The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), made up over 1,000 scientists, from over 100 countries around the world is releasing in four installments this year its latest report on global warming. The IPCC summary for policy makers includes the strongest statement to date linking human activities to global warming. The IPCC finds that it is “very likely” (90 percent probability) that human activities are the main cause of global warming and highlights the need for action today to address this extremely serious global problem that will affect our climate, ecosystems, and the institutions that support humanity.

More than any other issue, humanity’s response to climate change will define our times. To preserve options for future generations it is prudent to both mitigate impacts and begin preparing for anticipated changes. Significant reforms are necessary to address climate change in a comprehensive way, including changes in energy policy, transportation policy, land use, urban design, agriculture, etc. This report focuses on a subset of the problem, how climate change will affect forests and how sound forest conservation can play a role in mitigating climate change.

Predictions of specific climate changes at any given place and time are highly uncertain, yet scientists can confidently predict a few notable large-scale trends, such as general climate warming, altered patterns of precipitation, rising sea level, and significant disruptions of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. 

Forests are the most significant terrestrial stores of living carbon and their destruction and mismanagement over the last century has contributed significantly to the carbon dioxide (CO₂) pollution that threatens our climate. In the future, we need to manage forest to (a) make forests more resilient to the anticipated changes brought by climate change, and (b) manage forests to help mitigate climate change by allowing forests to fulfill their full potential for storing carbon in living systems. 

To make forests more resilient to climate change we need to protect the full diversity of life in our forests. Every species and each biotic community is a record of successful adaptation to past changes. Even though the future may not mirror the past, the diversity of life that exists currently represents the full catalog of successful adaptations that are available for the profound restructuring of ecosystems to come. We should not be throwing tools out of the toolbox by allowing species to go extinct. 

Since northern hemisphere ecosystems are expected to shift north and toward higher elevations in response to warming climate, we need to expand our existing system of protected areas to give forest ecosystems enough room to migrate via natural processes of disturbance, dispersal, and regeneration.

To help forests store more carbon we need to let our forests grow. Photosynthesis is the mechanism plants use to capture CO₂ and convert it to plant matter that feeds the base of the entire planetary food chain. Old-growth trees store massive amounts of carbon in their trunks as well as in the soil. Logging stops photosynthesis and initiates decay processes that transfer much of the carbon in the trees and soil back to the atmosphere. Forest conservation allows forests to grow large and complex, which not only helps mitigate climate change but also enhances water quality, wildlife habitat, recreation, and quality of life.