Section 5

Good change in the woods: conceptual and ethical perspectives on integrating sustainable land-use and biodiversity protection
T. Potthast International Centre for Ethics in the Sciences and Humanities (IZEW), Eberhard Karls Universitt Tbingen, Wilhelmstr. 19, 72074 Tbingen, Germany; potthast@uni-tuebingen.de

Abstract
The interrelations between land use, protection of biodiversity, mitigation of and adaption to climate change are contested. Hence possible synergies as well as conflicts have to be identified. But not only empirical data, models and scenarios have to contribute here: Conceptual and ethical perspectives play an important role for adequately setting and enacting the agenda. A realistic and feasible integration of climate change adaptation and nature conservation is a general and accepted goal. Within this, one building block should be a justified concept of good change. This is of importance for both land-use and conservation since both often tend to stick too closely to static concepts of alleged stability of existing states of nature. However, good change neither is to be confused with a downplaying of disastrous effects of climate change nor with an uncritical affirmation of change per se. In this paper forestry shall serve as a specific example for the needs of integrating sustainable land-use and biodiversity protection with regard to climate change. A normative concept of good change entails goals, criteria, and measures for protecting and promoting biodiversity as well as for sustainable use. But even in forestry, the field of birth of sustainability, it is far from clear which strategies of mitigation and adaptation are to be sought, for example with regard to (1) importing non-indigenous tree species as a means of precaution to climate change; (2) contrasting or combining wild woods, extensive forestry and intensive short rotation tree-farming; and (3) a hierarchy of goals for using forest products (timber, fuel, etc.). Good change shall serve as a somewhat neglected part of the much more encompassing notion of sustainable development. For example perspectives on biodiversity have to go beyond instrumental expressions of ecosystem services and other functional approaches. It shall take seriously the dynamic perspective of natural and cultural processes, also regarding the too sharp distinction between forestry and agriculture, and a revised notion of what naturalness or integrity might mean. Good change shall be part of ethically sound decisions about which measures are to be taken against undesirable developments and how to act in favour of desirable change. Keywords: ecological dynamics, sustainability, ethics, forestry

Sustainable development, change and climate change

In the context of the United Nations debates on environment and development too often misattributed as being contradictory goals the very notion of change appears as a cultural and political perspective: Yet in the end, sustainable development is not a fixed state of harmony, but rather a process of change in which the exploitation of resources, the direction of investments, the orientation of technological development, and institutional change are made consistent with future as well as present needs (UN, 1987: I.3.30). This cultural-political perspective, however, has long been accompanied with ideas of natures balance or stability, where change has been conceived of as cyclic; only evolution as a long-term process was regarded to bring about natural unidirectional change. Short- and mid-term change mainly was attributed to the activities of humans, and more often than not these alterations have been valued as negative. There are convincing arguments provided for this view also in the Brundtland Report (UN, 1987).

T. Potthast and S. Meisch (eds.), Climate change and sustainable development: Ethical perspectives on land use and food production, DOI 10.3920/978-90-8686-753-0_19, Wageningen Academic Publishers 2012

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In that vein of negative outcomes of anthropogenic action regarding the environment, climate change has been identified as one of the major driving forces of biodiversity loss for the next decades. Hence, the goals and means of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC; UN 1992a) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD; UN 1992b) will have to be integrated, also on national (and European) levels for maintaining and conveying biodiversity as well as for sustainable development under the conditions of climate change. The interrelations between nature conservation, protection of biodiversity, mitigation of and adaption to climate change have to be clarified. Possible synergies as well as conflicts have already been identified (Paterson et al., 2008). The most contested issue is the use of agricultural land and crops for fuel production, but also the conversion of forests with old tree stands into short rotation tree farming and the use of almost all biomass from forests hence a loss of wood and leaf litter for decomposition into soil at stake. But not only empirical data, scenarios and practical methods have to contribute here. Concepts and ethical perspectives play an important role in adequately setting and enacting the agenda. Ultimately this inclusion will contribute to a realistic and feasible integration of climate change adaptation and nature conservation. One building block should be a justified concept of good change. This is of importance for both land-use and conservation since both often tend to stick too closely to static concepts of stability of existing states. However, good change neither is to be confused with downplaying disastrous effects of climate change nor an uncritical affirmation of change per se. After some general considerations, in the second part of this paper forestry serves as a specific case example for the needs of integrating sustainable land-use and biodiversity protection with regard to climate change.
Change as a challenge

