Review of Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation Implementation in Canada’s Forest Ecosystems Part II: Successes and Barriers to Effective Implementation

Abstract

With its northern location, the exposure and vulnerability of Canada’s forest ecosystems to climate change impacts are all too glaring. While there is now an extensive body of literature describing expected climate change impacts and potential responses, studies characterizing the implementation of adaptation and mitigation practices in forest management remain rare in the Canadian forest sector. Using a systematic literature review approach, we examined reports on forest management practices implemented in response to climate change, specifically focusing on governance and institutional arrangements that either support or limit climate change adaptation and mitigation responses. Our literature sample size of 24 documents suggests that the body of literature reporting on adaptation and mitigation practices in Canadian forest management is scarce. Governments remain the dominant actors providing funding and leading the implementation and reporting of climate change adaptation activities, primarily in response to national or international climate change commitments. Forest practices such as enhanced silviculture, assisted migration, and nature-based solutions were the most frequently reported. However, given the scarcity of literature, it is difficult to conclude the scope of practice uptake in Canada. Barriers such as lack of information/data, inter-jurisdictional knowledge transfer, policy conflicts, forest tenure models, technical capacity gaps, and economic barriers to adaptation need to be overcome in order to strengthen climate change response in forest management in Canada. Better coordination of reporting at the provincial and national levels and improved information flows between the private and governments are needed.