Resilience

Even prior to concerns arising from recorded changes in climate, forests have had to adapt to both extreme weather events and to climate dynamics. For this reason, trees have developed mechanisms to adapt within their lifetimes, and to confer this ‘learning’ to their progeny. In our haste to ‘plant’ trees, we cannot ignore that there are complex ecosystem processes which create resilience in the face of change, many of which we are only now starting to understand. Issues such as mychorrhizal networks and epigenetic inheritance deserve to be considered as a matter of urgency. A forest is, after all, a visible manifestation of a much larger system. Planting trees to meet commitments, without considering what’s ‘under the bonnet’ is a route to failure. This can have negative impacts on dependent business and communities, especially where there are opportunity costs from Land Use Change involved.