New podcast: Forests in a changing climate: How the world’s forests are impacted by and are solutions to climate change

This article is based on Episode 1 of a three-part series on climate change and forests, on the Forests of the Future podcast. It explores how FSC understands climate change, the difference between mitigation and adaptation, and why accounting for climate risks is becoming essential for sustainable forest management. The episode shares Indigenous perspectives on resilience and long-term adaptation — and discusses the often overlooked costs of inaction.

Listen to Episode 1 on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or Castbox

For the Indigenous peoples in Labrador, caribou have deep cultural significance. “Our whole understanding of our place in the world revolves around our relationship with caribou,” says Valérie Courtois, CEO of Indigenous Leadership Initiative and forestry expert. 

But recently, elders began noticing something strange. Herds were moving away from the best sources of food. The changed behaviour puzzled researchers and the community, until they noticed the bugs. “Caribou are a really sensitive animal and, like us, they don’t like biting insects,” she says. As climate change raises temperatures, insects are moving further north, pushing the caribou into windier locations with fewer insects. “What we’re finding is that the caribou are starting to favour wind over good food. Which will of course have long-term impacts on the health of that herd,” says Valérie. 

How forests are changing

Subhra Bhattacharjee is global Director General of the Forest Stewardship Council. She notes that forests capture and store about 16 billion metric tonnes of the world’s carbon every year, naturally releasing about half of that. But with increased drought, wildfires and climate-driven insect infestations that defoliate and dry out forests, this is decreasing. In fact, in 2023, Canada became the world’s fourth largest greenhouse gas emitter as widespread fires caused forests to release decades of stored carbon.*

For forest managers, a less predictable climate means more operational risk. Shorter winters can decrease harvesting capacity, higher rainfalls make transporting lumber more challenging, fires and pests put assets at risk. 

Subhra notes that this is a particularly complex time in global events, which has seen climate progress deprioritized by some jurisdictions. “There is extraordinary economic pressure and uncertainty, and governments need to ease the cost of living pressure for populations. But you can’t argue with a heat wave. You can’t wish away a forest fire,” she says.

Action to mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change is crucial to preserve forests’ many climate and biodiversity benefits – as well as their substantial economic value. And it’s in economics that Subhra sees a compelling solution for forests and the people who rely on them. 

Forests as a solution

While forests are highly vulnerable to climate impacts, they are also a powerful climate solution. In Canada, the boreal forest plays an outsized role in mitigating climate change globally, storing twice as much carbon per unit area as tropical forests in normal conditions. According to the World Resources Institute, “in a typical year, forests and other vegetation absorb roughly 30% of the carbon that humans emit from burning fossil fuels.” 

Forests also cool the planet by reflecting sunlight back into space, absorbing heat and releasing moisture that forms rain clouds. The Amazon alone releases so much moisture that there is a permanent ‘river’ in the air above it that sustains humidity for thousands of miles, benefiting the whole North American continent.

Additional ‘services’ provided by forests include air and water purification (keeping local communities healthy), supporting biodiversity and providing recreational and cultural value. Generally, we get the benefit of these services for free, but there is a growing movement to price ecosystem services in order to better protect them. 

“In the context of economics these can sound like not very concrete things, but they are,” says Subhra. Quantifying the ‘hidden’ benefits of forests allows a market to be created, giving forests a tradeable value beyond what can be harvested.

Nature finance, broadly defined as financial instruments that allow global capital flows to align with nature-positive outcomes, is a solution that can provide meaningful financial incentives to keep forests standing, support forest companies to manage risk and provide both capital and reputational returns for investors. 

How FSC supports healthy forests

FSC is already a trusted leader in sustainable forest management globally. This means that FSC-certification puts forest managers at an advantage as they look to minimize volatility and diversify income streams. 

A strong area of interest for FSC is helping forest managers to create additional value by being rewarded for their management of the forest’s ecosystem services, through the innovative Verified Impact solution. Verified Impact unlocks the true value of certificate holders’ conservation efforts, connecting them with businesses interested in sponsoring projects that restore and protect the intangible benefits that forests provide, including both ecological and cultural and recreational benefits. 

The goal, says Subhra, is to address the economics of responsible forest management, getting forest finance to owners, managers and communities so they have an incentive to not only keep the forest standing, but to manage it so that it’s a healthy forest.

“We know diversification reduces risk,” says Subhra. By taking ecosystem services into account as another source of value from their forests, and planning for that in the long term, forest managers can help insulate their businesses from volatility, supporting healthy forests and healthy businesses. 

For Val, this is a common-sense approach that aligns with Indigenous understandings of land stewardship. She explains that by maintaining resilient forests, and considering the wellbeing of the human and non-human populations that rely on them, it’s possible to increase the opportunities for communities to benefit from them.

 “Doing good things for the planet is doing good things for humanity and that will translate into healthy economics,” she says.

What’s next?

FSC is continuing its work to understand and share the crucial role that forests play in minimizing the impacts of climate change on communities, and is actively involved in research that identifies best practices in forest management, especially biodiversity-positive forest management, so it can be incorporated into certificate holders’ regular operations. Learning from Indigenous peoples is a crucial part of this work, and in Episode 3 of this podcast series, we’ll hear from Métis fire expert Amy Cardinal, who’ll share what Indigenous communities in Canada are doing to manage wildfire in a changing climate.

Up next though, we’ll learn how Climate Vulnerability Assessments are helping Mistik Management to identify and adapt to climate risks. Stay tuned!   

Listen to Episode 1 on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or Castbox

* Byrne, B., Liu, J., Bowman, K. W., Pascolini-Campbell, M., Chatterjee, A., Pandey, S., ... & Sinha, S. (2024). Carbon emissions from the 2023 Canadian wildfires. Nature, 633(8031), 835-839.