https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7572-050X
Figures
Abstract
Natural Climate Solutions (NCS) are climate mitigation approaches that aim to incorporate sustainable practices in forest, agriculture, wetland, and grassland management to increase GHG mitigation from land sectors and have been estimated to be highly effective from global to local scales. As more state and local governments seek to address climate change using a range of available techniques, the potential of NCS has gained increasing attention. As NCS directly involves land management by a range of actors (such as farmers and landowners) operating within resource-dependent communities (such as those dependent on the forest sector), it also has the potential to significantly alter the socioeconomic conditions and opportunities for these communities, necessitating a critical assessment of how NCS implementation interacts with socioeconomic systems. In this work, we focus on the implementation of NCS in Washington State to support its 2050 net-zero goals. Using a novel research approach, we compare recently estimated NCS potentials along multiple pathways with estimates of county-level socioeconomic sensitivities, exposures, and adaptive capacities to NCS-related changes and highlight the potential challenges that exist. These challenges can significantly limit the estimated GHG reduction and ecosystem co-benefits from NCS if they are implemented without due consideration of potential social interactions. We outline policies that can supplement NCS implementation to support just and equitable approaches that contribute to resilient communities and enhance human wellbeing while mitigating GHG emissions from the natural lands of Washington state.
Citation: Roy Chowdhury PK, Robertson JC, Levin PS, Case MJ, Brown DG (2025) Opportunities and challenges to community-level adoption of natural climate solutions in Washington State. PLOS Clim 4(2): e0000580. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pclm.0000580
Editor: Lily Hsueh, Arizona State University, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Received: June 26, 2024; Accepted: January 22, 2025; Published: February 28, 2025
Copyright: © 2025 Roy Chowdhury et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Data Availability: The codes and datasets to reproduce the analysis and figures presented here can be found on Zenodo, accessible with via this link: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14291514
Funding: Funding: The work was supported by the Corkery Family Endowed Fund held at the University of Washington and award to DGB in his role as director.
Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
1. Introduction
There has never been a more urgent time to utilize all available strategies at humanity’s disposal to limit global warming below 2°C and mitigate the worst effects of climate change [1]. Among the available options, many nature-based solutions have attracted scientific attention because they can offer effective greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation and also community-level adaptation benefits [2–10]. [11] identified 20 potential conservation, restoration, and improved land management activities, such as agricultural nutrient management and reforestation, collectively called natural climate solutions (NCS), to enhance carbon storage and mitigate GHG emissions across forests, wetlands, agriculture, and grasslands around the world. The global estimate of cumulative NCS potential was 23.8 petagrams (Pg) CO2eYr-1 (95% CI 20.3–37.4), which is about 37% of the GHG mitigation required in the short-term to keep global warming below 2°C [11]. Further work by [12] estimated the maximum NCS potential for the United States to be around 1.2 (95% CI 0.9–1.6) PgCO2eYr-1, which could help reduce the then current national GHG emissions by 21%. Similar estimates from [13] showed NCS can cumulatively mitigate about 0.39 (95% CI 0.17–0.61) PgCO2e GHG between 2021–2030 in Canada. [14] found a potential cumulative NCS-related GHG mitigation in China between 0.6 (95% CI 0.5–0.7) PgCO2eYr-1 between 2020-2030 and 1.0 (95% CI 0.6–1.4) PgCO2eYr-1 between 2020-2060. These global- and national-level estimates highlight the significant potential of NCS in climate change mitigation from global to national scales.
Over the last couple of decades, many US states and regional coalitions have implemented policies for regional-level climate goals. The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) represents an inter-state coalition of twelve north-eastern and eastern US states that aims to reduce GHG emissions from the energy sector (www.rggi.org). Similarly, the Western Climate Coalition represents a coalition between California, Washington in the US and Quebec and Nova Scotia in Canada, managing economy-wide emission trading programs (https://wci-inc.org). The State of Washington passed a comprehensive bill, the Climate Commitment Act, to limit carbon emissions and set GHG limits. This law aims to progressively reduce GHG emissions by up to 95% of the 1990 levels by 2050, while the remaining 5% will be achieved using carbon reduction, avoidance, and removal efforts to achieve net-zero GHG emissions [15]. The Climate Commitment Act emphasizes NCS-aligned activities by investing in increasing ecosystem resilience and carbon-sequestering capacities under the Environmental Health and Safety program [16].
To achieve such goals and support policy design and implementation, state-level estimates of NCS potential are required. Recent studies have assessed NCS potential in California [17], Oregon [18], and Washington [19]. In California, the potential contribution of NCS to meeting the state’s 2030 goals has been estimated at 17% of the emission reduction required [17]. In Oregon, NCS potential to reduce GHG emissions was projected between 2.7 and 8.3 MMTCO2e by 2035 and 2.9 and 9.8 MMTCO2e by 2050 [18]. [19] assessed the potential of 11 NCS pathways to reduce emissions in Washington State and found these actions could contribute between 4.3 and 8.8 MMTCO2eYr-1 at the end of a 30-year implementation period, which is equal to 4-9% of Washington State’s carbon neutral targets.
