U.S. Resource Management Agencies Unprepared for Climate Change

WASHINGTON, DC, September 10, 2007 (ENS) - Federal agencies manage almost 30 percent of the land area of the United States - over 600 million acres of land, and more than 150,000 square miles of protected waters - but these agencies have not made climate change a priority, and the agencies' strategic plans do not address climate change, according to a new report by the investigative branch of the U.S. Congress.

At the request of Senators John Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat, and John McCain, an Arizona Republican, the Government Accountability Office, GAO, evaluated the state of readiness to respond to climate change of the five federal agencies that manage America's vast land and water resources.

In its report to the senators, released Thursday, the GAO recommends that the secretaries of agriculture, commerce, and the interior develop guidance incorporating agencies' best practices, which advises managers on how to address climate change effects on the resources they manage and gather the information needed to do so.

Climate change will affect the coasts and oceans, forests, and fresh waters, as well as grasslands and shrublands managed by the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the National Park Service, the report finds.

Sparked by lightning, fire consumes forest in the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness east of McCall, Idaho. September 2007. (Photo by John Thorton courtesy U.S. Forest Service)

Resource managers have limited guidance and are uncertain as to what, if any, actions they should take to address the impacts of climate change, says the report.

In commenting on a draft of this report, the three departments generally agreed with the recommendation, the GAO said.

"We waited a long time for this report to confirm the daunting prospect that climate change is impacting our public lands from coast to coast, and this Administration is ill-equipped to respond," said Senator Kerry, who first requested the report in 2004.

"This report should push the administration to follow last month's court ruling to complete a long-overdue comprehensive and integrated national climate science assessment. I also hope that this report is a wakeup call for this Congress to take bold and decisive action to pass climate change legislation that reduces carbon emissions," Kerry said.

For years, Kerry has demanded that the Bush administration produce a Congressionally-mandated comprehensive assessment on climate change science. He is planning to introduce legislation to amend and strengthen the Global Change Research Act.

Senator McCain, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, has not commented specifically on this GAO report but in January told a Congressional committee, "We are no longer just talking about how climate change will effect our children's and grandchildren's lives, as we did just a few years ago, but we now are talking about how it is already impacting the world. Drought, declining snow packs, forest fires, melting ice caps, species dislocation and habitat loss, and extreme weather events - all are examples of how climate change is impacting us. We need to act to mitigate and adapt to these devastating events."

To gather information for this report, the GAO held a workshop with the National Academies in which 54 scientists, economists, and federal resource managers participated, and conducted four case studies.

According to experts at the GAO workshop, federal land and water resources are vulnerable to a wide range of effects from climate change, some of which are already occurring.

Polar bear surrounded by melting ice. Polar bears use sea ice for migration and hunting. (Photo by Rolf Gradinger courtesy NOAA)

GAO obtained experts' views on the effects of climate change on federal resources and the challenges managers face in addressing climate change effects on these resources.

The GAO concludes that the five federal agencies have not made climate change a priority, and the agencies' strategic plans do not specifically address climate change.

"Resource managers focus first on near-term, required activities, leaving less time for addressing longer-term issues such as climate change," the GAO reports.

At the outset, the GAO says, "A growing body of evidence shows that increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases - primarily carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide - in the Earth's atmosphere have resulted in a warmer global climate system, among other changes."

The GAO relies on The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, as a leading source for international climate expertise, and notes the IPCC's April 2007 finding that "observational evidence from all continents and most oceans shows that many natural systems are being affected by regional climate changes, particularly temperature increases."

The IPCC also noted that climate change has led to rising sea levels, declining snow cover, melting glacial and Arctic ice, coral bleaching, and changes in the timing and amount of precipitation, among many other effects of a warming climate.

"The stresses caused by climate change could be exacerbated by existing stresses on ecosystems from such sources as pollution, human settlement, land-use change, and invasion by nonnative species," the GAO warns. "Together, climate change and ecosystem stresses may cause substantial damage to, or the complete loss of, some ecosystems and the extinction of species."

"Furthermore," says the GAO, "scientists project that changes in temperature and precipitation may result in more extreme weather events, such as more frequent and severe droughts, storms, and floods as well as changes in local climate conditions."

The IPCC reports that 11 of the 12 years between 1995 and 2006 rank among the 12 warmest years since 1850 - the first year that global temperatures were recorded - and are indicative of a strong upward warming trend over the last 50 years.

While a broad order developed in January 2001 under the Clinton administration directed the Bureau of Land Management, BLM, the Fish and Wildlife Service, FWS, and the National Park Service, NPS, to consider and analyze potential climate change effects in their management plans and activities, the agencies have not yet provided specific direction to managers on how they are to implement the order, the GAO reports.

A BLM official stated at an April 2007 hearing that BLM is establishing policy and technical committees to address necessary actions and develop guidance to address climate change in agency management practices.

Cattle on arid land in New Mexico managed by the Bureau of Land Management (Photo courtesy BLM)

While the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA and the Forest Service have not provided specific guidance to their resource managers, NOAA officials said that the agency is establishing a working group to determine what actions to take to address climate change effects.

Forest Service officials said that FS planning processes are designed to identify and respond to emerging issues such as climate change.

James Cason, associate deputy secretary of the interior, says a Climate Change Task Force established by Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne is already addressing many of the issues raised in the GAO report. Three of the agencies mentioned by the GAO fall under the jurisdiction of the Interior Department - the Bureau of Land Management, the Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Park Service.

In a July 19 letter of response to a draft of the report addressed to GAO Comptroller General David Walker, Cason writes, "The breadth of involvement and enthusiasm of the personnel throughout the Department working on this issue will help ensure that the Department effectively generates climate science in areas of our expertise; contributes to greenhouse gas mitigation through carbon sequestration and other measures; and develops adaptation strategies to reduce the adverse impacts of climate change. We are committed to keeping personnel within the Department involved and informed."

The National Park Service is also taking steps to respond to climate change. In 2002, the agency began a Climate-Friendly Parks Program to help parks measure and reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, evaluate their vulnerability to climate change, monitor for climate change effects, and educate visitors.

The quarterly "Ranger" magazine is the premier publication of the Association of National Park Ranger. The most recent issue, Summer 2007, examines climate change in the national parks. Find out more at: www.nps.gov/climatefriendlyparks.

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2007. All rights reserved.