the forest industry was found to be the in-sufficient inclusion of boreal forests and production forest in interna-tional climate policy and carbon accounting systems, which results in strategic uncertainty amongst actors (Binkley et al., 1997;Ellison et al., 2011). This insufficient inclusion of managed forests leads to a lack of incentive for national governments to implement relevant policy (Ellison et al., 2013), hampering action by relevant parties such as forest industry and forest owners, with significant consequences for the overall efficiency of climate change mitigation strategies (Ellison et al., 2014). One major strategic obstacle is the‘free-rider’ principle, the idea that no actor wants to be burdened with an‘unfair’ share of the costs for
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the collective, and that responsibility and thus costs must be shared equally by the collective in order for progress to occur. Within the in-ternational community, countries are careful not to commit to more than they feel is reasonable in relation to commitments of other countries (Lövbrand, 2004), one of the results of this is the ongoing discussion of what can and cannot be included as carbon sinks.
In addition, the involvement of multiple states, forest industry, geographical scales and competing interests, and the lack of consistent methodology in carbon emission measures and reporting from forests, as described in the institutional section, all contribute to strategic ob-stacles (Dunger et al., 2012;Ostwald and Henders, 2014;Pohjola et al., 2003). Again, lack of clarity affects the potential of active governance to use forests in carbon emission reduction strategies and leads to un-certainty among forest industry and forest owners regarding the op-timal strategy for achieving climate change mitigation. The temporal variability of carbon prices affects certainty regarding the returns, which affects the choice of forest management practice from both a carbon-sequestration (conserve and store) and bioenergy production (harvest and substitution) perspective (Backéus et al., 2005,2006).
The literature on bioenergy raises uncertainties regarding multiple institutional components such as technology development, legislation, certification standards, recommendations and political ambiguity that result in strategic obstacles (Creutzig et al., 2015;Stupak et al., 2007). As a consequence, land- and forest-owners and connected bio-energy industry face strategic uncertainty regarding pay-back of bioenergy investments due to high establishment costs, long-term commitment and uncertain net returns (Di Corato et al., 2013; Nyström and Cornland, 2003).
As the Swedish forest sector is in the process of change, forest, en-ergy, climate and global land use issues are increasingly intertwined, providing more options and choices that need to be considered. These include national decisions about appropriate forest use (cf. normative obstacles), economic and energy efficiency, socio-economic delibera-tions, as well as environmental effects and emission levels (Hall and Scrase, 1998;Solomon, 2010). The governance of forest in Sweden al-lows for a certain amount of freedom with respect to management decisions, with a diverse ownership structure meaning that manage-ment strategies vary depending on the owner. This increases the like-lihood that forest owners will interpret and evaluate situations di ffer-ently and creates uncertainty regarding how other forest owners may be expected to respond (Lidskog and Sjödin, 2015a,b).
3.4. Obstacles within the normative component
Several studies examine current social norms and frames, i.e. schemes of interpretation, that help distill and reduce the complexity of reality (Lidskog and Sjödin, 2015a; Lidskog et al., 2013). The main normative obstacles lay in that: i) At the national level, political in-stitutions, government agencies, forest companies, environmental or-ganizations, and private forest owners often have different perceptions and intentions (Hemström et al., 2013;Lidskog et al., 2013); ii) These differences in perceptions perpetuate at the European level (Edwards and Kleinschmit, 2013); iii) At the global level, conflicts can result from fundamental normative differences regarding equity and the geo-graphic distribution of resources (Solomon, 2010).
One striking normative obstacle is that knowledge, problems and perception of consequences regarding carbon accounting are not value-neutral (Lövbrand, 2004), and connected to the global division of wealth. The international climate arena includes different and often competing perspectives that obstruct consensus and the establishment of shared normative commitments (Lövbrand, 2009;Nielsen, 2013).
Regarding bioenergy, the literature highlighted a shift over time in opinions about bioenergy and acceptable forest use (Björheden, 2006; Hemström et al., 2014;Lindkvist et al., 2012). New scientific knowl-edge and public debates challenge the industry’s ‘social license to op-erate’, thereby question what are considered acceptable practices and
objectives (Edwards and Lacey, 2014).