The benefits and challenges of using NCS pathways to meet GHG targets depend on ecological and social context [20]. NCS interact dynamically with the social, ecological, economic, and political systems in which they are implemented, and can, therefore, affect local communities. Indeed, NCS proponents often proclaim a responsibility of NCS activities to address its possible adverse impacts in socio-ecological systems through equitable community engagement and adaptive management [21]. Communities may be differentially sensitive to NCS-related changes in production systems, such as reduction in harvested timber volume from changes in forest management [22,23] or short-term loss in agricultural yield from changes in agricultural practices [24,25], due to their dependence on livelihoods associated with land and natural resource management. If potential conflicts between NCS and the socioeconomic systems in these communities are not understood prior to implementation, these interactions may result in negative socioeconomic impacts. For example, without proper planning, implementation of NCS activities might result in increases in farm operating costs [26], potential short-term reduction in harvest and volume yield [22,23,27] or increases in housing and land prices resulting from increasing land rent for development [28]. Additionally, changes in land-based production systems can affect the social fabric of communities in myriad ways. For example, the sense of place and identity, cultural practices and values, heritage, and disruptions to intra- and inter-community relations might all be affected [29,30]. The outlined conflicts can be disruptive and may lead to resistance to or delay in adoption, and ultimately result in underachievement of the estimated NCS potential. NCS-aligned activities may also generate ecological co-benefits from implementation of sustainable natural land management, e.g., through cropland resilience from enhanced soil carbon [31], and reducing loss from coastal storms through coastal wetland management [32] or from wildfire through improved forest management [33]. Additional benefits to human health from NCS-aligned activities stem from improved aesthetics and temperature reduction from forests, especially in urban areas; nutrient management can directly lead to improved water quality [12].
The right of self-determination in Indigenous and local communities is recognized as a key principle for both the equity and effectiveness of NCS [21]. A people-focused approach that acknowledges the social, economic, and ecological complexities of local communities and empower people in land-related decision-making can ensure success of NCS-like climate policies compared to ones that do not [34]. Analyzing the sensitivities of local socioeconomic systems is a crucial first step to identify the likely opportunities and challenges, prioritize policy measures to overcome challenges, develop community resilience and agency over their lands through supplementary policies, and support NCS implementation in ways that are equitable and just in reducing GHG emission.
Despite a clear need for information to support NCS implementation, existing literature on the socioeconomic implications of NCS is sparse. We address this knowledge gap by analyzing these implications and demonstrating an approach that combines understanding of NCS potentials, and the associated socioeconomic challenges and opportunities in Washington State. Our goal is to highlight the potential interactions between NCS implementation and community-level socioeconomic sensitivities to resulting changes, identify the trade-offs, and indicate the possible approaches for policymakers to pre-emptively address these issues while implementing NCS in Washington State. Addressing possible conflicts at the outset of NCS implementation has the potential to increase the acceptance and success of NCS strategies, reduce inequitable outcomes, and enhance resilience in impacted communities.
2. Methods
2.1. NCS pathways
To identify the trade-offs and synergies associated with implementing NCS pathways in Washington State, we compared county-level patterns of local socioeconomic sensitivities to changes in land-resource production patterns. County-level estimates of GHG mitigation potential for each of 11 different NCS pathways under ambitious, moderate, and limited implementation scenarios were provided in [19]. To distinguish the implementation rates between these scenarios, the authors applied different annually increasing implementation rates to each county’s recent historical rate of activity (see [19], for detail). For simplicity, we used the estimates under their most ambitious scenario (provided in cumulative MMTCO2e GHG mitigation over a 30-year project implementation period), which marks the upper bounds of the potential NCS-based GHG mitigation, for the following three most impactful NCS pathways, which were found to offer between 96% - 99% of total NCS-based GHG mitigation in Washington State.
- A. Extending timber harvest rotation: Extending the time to harvest across productive forest lands is estimated to be the most effective NCS pathway in Washington, with a median yearly GHG mitigation potential between 4.02 (95% CI 3.88, 4.16) MMTCO2e and 5.63 (95% CI 5.40, 5.84) MMTCO2e (under limited and ambitious implementation scenarios, respectively) at the end of a 30-year implementation period and under the ambitious implementation scenario can potentially mitigate a cumulative 142.90 MMTCO2e of GHG over the implementation timeline. [18] indicate similar effectiveness of forest rotation extension in Oregon. The pathway is composed of several associated activities, which include delaying harvest on a combination of federal, state, private, and other forest ownerships. In the Pacific Northwest, biological growth in forest tree species culminates much later than average forest rotations, which range between 40-50 years [23]. Delaying harvest allows the trees to reach closer to their biological growth maxima and sequester additional atmospheric carbon in the process. Wildfires pose an increasing threat to the forests in the region and can result in a rapid release of forest carbon back into the atmosphere. Therefore, Washington counties where more than 50% of forestlands are at high risk of forest fire were excluded from both assessments of NCS potential in PNW [18,19]. These fire-risk estimates do not account for potential future changes in forest fire risks caused by climate change. This can result in a spatially variable overestimation in the GHG emission reduction potential from extending timber harvest rotation pathway. Nonetheless, this is the best available science-based assessment of county-level NCS potentials for the State of Washington, and it facilitates our introduction here of community-level opportunities and challenges to implementation.
