Tom DeMeo

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Climate Change Strategy for the Pacific
Northwest Region, USDA Forest Service

• Tom DeMeo
• Regional Ecologist
• Acting Climate Change Coordinator

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USDA Strategic Plan

• Strategic Goal 2 Ensure our national forests
  and private working lands are conserved,
  restored, and made more resilient to climate
  change, while enhancing our water resources.
• Objective 2.2 Lead efforts to mitigate and
  adapt to climate change
• Performance measure 2.2.3- Percent of National
  Forests in compliance with a climate change
  adaptation and mitigation strategy.

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National Roadmap for Responding to Climate
Change USDA Forest Service July 2010
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• Agency Capacity
• Employee education
• Designated climate change coordinators
• Develop program guidelines and training

• Mitigation and Sustainable Consumption
• Assess and manage carbon
• Reduce environmental footprint

• Partnership and Education
• Integrate science and management
• Develop partnerships

USFS Response to Climate Change

• Adaptation
• Assess Vulnerability
• Set Priorities
• Monitor Change

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Regional strategy with seven major points

• Improving climate change awareness and literacy
• Vulnerability assessment
• Adaptation strategy
• Monitoring
• Guidance to field
• Collaboration
• Sustainable Operations

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Strategy with seven major points

• Improving climate change awareness and literacy
• Survey 42 of Forest Service employees
  either dont believe the climate is changing, or
  that there is nothing we can do about it
• This probably reflects
• views of the general public

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Strategy with seven major points

• Improving climate change awareness and literacy
• Social science tells us
• Public is arrayed in groups from urgent action
  needed to active opposition
• You can influence the groups in the middle
• Environment is never a top issue with the public
  at large
• Interest in the climate change issue waxes and
  wanes
• 
  (Credit Suzanne Moser, consultant)

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Strategy with seven major points

• Improving climate change awareness and literacy
• Social science tells us
• DONT
• Scare people. They will give up.
• 2. Think providing more information is
  sufficient (the information deficit paradigm).
  People receive information through cultural,
  political, and experience filters. Dont
  underestimate how strong these are.

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Strategy with seven major points

• Improving climate change awareness and literacy
• Social science tells us
• DO
• Embrace reasonable hope
• Move the discussion away from
• them, there, then to
• us, here, now
• Show people a reasonable pathway
• to success

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Strategy with seven major points

• Improving climate change awareness and literacy
• Examples of reasonable hope
• Consider recycling, hybrid cars, organic
  gardening, reusable grocery bags, and the local
  food movement
• Not so long ago all these were considered fringe
  ideas now they are mainstream.
• Practical education and incentives brought this
  about.

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Strategy with seven major points

• Reasonable hope for climate change
• 1. Show people they can save money. Example
  home solar panels in Oregon
• 2. Show the numbers for carbon saved by using
  local food
• 3. Show how land use laws improve their quality
  of life
• .Making it us, here, now

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Strategy with seven major points

• Vulnerability assessment
• Adaptation strategy
• Monitoring

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Strategy with seven major points

• Vulnerability assessment
• --Development underway
• --Interim products by the spring of 2011
• --Final products in the fall of 2011

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Strategy with seven major points

• Vulnerability assessment
• --Terrestrial
• --Aquatic
• --Socio-economic

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DRAFT Terrestrial
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Strategy with seven major points

• Adaptation strategy
• Monitoring
• --Following the vulnerability assessment, develop
  these two together
• --Will probably involve expert panels

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Strategy with seven major points

• Adaptation strategy
• The best adaptation strategy is
• a well-thought out and
• defensible restoration strategy
• --Need (active or passive)
• --Efficacy
• --Public support

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Strategy with seven major points

• Guidance to field
• --Field wants to know
• - What do we do about climate change?
• - Show us the game plan.

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Strategy with seven major points

• Guidance to field
• --Whats the plan?
• --Carbon accounting
• --Vulnerability assessment
• --Restoration priorities

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Above Ground Carbon - Oregon
Above Ground Carbon -- Oregon
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Summary of carbon by ecoregion and vegetation type
5 7 Summary of carbon by ecoregion and
vegetation type uch potential carbon per unit
area fixed on the westside versus the eastside
forests
5 to 7 times as much potential carbon per unit
area fixed on the westside versus eastside
forests
The C density in PNW OG forests is equivalent to
tropical rainforest levels
Large potential to sequester more carbon than is
currently there
Data from Beverly Law and students, College of
Forestry, Oregon State University
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Strategy with seven major points

• Collaboration
• --Necessary but not sufficient
• --Moving beyond talk to specific projects
  can be difficult
• --People protect their interests reduce
  anxieties
• --Be specific about what you are asking them
  to contribute, and what they will gain

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Strategy with seven major points

• Sustainable Operations
• --Reducing fleet fuel use, more
  energy-efficient buildings, teleconferences.

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• Any mule can kick a barn down, but only a
  carpenter can build one.
• 
  --Sam Rayburn