Several studies stress normative conflicts associated with bioenergy. These include: i) actors who perceive future biomass supply as un-limited, versus those who stress scarcity and the distribution of re-sources (Beland Lindahl and Westholm, 2012); ii) a polarized debate between environmental arguments either in favor of bioenergy or en-vironmental groups that are skeptical about current strategies for pro-moting bioenergy (Söderberg and Eckerberg, 2013); and iii) intensive forestry and economic arguments versus nature conservation and en-vironmental goals (Edwards and Kleinschmit, 2013). Sjöstedt and Kleinschmit (2015)identify as many as ten different bioenergy frames in use across the Swedish forestry, energy and climate sectors, sug-gesting that consensus is unlikely.
3.5. Identification of interactions between different obstacles
Fully appreciating the contribution of the obstacles to the relative inertia of the decision-making system, difficulties related to each type of obstacle can be more effectively assessed. Understanding and iden-tifying the extent to which the four obstacles act to reinforce one an-other can further help to clarify the magnitude and complexity of the problem.
Even if it is obvious that the different categories of obstacles are potentially linked and may interact, our literature review illustrates that researchers rarely consider them in combination or with a clear understanding of the different and manifold types of obstacles. Studies within the biophysical research area have a very strong focus onfinding solutions to cognitive obstacles (Fig. 1), sometimes combined with as-sessments of the structures and components of the social system that contribute to institutional and strategic obstacles. They were, however, in this material never explicitly combined with normative aspects. Ar-ticles within the social sciences were more focused on obstacles within institutional, strategic and normative components, and often explored obstacles within institutional and strategic components in combination. Even though a relatively high number of studies describe the im-portance of shared values and norms in decision-making, there seems to be a low degree of integration between structures across components. We use the conceptualfigure (Fig. 1) as a visual depiction of the main obstacles identified and their desired counterparts.
For the conceptualfigure of carbon accounting, we can formulate desired states based on the observed obstacles (Fig. 3A). The desired state for the cognitive component will be that all parties agree on the model that will be used, which in the Swedish context will clarify what can and cannot be included as a carbon sink, and thereby enable Swedish policy makers to act on that premise. Thus, for carbon counting, the lack of consensus regarding the actual method of ac-counting (cognitive component) at the international level, inhibits long-term strategic action. This constrains the discussion on what can we use the forests for and how should we use the carbon storage capacity of wood biomass. Because this is a problem that is constructed at the in-ternational level, it could represent a ‘dead-lock’ for Swedish policy makers if they let their decisions and policy depend on the international context. One way of dealing with this, i.e. a pathway, could be to put efforts in formulating national policies as well as continued efforts at the international level toward agreement about carbon accounting methods.
In the research area addressing bio-energy questions there is cog-nitive uncertainty but also market uncertainty which is not counter-acted by policy-based incentives (Fig. 3B). Currently, one of the main obstacles seems to be the disagreement on acceptable forest use and the lack of supportive scientific evidence. The dichotomy in the opinion on acceptable forest use come forward from the biodiversity conservation perspective versus increased biomass production through intensifica-tion of forest management (Edwards and Kleinschmit, 2013). The conservation perspective takes the position that by not harvesting forest, the carbon will be stored in the standing volume, increasing the
amount of old forests which should contain high biodiversity (Díaz et al., 2009). Whereas, the argument for the production perspective is that harvested biomass to substitute carbon intensive products and the carbon will be stored and the new forest will sequester more carbon (Lundmark et al., 2014). What makes this argument difficult for bioe-nergy from forest products is that it is unclear what the consequences of removing coarse woody debris and stump harvesting will have on nu-trient cycling. In combination with the variable market price for bioe-nergy (Di Corato et al., 2013), makes it difficult and unprofitable for forest owners to collect and transport the additional biomass.
