Climate Impacts on Sustainable Natural Resource Management by Laurent Trognon

Climate change affects individual species and the way they interact with other organisms and their habitats, which alters the structure and function of ecosystems and the goods and services that natural systems provide to society. Understanding the direction and magnitude of ecological responses allows human communities to better anticipate these changes and adapt as necessary. Periodic syntheses of the ever-expanding knowledge about climate change, impacts on natural resources and associated ecosystems, land use and values, and human communities are critical to effective policy formulation. We also need to better understand how adaptation to and policies for addressing climate change may affect landscapes, ecosystems, ecosystem services, and local economies. Policy deliberations will be aided by better information on the economic viability of forest-related offsets relative to other greenhouse gas (GHG) offset options. Climate change is a pervasive and growing global threat to biodiversity and ecosystems.

Herein this book, we present the most up-to-date assessment of climate change impacts on biodiversity, ecosystems, and ecosystem services. The management of natural resources is directly associated with climate change. On the one hand, most of the greenhouse gases released in the atmosphere originate from the production, transformation and use of natural resources such as coal, natural gas and oil. On the other hand, climate change affects natural resources such as forests and agricultural produce. These interactions illustrate the two-way relationship between climate change and the commodities sector. This book analyses the ways in which the management of natural resources may impact climate change, and how climate change impacts the adaptation strategies of countries, industries and farmers that extract or produce primary commodities. Although not all impacts are negative, even positive changes can require costly societal adjustments. Natural resource managers need proactive, flexible adaptation strategies that consider historical and future outlooks to minimize costs over the long term. Many organizations are beginning to explore these approaches, but implementation is not yet prevalent or systematic across the nation. In this book, an attempt has been made to synthesize the state of knowledge on climate change as well as mitigation and adaptation using Natural Resource Management (NRM) as an entry point. Climate change governance and reorientation of national level institutions to effectively bridge local and global level mechanisms are also discussed.