Public perceptions about climate change mitigation in British Columbia's forest sector

<div><p>The role of forest management in mitigating climate change is a central concern for the Canadian province of British Columbia. The successful implementation of forest management activities to achieve climate change mitigation in British Columbia will be strongly influenced by public support or opposition. While we now have increasingly clear ideas of the management opportunities associated with forest mitigation and some insight into public support for climate change mitigation in the context of sustainable forest management, very little is known with respect to the levels and basis of public support for potential forest management strategies to mitigate climate change. This paper, by describing the results of a web-based survey, documents levels of public support for the implementation of eight forest carbon mitigation strategies in British Columbia’s forest sector, and examines and quantifies the influence of the factors that shape this support. Overall, respondents ascribed a high level of importance to forest carbon mitigation and supported all of the eight proposed strategies, indicating that the British Columbia public is inclined to consider alternative practices in managing forests and wood products to mitigate climate change. That said, we found differences in levels of support for the mitigation strategies. In general, we found greater levels of support for a rehabilitation strategy (e.g. reforestation of unproductive forest land), and to a lesser extent for conservation strategies (e.g. old growth conservation, reduced harvest) over enhanced forest management strategies (e.g. improved harvesting and silvicultural techniques). We also highlighted multiple variables within the British Columbia population that appear to play a role in predicting levels of support for conservation and/or enhanced forest management strategies, including environmental values, risk perception, trust in groups of actors, prioritized objectives of forest management and socio-demographic factors.</p></div

Mean scores representing the level to which respondents trust the groups of actors when it comes to providing information about climate change issues in BC’s forests, with -2 = strongly distrust and 2 = strongly trust.

<p>Mean scores representing the level to which respondents trust the groups of actors when it comes to providing information about climate change issues in BC’s forests, with -2 = strongly distrust and 2 = strongly trust.</p

Knowledge scale items and factor loadings.

<p>Factors’ loadings in bold indicate that they have been selected in a factor.</p

Description of the eight forest carbon mitigation strategies.

<p>Description of the eight forest carbon mitigation strategies.</p

Ranking in order of relative importance (from the most to the less important) of five possible outcomes to consider when selecting forest management strategies to mitigate climate change in BC’s forests.

<p>Ranking in order of relative importance (from the most to the less important) of five possible outcomes to consider when selecting forest management strategies to mitigate climate change in BC’s forests.</p

Expected directionality of the explanatory variables’ effect on levels of support for forest carbon mitigation strategies based on their relative levels of human-intervention.

<p>A positive sign indicates a positive relationship, a negative sign indicates a negative relationship and a positive/negative sign indicates that the relationship could either be positive or negative.</p

Environmental value scale items and factor loadings.

<p>Factors’ loadings in bold indicate that they have been selected in a factor.</p

Scale items and factor loadings of respondents’ support or opposition to climate mitigation strategies.

<p>Factors’ loadings in bold indicate that they have been selected in a factor.</p

Mean scores representing the degree of knowledge about four different topics related to climate change in the context of forests and their management, with 1 = not at all knowledgeable and 5 = very knowledgeable.

<p>Mean scores representing the degree of knowledge about four different topics related to climate change in the context of forests and their management, with 1 = not at all knowledgeable and 5 = very knowledgeable.</p

A conceptual framework highlighting the variables that affect level of support for conservation and forest management mitigation strategies.

<p>Positive (blue boxes) and negative (red boxes) signs respectively indicate positive and negative impact on level of support. Lighter (p ≤ 0.05), medium (p<0.01) and darker (p<0.001) colour shading refer to the calculated probabilities (p-values) of the variables in the linear regression. Dotted boxes identify variables that did not significantly factor into the regressions, but were correlated with risk perception of climate change.</p