Mediterranean Forest Stakeholders Skip Climate Resilient Options in Participatory Planning, Study Finds

A study of participatory forest management in Spain, Morocco, and Italy found that local stakeholder groups did not choose the management options best suited to withstand severe drought. Researchers paired workshops with the CAFE decision support system, which models carbon, water, fire, and ecological resilience. Across four Mediterranean sites, stakeholders consistently favored thinning, grazing, or non-intervention plans that improved conditions relative to doing nothing, but the resilience performance of their final choices was no better than random selection from the model's feasible options. Resilience was hard to see in the usual metrics. Heavy thinning in a Spanish pine plantation tripled deep soil water percolation, while similar thinning barely changed water flows elsewhere. The study argues that drought resistance and recovery must be added as explicit planning objectives rather than expected as byproducts of managing for wildfire risk, water, biodiversity, or biomass. For carbon and forest projects in dry regions, the finding matters because long term carbon storage depends on how forests respond to climate stress.