- B. Modification of agricultural management: The agricultural pathway is made up of three sub-activities that include implementing no-till agriculture and cover crops to sequester soil organic carbon, as well as reducing nitrous oxide emissions by limiting or reducing nitrogen fertilizer application to a prescribed efficiency level [18,35]. Soil is known globally to hold threefold more carbon than the atmosphere. This pool has seen historical carbon losses and stands to experience increased loss rates under future climate scenarios [36]. NCS can help in protecting the existing soil carbon as well as sequestering additional carbon through efficient natural land management to an estimated global potential of 23.8 (Gigatons) GtCO2eYr-1 [36]. The number of soil-carbon-focused NCS projects currently remains relatively low and wider application of these projects should include considerations of permanence of sequestered carbon [36,37]. Together, these activities are estimated to have a median yearly GHG mitigation potential ranging between 0.10 (95% CI 0.09, 0.11) and 1.40 (95% CI 1.28, 1.52) MMTCO2e at the end of the implementation period and a cumulative mitigation potential of 25.39 MMTCO2e of GHG emissions (under the ambitious scenario).
- C. Avoiding forestland conversion: Mitigating forestland conversion to other land uses is estimated to have a median yearly GHG mitigation potential of 0.12 (95% CI 0.11, 0.13) and 1.16 (95% CI 1.05, 1.27) MMTCO2e at the end of the implementation period with a cumulative mitigation potential of 29.14 MMTCO2e of GHG under the ambitious scenario. The pathway addresses a combination of two land transitions that, when avoided, reduce emissions, i.e., forest to other rural uses and forest to urban conversion.
2.2. Community-level socioeconomic sensitivities and adaptive capacities
We frame our analysis using the concept of vulnerability [38], which has been expressed as a function of a community’s exposure to external changes (such as climate change or, in this case, implementation of NCS), sensitivity to the exposure, and adaptive capacity to cope with the change resulting from the exposure [39]. While the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has moved from the vulnerability to a risk-centered framework in their fifth assessment report (AR5), we chose to frame our analysis around the vulnerability framework due to its wide acceptance in literature (e.g., [39]) and its diagnostic value in the context of NCS implementation.
Due to the social and economic implications associated with NCS pathways, we hypothesize that sensitivity is related to the degree of their interactions with county-level socioeconomic dynamics, which can be represented using information on each county’s dependence on land-based production systems that may plausibly be affected by each pathway. For example, total forest- or agricultural-sector wages might be affected by modification in forest or agricultural practices. These impacts will further be affected by local socioeconomic trends. e.g., changes in land-use policies to control land change in rapidly urbanizing counties.
The likelihood and the degree of such impact will depend on community-specific socioeconomic characteristics, leading to potentially unique interactions. We focus our analysis at the county level, because counties are the smallest geographic entities for which all the required information is consistently available and thus was the level of analysis presented by [19]. Also, county governments are an important level of governance likely to administer relevant environmental and economic development policies. Thus, we treat each Washington county as a unique socio-economic unit, representing the different constituent communities within it and operating with unique county-specific policy and governance, and evaluate their socioeconomic characteristics to identify sensitivities to NCS implementations. We address implications of the choice of geographical scale in the discussion.
Differences in the adaptive capacity of communities [40–42] were captured using the Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) from the Center for Disease Control (www.svi.cdc.gov; [43]). The SVI is constructed to measure a community’s susceptibility to harm from exposure to hazards [44], stemming from diverse factors including the lack of access to financial resources, political power and representation, and social capital [45]. These measures indicate the community’s resilience to changes, such that the most vulnerable communities (indicated by higher SVI values) are also the least resilient [46] to climate change and to socioeconomic changes, including those that might result from NCS implementation. SVI incorporates demographic, social, and economic factors that contribute to community resilience to exogenous disruptions, consistent with the definition for adaptive capacity [38]. The SVI values indicate the percentile rank of counties within Washington in 2020 from most to least vulnerable (See supporting information). The least resilient counties experience higher poverty, disability, unemployment, the proportion of older and minority population, as well as a lack of education, mobility, and per capita income, compared to the counties with greater resilience and capacity to adapt to changes. Thus, the ability of the general population to adjust to the socioeconomic shifts brought on by NCS implementation in these counties may be lower than their counterparts that possess higher adaptive capacities. Despite the incorporation of several resilience-relevant factors in the construction of SVI (see supporting information), other important aspects that determine a community’s ability to adapt to stressors, such as people’s connection to place, knowledge sharing on local levels, social learning [47], sense of community and belonging, self-efficacy, coping methods [46,48], or social identities and collective resilience [49,50] are not included. While some of these factors may correlate with measures that are included in the calculation of SVI, they are difficult to measure consistently. Nonetheless, the SVI remains one of the most effective and widely used measures of general community resilience.
