Sharing in the glow

Tree-hugger Peter Duinker.

Receiving a copy of the Nobel Peace Prize certificate is hardly an ordinary day at the mailbox.

“It does feel a bit like being part of a cast of thousands,” laughs Peter Duinker, professor in Dalhousie’s School for Resource and Environmental Studies.

In association with his work as a research scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Dr. Duinker contributed to the second assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1995. The scientific body, tasked by the UN to evaluate the risks of climate change caused by human activity, shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore. The IPCC recently sent copies of the award certificate to individuals who “have contributed substantially to the work of the IPCC over the years since the inception of the organization.”

Dr. Duinker was a lead author on a chapter in the report titled, “Wood Production under Changing Climate and Land Use.” Its thesis? “Profound uncertainty in what climate change means for forest production in general,” Dr. Duinker explains. “Forests are diverse and climate change won’t affect all of them in the same way. But no forest is going to escape its effects.”

Forests in warmer and dryer climates are likely to fare the worst should the effects of climate change be as predicted, but the precise impact on specific forest ecosystems is difficult to forecast and may be dramatic. In addition, many scientists believe that climate change will bring increasing storm activity that could significantly increase forest blowdowns.

In the 13 years since the report’s publishing, Dr. Duinker says that there’s been a shift in emphasis in how forest researchers are examining climate change. Back then, the primary concern was economic: how climate change would affect the forest industry. Today, though, they’re taking a longer-term vision by focusing on forest ecosystems and developing strategies for building stronger, more resilient forests that can cope better with the uncertain future they face.

The certificate for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

After being pulled into the realm of forests and climate change while working at IIASA, Dr. Duinker has found that understanding and predicting the effects of climate change has become increasingly central to his work. Currently, he’s the manager of the Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) Network’s Forest Futures Project in which climate change is a key driver of forest behaviour up to 2050.  He also recently co-authored a report on the effects of climate change on Canada’s forests, as part of the national climate-change assessment of the Government of Canada to be published by the SFM Network.

So just how prepared is Canada’s forest industry for climate change? “Not well,” he says. “It’s taken 20 years to get the forest sector to really pay attention. But there’s still precious little allocation of resources focused on what to do about it. But we’ve got their ear – now we have to weave climate-change thinking into all of our forest management and policy initiatives.”

LINKS: Nobel Peace Prize | Sustainable Forest Management Network | Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change