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We conducted a spatially explicit vulnerability assessment of the forest industry in Maine, USA, to climate change in an effort to (1) advance a spatial framework for assessing forest industry vulnerability and (2) increase our understanding of Maine’s specific vulnerabilities to climate change in order to guide decision-making. We applied a bottom-up indicator approach to evaluate exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity to climate change using both biophysical and social indicators, largely driven by participatory processes. Our approach enabled us to synthesize and aggregate indicators of regional importance to evaluate vulnerability, allowing us to simultaneously examine combinations of potential changes. We found that each Maine county had its own unique combination of exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity indicators, with overall vulnerability highest in the rural northern and western parts of the state, where forest industry activities are most prevalent. However, results also indicate that although increased stress from climate-related changes can negatively affect Maine’s forest via high exposure, reduced sensitivities and increased adaptive capacity have the potential to largely decrease overall vulnerability in many parts of the state.

 

Values and motivations can shape natural resource management decision-making as individuals set conservation goals based on diverse, unique backgrounds, histories, and experiences. Recent literature points to the need to understand, evaluate, and articulate practitioner values to make explicit how experiences shape their work. Our research responds to calls to explore a diverse range of values and motivations among conservation practitioners. We used a qualitative approach grounded in phenomenology to advance an in-depth understanding of how conservation and stewardship practitioners experience, acknowledge, and make sense of conservation decision-making in Maine, USA. We interviewed 21 conservation and stewardship practitioners. Our results indicate the presence of complex value systems, including strong biospheric, altruistic, eudaimonic, as well as egoistic values. These values interact and intersect with motivations for participants’ careers in conservation in unique ways, driving participant actions and decision-making. Within Maine specifically, our results highlight the many areas for convergence of broad values among seemingly diverse groups that can inform opportunities for collaboration. Participants expressed various pathways to careers in conservation, where their work enables them to make a meaningful contribution to the environment and society. However in situations where personal and organizational values are misaligned, the role of organizational transparency, employee empowerment, and agency are key. Our results have implications for conservation groups seeking to achieve high employee satisfaction, as well as researchers, policymakers, and practitioners who hope to inspire individuals to take on conservation careers to create sustainable and transformative action for the future. Fostering early experiences in place, including interactions with the non-human world and local community, are important for influencing and reinforcing values and motivations for conservation action.

 

In this essay, we identify a temporal turn in environmental rhetoric. As field researchers, we have experienced different senses of time bumping against one another in intercultural, ecological situations. Although these micro-experiences of time provide a constant grounding for our lives, we are also aware of the macro-expressions of time and the ways that they order our world and understanding of environmental degradation. We detail three interrelated temporal themes in environmental rhetoric. First, we delve into the practical considerations of time, articulating it in relation to how humans address environmental crises. Second, we respond back to ourselves by discussing epistemological concerns of time that emphasize knowing as critical to appropriate action and recognizing the need for impatience in the face of colonial, sexist, and racist systems that have existed for far too long. Lastly, we unpack multiple conceptualizations of time—the ontological commitments of different entities, systems, and cultures—and ask how scholars should conduct their own work given the temporal challenges presented by environmental problems, the demands of the field, the need for radical change, and the necessity of intelligent and meaningful choices. We do not seek to resolve tensions between these three themes but deepen the field's engagement with multiple temporalities. The conclusion offers some pathways to stimulate further scholarship about environmental temporalities.