2.3. Characterizing socioeconomic sensitivities and interactions with NCS
To characterize a community’s socioeconomic sensitivity to implementation of NCS, we identified several relevant variables, including economic, demographic, and land ownership information using county-level socioeconomic data (additionally, time-series data when available) from the US Census Bureau and Washington State agencies (See supporting information for details). We then used two separate principal component analyses (PCA) to summarize data and create composite variables. Both PCAs incorporated basic demographic and land-use variables, while the first PCA included variables on forest-sector involvement and the second PCA included variables on agricultural-sector involvement (see supplementary information for more details). The resulting components characterized Washington counties for the following characteristics:
- PCA 1: The first principal component (PC 1.1) captured the Washington counties’ urbanization levels and associated sensitivities to avoiding forestland conversion, while the second component (PC 1.2) captured the county-level reliance on forest sector wages.
- PCA 2: The first PC (PC 2.1) captured the county-level reliance on agricultural sector wages in their economy and their engagement in agriculture supporting activities.
Together, these PCs represent socioeconomic sensitivities by measuring the degree to which the counties’ social and economic systems depend on land-based production systems that might be affected by NCS implementation. We excluded any variables that were used to develop the SVI indicator from PCA construction to reduce potential overlap between the SVI and PCs.
For the identification of possible trade-offs and synergies, we first classify the relevant PC scores, SVI values, and the GHG-reduction potentials from the three NCS pathways into three county quantiles (by number of counties) indicating high, medium, and low values. For each pathway, we then mapped counties according to different paired levels of socioeconomic sensitivity and NCS potential. Specifically, we paired (a) the PC most associated with forest-industry wages (PC 1.2) with potential for GHG mitigation from extended rotations, (b) the PC most associated with agricultural wages (PC 2.1) with potential mitigation from shifts in agricultural management, and (c) the PC most associated with urbanization levels (PC 1.1) with the potential mitigation from reduced forest conversion. Counties with high socioeconomic sensitivity (e.g., where there is a high reliance on forest wages) and a high potential GHG reduction (e.g., resulting from extended rotations) were classified as “high-high” and interpreted as having a potential trade-off between the socioeconomic impact and NCS potential. Conversely, counties indicated as “low-high” signify lower socioeconomic sensitivity due to low reliance on affected livelihood activities but high potential GHG reduction, indicating potential opportunities with relatively lower likelihood of adverse community impacts from NCS implementation. We then repeated the analysis by comparing paired levels of adaptive capacity and NCS potential for each county. We analyze SVI interactions with NCS potential separately from the PCs related to sensitivity in order to represent these as separate, independent factors affecting NCS implementation.
Through these comparisons, we were able to identify the unique county-level opportunities and challenges and identify counties that, e.g., may have high NCS potential but where implementation interact with high socioeconomic sensitivities or low adaptive capacity (i.e., high SVI or high PC scores), or the counties that offer high NCS potential while also possessing lower socioeconomic sensitivities or high adaptive capacities. We then present plausible GHG mitigation, aggregated across the three pathways at different interaction levels, signifying the potential for GHG mitigation with respect to various levels of plausible social and economic impacts and the different degrees of community-level capacities to withstand any resultant short-term disruptions.
3. Results
3.1 Interactions between socioeconomic sensitivities and NCS potential
3.1.1. Extending forest rotation pathway.
The spatial patterns of interaction between county-level socioeconomic sensitivities to extending forest rotation and GHG mitigation from associated NCS pathway indicate that Washington counties most dependent on forest-sector activity (including wages) are also those that offer the most potential for forest carbon storage (Fig 1). High-high interactions are found in the counties on the densely forested Olympic Peninsula, such as Clallam, Jefferson, Mason, and Grays Harbor counties, along with Pacific, Lewis, and Cowlitz counties in Western Washington and Pend Oreille and Stevens counties on Eastern Washington, indicating high GHG mitigation potential from forest rotation extension associated with high levels of socioeconomic sensitivities to changes in forest management. The counties of Thurston, Pierce, Klickitat, and Snohomish in Western Washington exhibit medium levels of socioeconomic sensitivities and high potentials for GHG mitigation from extended forest rotation (medium-high). This indicates some degree of compatibility between sensitivities and GHG mitigation in these counties due to their lower dependence on forest sector wages while still offering high GHG mitigation from extending forest rotation.
County classifications indicate combined levels of dependence of forest-sector activity (high, medium, low) and NCS potential from extended rotations (high, medium, low). The WA county outlines are from 2019 Census TIGER Shapefiles and are in the public domain (https://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/geo/shapefiles/index.php).
3.1.2. Agriculture management pathway.
From the patterns of interactions between county-level reliance on agricultural sector activity (including wages) and GHG mitigation from modifying agricultural management, it is apparent that most of the counties with high-high and medium-high interactions are located in central Washington, where most of the state’s agricultural activities are concentrated (Fig 2). Douglas, Grant, Lincoln, Adams, Whitman, Garfield, Columbia, and Walla Walla counties all exhibit high socioeconomic sensitivities to modifying agricultural practices while also having the highest potential to mitigate GHG emissions. Yakima and Franklin counties exhibit more compatibility with medium-high classification of their socioeconomic sensitivities and potential GHG mitigation from NCS agricultural pathways, respectively.
County classifications indicate levels of economic dependence on the agricultural industry (high, medium, low) and NCS potential through agricultural management techniques (high, medium, low). The WA county outlines are from 2019 Census TIGER Shapefiles and are in the public domain (https://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/geo/shapefiles/index.php).