However, it is not only the lack of knowledge that inhibits decision-making, uncertainty about ecological impacts interact with the nor-mative question how one defines acceptable forest use. One possible pathway is targeted knowledge collection to understand the con-sequences of debris, stump removal and the contribution to mitigation in combination with the exploration of the concept of acceptable for-ests. Different ideas of “acceptable/desired forest use” spill over to the research about cognitive issues, and vice versa unclear cognitive results strengthen the normative conflict. Thus, in order to overcome/sur-mount this deadlock andfind possible decision making pathways, is to
investigate cognitive and normative obstacles together in order to se-parate out scientific evidence from social values, and how they interact in this context.
4. Discussion
Applying our framework has enabled us to sort complexity by creating a four-celled typology of components to decision-making. In addition, our approach allows us to recognize how different compo-nents of the four categories are linked and influence each other, which we will elaborate later in the discussion. Each individual type of ob-stacle should be regarded in the context of the three others, as no single type of obstacle can adequately explain why production forest man-agement is not more intensively mobilized for the purpose of climate change mitigation (cf. IPCC,Smith et al., 2014). Our heuristic frame-work and connected conceptual figure avoids the division between different components that we found in the literature, supports and thereby provides a combined understanding (Fig. 1), which provides some flexibility to assign the difficulty and impact separately in the context of each specific question. Applying this framework in
Fig. 3. (A.) The conceptualfigure as applied to the carbon accounting issue from the perspective of Sweden, indicating that efforts need to focus on internal changes without having the expectation that conditions are going to change internationally. (B.) The conceptualfigure applied to the bioenergy problem shows that the use of forest products for bioenergy is a subject of research and there is no consensus on the best way to use such products. Another obstacle identified is the lack of agreement on what constitutes acceptable forest use. Here we need an open discussion about the consequences of using forests for bioenergy in relation to other goals for the forests, as well as conducting research to gain more knowledge about the outcome of decisions.
M.J. Klapwijk et al. Global Environmental Change 52 (2018) 238–247
combination with the conceptualfigure can expose complexity in dif-ferent contexts by summarizing the main observed obstacles and their corresponding desired state. Even though we did not set-out to compare or contrast the‘carbon-accounting’ case versus the ‘bioenergy’ case, it became clear that using a similar methodology of comparison allows us to individually assess and approach each case as they can contain dif-ferent obstacles in each component. By applying the conceptualfigure to‘bio-energy’ and ‘carbon-accounting’, we show that combining ob-stacles represented in the four components of decision-making reveals where the‘bottle-necks’ and ‘dead-locks’ are in the system. In this way, the conceptual figure makes it possible to envisage pathways that provide direction in relation to the specific situation, as we exemplified related to carbon accounting and bioenergy production.
The discussion around the practice of carbon accounting is a con-struct of the international institutional context in which it is important to avoid the‘free-rider’ principle (Lövbrand, 2004). Seen from a cog-nitive perspective, disagreements are associated with the standardiza-tion of carbon calculastandardiza-tions and monitoring (Ståhl et al., 2004), which is important for, and affects the outcome of international agreements (Lövbrand, 2009). Globally, one major problem is the lack of consensus, shared knowledge and mutual normative commitments. This influences any kind of related negotiation (Nielsen, 2013), in turn preventing the development of an active strategy at the national level and any ex-plicitly directed increase in the use of managed Swedish forests for climate change mitigation (Lövbrand, 2004).
In bioenergy research, with respect to cognitive obstacles, the focus has been on whether the use of forest products to produce energy can substantially contribute to climate change mitigation (Berndes et al., 2003; Grelle et al., 2012), and whether mitigation potential can be optimized (Gustavsson et al., 2015). However, increased use of forest biomass for bioenergy would affect other ecosystem services and bio-diversity (Bouget et al., 2012). The trade-off between these two goals is not only a cognitive obstacle but represents normative obstacles as well (Edwards and Kleinschmit, 2013), as it influences and is likewise in-fluenced by institutional obstacles. This, in turn, leads to ambiguous policies, goal conflicts, and a lack of clear incentives and conditions for the bioenergy market, resulting in strategic obstacles with uncertainties about returns on investment, and the lack of monetary incentives in policy. Thus, the willingness of stakeholders to invest and act is thereby affected (Creutzig et al., 2015;Stupak et al., 2007).