A long-standing general problem of conservation and its policies reads: why should we sustain or even restore a certain state of nature if it is constantly changing anyway? The last decades have spawned concepts of a more dynamic outline of biodiversity protection on all levels, from populations to ecosystems (e.g. Botkin, 1990). The conceptual shift from pattern to process, however, has not made clear whether processes themselves have become the new protection goal(s). It seems that often processes are understood mainly as means for maintaining those habitats and inhabitants that require ecological dynamics. In the latter sense, process is understood instrumentally. But in other cases, natural processes are conceived of ethically as goals in themselves with intrinsic value, hence becoming more important than e.g. specific species or landscape protection goals (Potthast, 2006). This tension remains unresolved and applies even more under the conditions of climate change. But should one give up the idea of maintaining specific species and habitats at all? The latter seems to be grossly overstated and misleading as well as politically counterproductive. But some protection concepts, goals and goods will be challenged and like it or not have to be adjusted. All this does not preclude, however, the necessity of mitigation: Since major adverse effects on humans, ecosystems and biodiversity are to be expected, lowering the extent of anthropogenic contribution to climate change is well justified regardless whether nature changes anyway. In that sense, human action resulting in no or slow contribution to climate change is morally preferable. This initial ethical perspective on mitigation will not be elaborated further but shall be regarded as a major frame for the following discussion.
Natural and anthropogenic change

Even a dynamic approach of protecting natural processes as opposed to certain states with a fixed set of biodiversity elements distinguishes between anthropogenic and natural change. This happens on both the empirical and the valuation level. In the first instance the difficult empirical question arises whether or to which extent certain changes within ecosystems are caused naturally or by human action. On the normative level the question remains to justify why natural changes should generally be considered good
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whereas anthropogenic changes are less preferable. Concepts within conservation as well as of sustainable development have challenged the rigid evaluative supremacy of the natural anyway: cultural landscapes, old local forms of cultivated plants and livestock within biodiversity protection and so on. Nevertheless, telling apart natural and anthropogenic change still remains to be one of the conceptual foundations of conservation, mainly because non-altered processes have become more and more scarce, with all ensuing effects on a large sector of biodiversity. But in the face of climate change effects, the separation between natural and human-driven change becomes even more blurred. Hence on the empirical level, wildness as the idea of actual non-interfering gets detached from the notion of unaltered nature. But ethically speaking, this does not at all inflict on the necessity to justify all human action (and forbearance) with regard to their effects on biodiversity and climate change. The challenge of adequately describing and valuing transformations in and of nature intensifies.
Good change