3.1.3. Avoided forestland conversion pathway.
The conversion of Washington forestlands through land-use change is one of the biggest challenges to forest carbon protection [51,52]. Forestlands also experience more frequent forest management as the opportunity costs rise from development [53], negatively affecting the forest carbon pool. The Puget Sound region is one of the fastest growing urban regions in the US, causing rapid urban expansion into timberlands that is expected to continue into the foreseeable future [28]. A severe discrepancy between forested and developed land values [28] results in high development pressure on undeveloped land near existing urban areas, which shows up as high-high interactions in areas along the Puget Trough area (i.e., Snohomish, King, Pierce, and Thurston counties), near the Portland, Oregon metro area (Cowlitz and Clark counties), and in Spokane County (located in the Spokane Metropolitan Area). Additionally, Jefferson and Mason counties in the Olympic Peninsula and Lewis County exhibit medium socioeconomic sensitivity to the pathway and high potential GHG mitigation from avoiding forestland conversion. It should be noted here that the currently observed medium sensitivities may likely change into high sensitivities as the urbanization continues in these areas resulting in increased demand for developed lands. Together, the spatial distribution of the interactions between urbanization levels and NCS potential highlights the likely difficulty in controlling forest land transition ceteris paribus (Fig 3) .
County classifications indicate, first, urbanization levels (high, medium, low) and, second, the levels of NCS potential through avoided forest conversion (high, medium, low). The WA county outlines are from 2019 Census TIGER Shapefiles and are in the public domain (https://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/geo/shapefiles/index.php).
3.2. Interactions between adaptive capacity and NCS potential
The spatial distribution of interactions between SVI values and GHG mitigation potential indicates that some of the Washington counties with relatively low adaptive capacities may be exposed to the disruptions to their social and economic systems from NCS implementation. Four of the counties in the western part of the state, Clallam, Grays Harbor, Lewis, and Cowlitz, indicate high estimated potential for GHG mitigation via the extended forest rotation pathway. However, these counties also exhibit high SVI scores (Fig 4A). The interaction between GHG mitigation potential from agricultural management changes and SVI (Fig 4B) indicate that a significant portion of central and eastern Washington (particularly Yakima, Douglas, Grant, Adams, Franklin, and Walla Walla counties) offers high potential GHG mitigation from agricultural pathways also exhibits low adaptive capacity.
County classifications indicate levels of adaptive capacity and NCS potential via: (a) extended forest rotations; (b) changes in agricultural management; and (c) avoided forest conversion. The WA county outlines are from 2019 Census TIGER Shapefiles and are in the public domain (https://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/geo/shapefiles/index.php).
Limiting forestland conversion may likely impact two counties (Lewis and Cowlitz) in southern Washington that offer high GHG mitigation potential but do not possess the similarly high levels of adaptive capacity as their other more urbanized counterparts (e.g., King or Snohomish counties) (Fig 4C).
Several counties offer high GHG mitigation potential from NCS while having medium levels of adaptive capacity (Fig 4). Pacific, Mason, Thurston, Pierce, Pend Oreille, and Klickitat counties (extending forest rotation); Spokane, Columbia, Whitman, Benton, and Klickitat counties (modifying agricultural practices); Mason, Thurston, Pierce, King, and Spokane counties (avoiding forest conversion) indicate communities might be better positioned to withstand socioeconomic changes due to NCS implementation because of their moderate levels of adaptive capacities.
3.3. Potential GHG mitigation across different interaction levels
Our analysis thus far indicates that the full potential GHG mitigation may not be achievable without first carefully addressing the plausible exposures of resource-dependent communities with low adaptive capacity to the changes that can result from NCS implementation. We highlight the need to consider interactions that arise between socioeconomic sensitivities and GHG mitigation potential from NCS pathways, and between adaptive capacities and NCS potential. By quantifying GHG mitigation potential across different types of interactions, we now show that, from the total potential GHG mitigation (under the ambitious pathway from [19]), only about 6.9% can be obtained from counties exhibiting low socioeconomic sensitivities to NCS implementation (i.e., combinations of low-high, low-medium, and low-low socioeconomic sensitivities and potential GHG mitigation potential from NCS) (Fig 5). In contrast, the counties exhibiting medium socioeconomic sensitivities (medium-high, medium-medium, and medium-low interactions) offer an additional 25.7% while the rest, or about 67.5% of the total GHG mitigation potential, is tied to counties that indicate high sensitivities (high-high, high-medium, and high-low interactions) to the socioeconomic impacts of NCS implementation.
Similarly, about 25% of the aggregated estimated GHG reduction across the three pathways can be provided by communities with high adaptive capacity (i.e., low-high, low-medium, and low-low interactions between SVI values and GHG mitigation potential, respectively) (Fig 6). Another 40% GHG mitigation can be linked to the counties possessing medium levels of adaptive capacity (i.e., medium-high, medium-medium, and medium-low interactions). The final 35% is connected to counties possessing the lowest adaptive capacities (i.e., high-high, high-medium, and high-low tradeoffs interactions). The challenges associated with addressing the need of the least resilient communities while trying to achieve statewide GHG mitigation highlights the need for an equitable approach to NCS-related climate mitigation in WA.
