European vulnerability to global change: a spatially explicit and quantitative assessment

Many aspects of our planet are changing rapidly because of to human activities and these changes are expected to accelerate during the next decades. For example, forest area in the tropics is declining, many species are threatened with extinction, and rising atmospheric carbon dioxide results in global warming. Many of these changes will have an immediate and strong effect on agriculture, forestry, biodiversity, human health and well-being, and on amenities such as traditional landscapes. Furthermore, a growing global population, with increasing per capita consumption of food and energy, are expected to continue emitting pollutants to the atmosphere, resulting in continued nitrogen deposition and eutrophication of environments. Over the last decades many people have become increasingly aware of these environmental changes, such that they are now commonly recognized as 'global change'. In the face of these changes, it is important to integrate and extend current operational systems for monitoring and reporting on environmental and social conditions. Many research projects and several environmental assessments are currently addressing these concerns at all relevant scales, frequently in multidisciplinary collaborations. However, integrating this wealth of information across disciplines remains a considerable challenge.The vulnerability frameworkThis thesis presents and demonstrates a framework for integrating the results from the European project Advanced Terrestrial Ecosystem Analysis and Modelling (ATEAM) in a vulnerability assessment. ATEAM was a 3.4 million Euro project, involving scientists from 18 research institutes across the EU. Different modelling groups, specialised in disciplines such as agricultural science, forestry and biodiversity modelling, used the same, internally consistent, climate and land use change scenarios to calculate maps for a range of indicators (see Table 2.3). These indicators were defined in such a way that they can be seen as 'ecosystem services', i.e. benefits people obtain from ecosystems. These include timber production, climate regulation, biodiversity, and soil fertility. The model outputs covered the EU15 countries as well as Norway and Switzerland in maps with a 10 arcmin x 10 arcmin resolution (approximately 16 km x 16 km) and were calculated for baseline conditions and three future time slices (1990-2020, 2020-2050, 2050-2080).These maps of ecosystem service provision give important insights of the potential impact of global change for the different sectors, but do not take into account the possibility of adaptation to these impacts, thus reducing vulnerability to global change. Furthermore, it is difficult to compare impacts between different regions and across sectors. The principal objective of this thesis was to develop a methodology for quantifying and mapping vulnerability to global change impacts forEurope. The vulnerability framework should integrate the results form the sectoral ecosystem models. It should allow for comparisons between ecosystem service indicators, between global change scenarios and between different regions. In addition, some measure of adaptive capacity will need to be incorporated. This resulting framework can help answer policy-relevant questions such as:•         Which regions are most vulnerable to global change ?•         How do the vulnerabilities of two regions compare ?•         Which sectors are the most vulnerable in a certain region ?•         Which scenario is the least harmful for a sector ?In this thesis, vulnerability is defined as ' the degree to which an ecosystem service is sensitive to global change plus the degree to which the sector that relies on this service is unable to adapt to the changes '. This definition includes the potential impact of global change on the human-environment system to global change, as well as the possibility to reduce these impacts by adaptation, thus reducing vulnerability.The potential impacts are derived from the ATEAM ecosystem models. Increasing ecosystem service provision is defined as a positive potential impact (e.g. increased wood production), and vice versa . These measures of potential impacts are not easily compared. Firstly, the ecosystem service indicators are intrinsically different. Biodiversity and soil fertility are not easily compared. Furthermore, many ecosystem service indicators are very much related to wider environmental conditions, making it difficult to compare the potential impacts across the European environment. Wood production in The Netherlands and inSpainis difficult to compare because the environment in these countries differs so much. In order to overcome these problems, potential impacts are stratified by principal environments, thus creating a standardised measure of stratified potential impact that can be calculated for each ecosystem service indicator. The stratified potential impacts for the various ecosystem service indicators show that there are large potential impacts on the provision of many ecosystem services. The extent of these impacts differs between the ecosystem services, different regions ofEuropeand the alternative scenarios of change. Adaptation in general is understood as an adjustment in natural or human systems in response to actual or expected environmental change, which moderates harm or exploits beneficial opportunities. Here, adaptive capacity reflects the potential to implement planned adaptation measures and is therefore concerned with deliberate human attempts to cope with change, and not with autonomous adaptation. For the ATEAM vulnerability framework a macro-scale indicator of adaptive capacity was constructed. This index was based on a conceptual framework of socio-economic indicators, determinants of and