In some sense, climate change and good change pose a paradox for conservation that reminds of the sceptical dictum from philosopher Theodor W. Adorno (1951: 59): There is no right life in the wrong one. If for good reasons we should act for halting climate change since the latter will mostly result in unwanted alterations, how could good change look like in the first place? Wouldnt simply preserving the status quo of nature and environment be the best? Obviously, this is not the case, since it implies a couple of problems: Present situations are not per se good points of reference since they might include several negative states, trajectories and processes. Due to anthropogenic change in general and climate change in particular, neither present nor historical states of reference make very much sense not least because they might well never be reachable again. Global dimensions of climate change make it even more problematic to tell apart natural from human-induced causes and processes. This situation makes it (even more) implausible simply to reject any change. But at the same time uncritical affirmation of any change in nature and environment or accepting all change as without alternative neither does make sense. Good change may not be confused with a downplaying of disastrous effects of climate change nor with an uncritical affirmation of change per se. In response to this situation, new approaches of environmental ethics and sustainability have to be developed to identify desirable changes of nature or the environment, respectively. A normative concept of good change requires the formulation of goals, criteria, and measures for biodiversity protection and promotion, which already include strategies of mitigation and adaptation. To meet these needs conservation even more has to focus not only on protected areas but on 100% of the land. But again, on the practical level this still would be in accord with some classical safeguard approaches protecting large areas as well as networks and corridors of habitats. The increasing speed and magnitude of natural and anthropogenic change will convey the need to establish new goods and goals beyond to keep every cog and wheel (a)s the first precaution of intelligent tinkering, as Aldo Leopold (1953: 190) once put it. As reasoned above, the notion of good change still qualifies global climate change as an overall negative process to be halted or slowed down. But one should note that the often-mentioned example of intensive and large scale land-use for agro-fuels neither is good for biodiversity protection nor for a climate-sensitive sustainability (e.g. Searchinger et al., 2008). Policy targets of present (sometimes nave) conservationism have to be revised not least with regard to the concept of biodiversity framed by the CBD (cf. Potthast, 2007). This includes the role of naturalness as the main or only focal point for the derivation of values. The role of naturalness has to be reassessed as an important but not all-encompassing goal and criterion. Species and habitat changes should not be per se
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viewed negative in relation to earlier historical benchmarking. The evaluation of biological invasions and alien taxa has to be revised. At the same time, existing tendencies of uncritically welcoming all change will have to be put into question. Most notably, the targets need to be expanded with regard to humannature interaction for sustainable development. On the other hand, processes as goals need at least some indication of the pathways and trajectories to be taken, notwithstanding that no fixed goals might be targeted. Nature conservation and sustainability do not overlap completely: the differentia specifica of the former lies in some sense of eudaimonistic (good life) and/or intrinsic value of biodiversity not to be covered completely by sustainability. Good change shall thus provide input for more encompassing notions of sustainable development with perspectives on biodiversity reaching beyond ecosystem services and other functional approaches.

Good change and forestry

An international consensus on the protection and sustainable management of forests was set out in the context of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Agenda 21 (Chapter 11) and the Forest Principles (UN, 1992c). Forest elements are to be found also in chapters of the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Framework Convention on Climate Change. In stark contrast to agriculture with its primary goal of food supply, notwithstanding classical fibre and recent fuel purposes, forestry has a much broader spectrum of targets: wood and wood products, water, food, fodder, medicine, fuel, shelter, employment, recreation, habitats for wildlife, landscape diversity, carbon sinks and reservoirs, and for other forest products (UN, 1992c: 2b). On the one hand, forestry always was much more long-term oriented for obvious reasons. On the other hand, the idea of a relatively stable environment has been the basis of calculating for rotation periods between 50 and 250 years. Climate change thus challenges forestry in two ways: (1) during the growth period of much less than one generation of trees, irreversible environmental change will occur; (2) uncertainty of future developments will increase much more due to the regional and local differences and complexities of the climate change process. As a consequence even in forestry, the field of birth of sustainability, it is far from clear which strategies of mitigation and adaptation are to be sought, for example with regard to (1) importing non-indigenous tree species as a means of precaution to climate change; (2) contrasting or combining wild woods, extensive forestry and intensive short rotation tree-farming; and (3) a hierarchy of goals for using forest products (timber, fuel, etc.). In the following, only some very preliminary considerations shall be presented in order to open up discussion points to further consideration.
Non-indigenous tree species as a means of precaution to climate change