4. Discussion
NCS can be important components in strategies seeking to limit increases in atmospheric GHG concentrations and helping to keep temperature increases below 2°C [54]. However, successful implementation of NCS requires participation of diverse actors (e.g., landowners and farmers) and necessitates considerations of the economic and distributional impacts of associated regulations and incentives, and the plausible negative social and economic consequences during the necessary transitions phase. In this paper, we focus on Washington as an example of a state with a clear climate goal that can benefit from NCS implementation to highlight the potential opportunities and barriers to local-scale level adoption of NCS strategies.
4.1. Challenges and opportunities of NCS pathways in Washington State
4.1.1. Modification to forest management.
Washington State’s highly productive and carbon-dense forestlands carry a long history of commercial forestry, generating revenue and employment for local communities. This context presents both an opportunity to mitigate climate change via additional forest carbon sequestration and a challenge to support forestry-dependent communities through any socioeconomic impacts. Any policy implementation that ignores these social complexities associated with environmental management may further complicate acceptance of new guidelines on forest management [55].
While extending forest rotation is reportedly one of the most effective ways to sequester additional atmospheric CO2 [23], substantial extension of forest rotation can result in timber volume loss in the short-term [22,23], reducing the supply of timber to the lumber mills [27], and limit opportunities to alter management strategies to leverage improved silviculture practices [22]. [23] noted that implementation of alternative forest management practices that increase rotation length to maximize carbon storage can result in a nearly 25% reduction of forestland net present value in PNW in the short term. Some of the harvested timber volume loss can be offset by introducing increased thinning during the transition from shorter to extended rotation periods [22,27]. The impact of harvest rotation extension on aesthetics and recreation remains somewhat uncertain and depends on intermediate management such as slash removal [22] and thinning [56]. Additionally, increasing management actions could add to recurring expenditures and negatively affect recreational activities [57], and result in loss of land values of adjacent non-forested parcels [58].
The impact on community well-being in response to changes in forest industry are expected to be greater in communities with a greater dependence on forest wages and jobs. In such communities, a decline in timber harvest in the near and medium time frames may further affect wider community support for NCS implementation. The socioeconomic disruptions can negatively affect the economic well-being of forest-dependent communities. For instance, lengthening harvest rotation may force residents to find alternative livelihoods, which can be hard to adapt to without additional support. Loss of forest revenue can also increase the pressure for forestland sale for development, especially near existing urban areas where the developed land values are significantly higher than the forested land values [28,59].
Therefore, supplementary policy measures are needed to sustain forestland owners through a period of transition, especially the private owners who possess 43% of all forestlands in Washington [60]. Carbon offset payment is a useful policy tool that can increase forest value [61] and encourage sustainable forest practices [62]. The two broad classes of private forest owners in Washington, i.e., industrial and small forest owners, differ significantly in their financial and non-financial motivations for forest ownership and management. Small forest landowners are driven by a more diverse range of motivations, including financial, legacy, recreation, and environmental values, than any other forest owner groups [59]. Even with the introduction of financial incentives, small forest landowners, especially the ones with smaller land holdings, may largely stay out of a program’s reach [63,64]. Therefore, additional outreach and training could be beneficial to increase landowner participation in conservation programs [65], promoting sustainable forest management aligned with NCS goals.
Extension of forest rotation not only increases carbon storage, but past studies have also shown additional benefits from extending forest rotation, such as biodiversity conservation [66] and water quality improvement [67]. Including ecosystem services co-benefits in the assessment metrics can allow for payments for additional ecosystem services and increasing the revenue flow to the forest owners that participate in sustainable forestry. Inclusion of co-benefits in stakeholder engagement may address the diverse values of forest owners and encourage their participation that is motivated by values other than revenue generation.
While we have identified policies that can help facilitate landowner participation in modified forest management through payments for carbon and/or ecosystem services, additional employment in the forest-products sector (e.g., mill workers) will not benefit from such policies. Policymakers, therefore, need to implement robust supplementary policies to provide the affected population with alternate job options, such as in restoration, firefighting, recreation, production and processing on non-timber forest products, and forest ecosystem services production [68], along with required training for transition.
In addition to addressing plausible economic impacts, policy and administrative remedies are also needed to address impacts on social and cultural aspects of human wellbeing that might be affected, such as resource access, physical and mental health, belongingness, and connection to place. [30] systematically highlight these aspects of human wellbeing and provide a helpful framework for including these considerations in environmental policy making. Similarly, [69] describe how lessons from the initial implementation of the Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP) have been applied to some subsequent management strategies promoting wellbeing of tribal communities by supporting access to and protection and restoration of cultural and natural tribal values.