components of adaptive capacity, e.g. gross domestic product, female activity rate, equity and number of doctors. The index was calculated on a province level across the European Union and differs for each storyline. Different regions inEuropeshow different adaptive capacities. The lowest values occur in theMediterranean, but differences decline over time.For the final vulnerability maps the two component of vulnerability, the potential impacts and the adaptive capacity, have been combined visually. Complete integration was considered, but given the limited understanding of adaptive capacity it was felt that such a combination is not possible. Nevertheless, the vulnerability maps give an intuitive overview of the vulnerability to the provision of an ecosystem service. For more detailed analyses, the stratified potential impacts and the adaptive capacity indicator can be viewed separately. In order to facilitate such analyses, a separate piece of software was develop, the ATEAM vulnerability mapping tooI, which is available on the CD-ROM annex to this thesis.Results form the vulnerability assessmentOn the whole, the Mediterranean region is projected to be the most vulnerable to global change. Large environmental shifts are projected, and the agriculture and nature conservation sectors face negative impacts. Forestry may be able to expand slightly, but faces negative impacts from droughts and forest fires. The only positive development for this region is a slight increase innet carbon storage.While adaptive capacity is indicated to increase, it is unlikely that the negative impacts can be alleviated fully by adaptation measures.In the Atlantic region climate change impacts will be relatively minor because of buffering of the climate by the ocean. Land use change will affect this region, and especially the agricultural sector will face negative impacts. Nevertheless, this region, which includes wealthy countries such asDenmark,United KingdomandFrance, is indicated to have a high adaptive capacity. Vulnerability of the region will therefore be relatively low.The vulnerability assessment shows how the alternative development pathways associated with the SRES storylines influence ecosystem service provision. The scenarios associated with strong economic developments and open markets (A-family) generally show the most negative impacts. There are however exceptions, for instance under the A1 scenario agricultural production is concentrated in the most optimal environments, and therefore forDenmarkand The Netherlands A1 is the most favourable scenario. Interestingly, the A-family of economic scenarios is also associated with the most rapid development of the adaptive capacity indicator, thus reducing vulnerability.Limitations and relevanceThe vulnerability framework presented in this thesis forms an extra extension to modelled projections of ecosystem service provision under future scenarios of global change. It is therefore inevitable that within the vulnerability framework complexity and uncertainty is increased. Importantly, the additional assumptions within the vulnerability framework have been made explicit. While the main motivation for the development of vulnerability framework was the demand for methods to integrate multidisciplinary assessments, such integration comes at the price of additional uncertainty.A second limitation of the vulnerability framework is the simple adaptive capacity index. It was developed specifically for the ATEAM vulnerability framework, with great constraints on time and resources. While it provides the possibility to include adaptive capacity in the vulnerability framework, the adaptive capacity index can only be seen as a very generic and coarse indicator. A single indicator is used for all sectors, across the whole ofEurope.Despite its limitations the results from the vulnerability assessment confirm existing knowledge about projected global change impacts inEurope. While stratification of the ecosystem service provision facilitates comparisons between regions. Nevertheless, stakeholders interested in a specific sector, or region have indicated that the uncertainties in the projections, combined with difficulties in relating results to their regional situation, limits the usefulness of the assessment in policy development.The results provided by this assessment could nevertheless be useful to stakeholders who are interested in multidisciplinary global change issues at the European level, e.g. EU policymakers and representatives from international NGOs. They can use the maps of ecosystem service provision, potential impacts and vulnerability as a spatially explicit portfolio of alternative futures. The provision of ecosystem services can be seen in their interactions, sometimes competing with each other, sometimes erasing or enforcing each other. While such a portfolio is not suitable for direct policy development, it can form a suitable basis for discussion on future policy directions, thereby facilitating sustainable management ofEurope's natural resources.Final conclusionsThe final conclusions of the research present in this thesis are:1.     Global change will have a large influence on ecosystem service provision inEurope.2.     There is large heterogeneity in projected vulnerability between regions and ecosystem services.3.     The Mediterranean region is projected to be the most vulnerable, with greatest impacts and lowest indicated adaptive capacity.4.     Wealthy north-western European countries face the lowest impacts and are indicated to have the greatest adaptive capacity.5.     On the whole, the agriculture and nature conservation sectors are projected to be most vulnerable.6.      The presented vulnerability framework is useful for stimulating discussion, and illustrating how vulnerability is influenced by future development pathways.