Since in most parts of western and central Europe, a warmer climate with more drought is to be expected, it has been suggested to plant ecotypes of the same species from more southern parts as well as to import other tree species which should be capable of coping with the new conditions. Precaution has a double meaning here. On the one hand it means taking care for future developments by the respective action. On the other hand there is a need to reflect on possible consequences and side-effects of growing (i.e. planting) non-indigenous tree species. With regard to a high genetic diversity within local populations of all important forest tree species, it might be advisable to put the emphasis on natural rejuvenation of trees at their stands with the chance of mid- and long-term adaptation by differential growth success. In this perspective, one would prefer a strategy of drawing on local conditions for coping and hence adjusting for a good change within and by existing tree populations. This is based on assumptions of biological adaptation processes of cultivated, semi-cultivated or wild plants (like forest trees) that will develop best under the local conditions of use and in the respective spatio-temporal context. A different picture might appear when it comes to short-rotation plantations where trees are plated and removed at high frequency anyway and where non-indigenous variations could play an

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important role for more flexibility. It is not just by coincidence that the latter practice does resemble agriculture much more than traditional and modern forestry.
Contrasting or combining wild woods, extensive forestry and intensive short rotation

Taking into account the manifold demands for functions of forests, a somewhat segregating strategy is necessary to combine wild woods, extensive forestry and intensive short rotation plantations. The quantitative proportions are debateable. Focussing on forests as greenhouse gas sinks, however, one would prefer a large proportion of wild or extensively used forests with a high amount of (non-harvested) biomass, here combining mitigation and biodiversity protection. This will however, demand for short rotation plantation elsewhere. Here, the resulting strategy might be not to use forest areas but agricultural or ruderal areas for such plantations. As a consequence, good change would imply to blur the traditional and culturally quite sharp (European) distinction between field and forest for biomass grown in short rotation. However, in detail it will have to sorted out whether this will also continue in new ways old practices of short (Niederwald) and midterm (Mittelwald) rotation practices in combination with extensive use of husbandry. Another very important point from a global perspective is a halt to cut forests in the tropics for agricultural purposes including all sorts of tree plantations for fuel since the gains in food, fibre and fuel do not outweigh biodiversity and ecosystem functions (Foley et al., 2011). In sum, the total amount of forested area may not be diminished elsewhere, too.
A hierarchy of goals for using forest products?

The question of a hierarchy for forest products cannot be answered without taking into account the needs and preferences of local communities, as several of the aforementioned UN documents explicitly state. It seems that all sorts of ecosystem services, including CO2-fixation for climate change mitigation as well as adaptation. And again, for reasons mentioned above, the use of wood or tree products primarily for fuel will have to decrease, by replacing small fireplaces by solar energy and by replacing tree plantations for conversion into agro-fuel by structured forests for multiple uses. Notwithstanding, wood for fuel from side-products of logging and the sawmills of course does make very much sense anyway. But is a forest only the sum of its resource and ecosystem functions? There is more to the good change perspective. It shall serve as a somewhat neglected part of the much more encompassing notion of sustainable development. For example perspectives on biodiversity have to go beyond instrumental expressions of ecosystem services and other functional approaches and this is not at all a specific German perspective on forests and sustainability (Grober, 2010; Leopold, 1953). It shall take seriously the dynamic perspective of natural and cultural processes, also regarding the too sharp distinction between forestry and agriculture, and a revised notion of what naturalness or integrity might mean. Good change shall be part of ethically sound decisions about which measures are to be taken against undesirable developments and how to act in favour of desirable change.

Acknowledgements
Earlier explorations on good change have been supported by a grant from the German Federal Agency for Nature Protection (BfN; Potthast, T. and Lachnit, S.: Guter Wandel? Konzeptionelle und ethische Grundlagen fr eine Integration von Biodiversitts- und Klimaanpassungsstrategie. Expertise, Bonn-Bad Godesberg, 115 pp., publication in prep.). For the process of finalising this paper, stimulating input from a working group on Forest Conservation Strategies of the Forstliche Versuchs- und Forschungsanstalt Baden-Wrttemberg (FVA), Germany is acknowledged.

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