4.1.2. Modifying agricultural practices.
NCS aims to modify three agricultural practices, i.e., no-till agriculture, cover crops, and nutrient application, to reduce GHG emission and sequester atmospheric carbon. A global meta-analysis [25], comparing yields from no-till versus conventional agriculture across several crops and regions across the world, found a reduction in crop yield from no-till agriculture in dry and irrigated landscapes. Similar environmental conditions prevail in central and eastern Washington, where the greatest potential from agricultural pathways is concentrated in the state (Fig 2). A WA-focused experimental study also noted the lack of profitability and greater variability in revenue from no-till rotations compared to conventional farming methods [70]. Additionally, past studies indicate small or no yield increase in the short-term [71], especially in the first couple of years [25], which may further limit the enthusiasm of small farmers in adopting no-till techniques.
Cover crops are known to reduce negative environmental footprints from agriculture, help in prevent soil erosion, and enrich soil organic matter [72]. However, their adoption is affected by farm economics and added costs in the form of direct costs (seed, planting, fertilizer application, and termination by herbicide spraying) as well as indirect and opportunity costs (such as decreased soil water, foregone cash crops, and grazing opportunities) [26]. Carefully shifting nutrient management practices, on the other hand, has been noted as an efficient mitigation pathway due to the reduction in GHG emissions from agriculture [71,73]. However, experimental results from the PNW suggest that financial incentives from carbon markets, at the lower end, are not effective enough to persuade the farmers to alter nitrogen management [74].
Achieving NCS potential through the agricultural management pathway will require participation by a large number of farmers. Cost sensitivity of farmers is a barrier to adoption of alternative management strategies, where subsidy programs could alleviate economic concern and promote cover-crop usage [26]. Cost-sharing can similarly increase the chances of cover-crop adoption [75]. Federal programs such as the Environmental Quality Incentives Program can not only partially cover the direct costs, but also cover some indirect costs such as foregone income [26]. The Conservation Stewardship Program is another policy that can help offset costs, and more farmers need to be brought into such programs. In the Pacific Northwest, adoption of cover crops is affected by a perception of costs vs. benefits and lack of trial-based evidence. A recent study [76] highlights the need for new research on site-specific implementation, stakeholder engagement and collaboration, peer-to-peer learning, and capacity-building efforts. To optimize existing nitrogen management, the farmers can be encouraged to regularly test their lands [73], additional resources in the form of remote sensing, spatial mapping, and precise measurements can further enable informed decision making in this regard [73]
The estimated loss of crop yield from cover crops [24] and no-till agriculture [25], even in the short run, may affect a more extensive stakeholder base beyond the farmers including communities dependent on agricultural activities for their livelihoods, as the agricultural production also supports related industries, such as food processing facilities, that are located in close proximity to the farms. The changes in technologies and economics during the proposed three-decade-long implementation phase may impact the employment opportunities in the agriculture sector. Any economic consequences must be addressed via supplementary policies like the ones proposed for the forest sector. Smaller farms, accounting for about 89% of all agricultural farms in Washington [77], may require special attention due to additional costs and yield penalties associated with sustainable agricultural practices. Therefore, targeted programs to mitigate those risks are needed, and these may also help prevent agricultural land loss to other uses.
4.1.3. Avoiding forest conversion.
The difference between the forested and developed land value is a prime economic driver of forestland conversion [59,78,79]. [28] estimated the average per acre forest land value to be $1,438, compared to a $165,947 per acre value for developed use in western Washington. The large difference between forest and developed land values is a prime driver of forest conversion, and any policy aiming to reduce forest conversion must therefore increase the incentives of forest ownership and reduce the demands for land development.
Washington enacted a Growth Management Act in 1990 to protect natural lands by reducing urban expansion outside a designated area. However, urban expansion has occurred faster outside the designated areas than inside [80], most of which were at the expense of forestlands [59]. Our analysis highlights the significant challenges of GHG mitigation from avoiding forest conversion in Washington counties experiencing high levels of urbanization. Therefore, policies addressing housing needs can have important implications for success of NCS pathways. For example, provisioning more affordable housing, and relaxing the minimum density requirements may help increase housing supply within the growth areas and lessen the development pressure on natural lands [81].
The foregoing discussion presents a number of supplementary policies that can help a just and equitable NCS implementation (Table 1). Many can be implemented at the federal, state, and county levels, providing some support for the notion that the county-level analysis presented is useful in supporting policy and decision-making.
4.2. Need for an equitable approach
Our analysis highlights that without careful consideration there is the potential for inequitable outcomes from implementation of NCS in Washington State. We highlight the need for attention to the social and economic impacts on communities that are differentially sensitive to NCS-related changes and possess different levels of adaptive capacities. Socioeconomically vulnerable populations are uniquely threatened by impacts from climate change [82]. However, the lack of representation of vulnerable populations in policy development processes can result in their concerns being left unaddressed and result in considerable societal costs [83]. Without adequately addressing the need of natural resource dependent communities, precipitous NCS implementation may cause additional harm and unequally distribute the burden and benefit of climate.