Our approach allows us to conclude that carbon accounting is mostly a problem of international politics that trickles down to national policy-making, and forest use for bioenergy is mostly determined by national policies and market forces. Still, both these examples illustrate that even though knowledge regarding the socio-ecological system is pivotal, lack of knowledge is neither the sole nor arguably even the main obstacle that needs to be overcome.
In general, norms and values are strongly connected to the under-standing of acceptable forest use, different actors attach diverging norms and values to the understanding of acceptable forest use. Consequently, it remains unclear how to best define “the common good”. Diverging values thus remain at the root of goal conflicts that themselves are further reinforced by and also shape obstacles within the institutional component. Likewise, this influences the gathering and transfer of knowledge related to optimal forest use for climate change mitigation, which then become an obstacle in the cognitive component. This problem is illustrated by the scientific debate about whether it is better to conserve or harvest trees [see for exampleFares et al. (2015) and responses byJonsson et al. (2015),Bellassen and Luyssaert (2014) andJacob et al. (2014)], where both sides use the argument for fa-voring carbon sequestration to support their divergent views (Ulmanen et al., 2015). Current objectives for nature conservation align well with the goal of storing carbon as biomass in the forest, while harvest and substitution with a focus on high production aligns well with current goals for forest production (Winkel et al., 2011).
From a strategic point of view, these competing perspectives result
in difficulties when selecting one course of action over the other for involved individual actors and policy-makers. In addition, actors, e.g. countries, forest industry, or forest owners need to be able to anticipate the commitment of other actors, in order to know whether or not in-vesting in a particular action is a sensible strategy.
By summarizing the results from the literature study in the context of our heuristic framework and further visualizing them using the conceptualfigure, the potential transformative pathways become more transparent and potentially manageable compared to using a mono-disciplinary approach or only considering a subset of these components to decision-making. Obstacles in the system likewise become visible. For instance, by identifying the historical disparities in the development of the goals different actors advocate, one can better understand why agreement or development of shared values may take time, if indeed this can be achieved at all.
Using the conceptualfigure to visualize the results of our literature study indicates that carbon accounting is a problem constructed in the international context that cannot be solved at the national level. Nevertheless, efforts to reduce the concentration of CO2in the atmo-sphere might need to focus nationally (e.g. in Sweden) combined with efforts to resolve the problem at the international level. In the case of bioenergy from forest products, this is still the subject of research, as there is no consensus on either the best way to use forest products to generate bioenergy or on the subsequent consequences for forest eco-system functioning. In this context, disagreement about what con-stitutes acceptable forest use is of central concern and an open discus-sion about the consequences of using forest products in relation to other forest goals is needed.
5. Conclusions
We argue that there is an increasing need for research that considers issues that span social and ecological spheres across their temporal and spatial dimensions. With our framework, we suggest a way to capture such complexity and make obstacles more manageable. Using the four-celled typology of components facilitates the identification and under-standing of the main obstacles related to them, as well as providing starting points for directing forest management towards reducing CO2 levels in the atmosphere.
Finally, it is important to recognize that obstacles and barriers may be present for a reason. For example, from the viewpoint of the forest owner or manager, these‘obstacles’ often have well-founded explana-tions that have been historically and contextually developed. The im-plementation of new actions may not be regarded as practically ap-plicable, adapted to the local situation, or economically viable. They may even be considered as meaningless by some actors. Thus, rather than perceiving the obstacles solely as problems, they can also be used as starting points for discussion and for examining how disparate values and disparately developed institutions– which are at the core of the climate change issue– can be managed and potentially re-directed. It is our hope that decision-making processes analyzed in this way may also be used to support embedded and democratic decision-making, which is critical in the context of climate change mitigation.
Acknowledgements
The research was funded through Future Forests, a multi-dis-ciplinary research programme supported by the Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research (MISTRA), the Swedish Forestry Industry, the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), Umeå University and the Forestry Research Institute of Sweden.
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary material related to this article can be found, in the online version, at doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2018.07.
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