Though ostensibly different in scale and practice, the Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP) of 1984 can serve as an example for NCS decision makers indicating how forest management changes that suddenly reduce near-term timber harvest can negatively socially and economically impact communities in the Pacific Northwest, particularly without involvement of those communities in planning processes and implementation. NWFP was enacted with a set of sweeping reforms to forest management in the region’s national forests intended to protect biodiversity. However, cumulative socio-economic outcomes of the NWFP included decreased timber harvest from affected federal forests by 80-90%, substantial budget and workforce reductions on and around those lands, 30% reductions in harvests from non-federal lands within the plan area, and exacerbated technological changes, mill closures, and restructuring in the market and industry [68,84]. [29] analyzed the socioeconomic well-being in forest-dependent communities following the implementation of NWFP and noted that the forest communities generally exhibited lower well-being levels as compared to non-forest communities, especially in terms of income inequality. [85] carried out interviews of NWFP stakeholders that revealed a pattern of socioeconomic redistribution, marginalization of prevailing rural lifestyles and economies by capital and urban interests, and an overall loss for the small timber industry and rural communities. The interviewees also noted that timber production either shifted from federal to private lands or outside the region, which can counterbalance any NCS related GHG mitigation at regional or global scales. Compared to agricultural operations being run by large and distant investors, securing land rights of rural and Indigenous populations may encourage participation in sustainable agricultural practices [34].
In addition to creating jobs and generating revenues for the local communities, natural lands also provide for government revenues used for public works. The Washington Department of Natural Resources (DNR) manages about 3 million acres of public trust lands to support public services such as schools, state universities, public buildings [86]. Changes to management of these lands can differentially affect the funding for public services, depending on which land trust and which community is affected, and will have to be compensated for by other funding sources.
Addressing the shared benefits and burdens of NCS implementation requires consideration of a more comprehensive range of interventions than those solely aimed at increasing carbon sequestration. These resilience-focused considerations include policies that provide outreach, assistance, education and training to affected communities; aimed to develop several aspects of community resilience such as the access to financial, technical, and service-related assets, individual and community level flexibility to choose among different policy options, social organization and learning, and improved human agency to respond to changes [87]. As policies and approaches are developed to raise and allocate funds generated through carbon offsets and other mechanisms, particular consideration needs to be given to the risk of unequal impacts and ensure that investments in these communities are made to offset the possible negative impacts on human wellbeing. Inclusion of local communities in the NCS related policy design and implementation remains crucial. In this context [88] summarizes evidence from literature to highlight several benefits from engagement with local and Indigenous people, including being able to leverage the deep local and context specific knowledge, flexibility to mold implementation mechanisms to changing local social, economic, and environmental conditions, a more equitable power distribution between government and local communities, and equitable distribution of benefits within society resulting from knowledge about diverse environmental values [89–92].
An explicit acknowledgement of the fact that Indigenous communities share a unique bond with the land and ecosystems, which often goes beyond what is experienced by the common public [93], is required to include the unique contexts and needs of these communities in climate policy making. Washington State is home to 29 federally recognized tribes who live in reservations across the state and have sovereign rights over about 8% of the state’s land area [94]. Inclusion of these communities in NCS implementation processes through formal and appropriate consultations and negotiation, focusing on coproduction of knowledge and social capital generation, can significantly bolster the prospects of NCS in Washington state.
While counties are often the appropriate administrative unit for climate policy implementation, within-county variation in communities’ socioeconomic context need to be addressed during the implementation for a truly equitable outcome. Analysis at a finer scale would facilitate identification of smaller geographic areas with vulnerable populations and facilitate more finely tuned community policies and planning by local jurisdictions. Such a scale of assessment is outside the scope of the present study, due partly to the availability of consistent statewide data, but further analysis of this sort could be a valuable elaboration of this study. Policy making at the federal, state, and county levels can include opt-in provisions for municipalities, tribes, and other more local communities to address the finer scale at which the patterns of intersection between NCS potential and social vulnerability occur.
NCS by itself cannot mitigate industrial, fossil-fuel generated, and other anthropogenic GHGs at scale and, therefore, should be considered a complementary rather than an alternative to other more urgent GHG mitigation strategies [19,54]. Care should also be taken to address the release of sequestered carbon from regions not covered by state-level policies, necessitating coordination between local policies with national, regional, and global efforts. A strength of NCS-like strategies lies in the possibility for co-benefits generation that can improve other environmental and social conditions beyond carbon [5] To achieve these co-benefits, participation of numerous actors and stakeholders in decision making is needed, increasing knowledge, building capacity and resilience, and ultimately striving for a just transition that shares burdens and benefits of policy actions equitably. For the resilience and sustainability of NCS actions, they must be implemented in ways to support people [7] and social structures that can sustain the economic and ecological changes needed to fight climate change over future decades.
5. Conclusions
Washington is one of the pioneering states in the US to have instituted a net-zero climate policy. To achieve such goals, every available GHG mitigation strategy needs to be used. NCS can contribute towards this while also producing co-benefits for the environment and society. However, as we highlight in this paper, appropriate consideration of the possible socioeconomic impacts of NCS, like other mitigation strategies, is necessary to avoid significant disruptions to socioeconomic well-being of local communities and need to be addressed through a range of policies, including some (e.g., investment in community and individual wellbeing, housing, and training and education) that are not often considered as relevant to environmental management, to reduce unintended harm and achieve the envisioned NCS potential.
Acknowledgments
The authors gratefully acknowledge the help of Natural Resource Spatial Informatics Group at the University of Washington and Dr. Andre Coleman at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory for critical feedback on this work.
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