In biosecurity rationalities and discourse, the future is brought into the realm of contemporary political calculation through risk management, as the unpredictability of life is used to justify actions made in the present to attempt to control, or produce, the future. For example, the UK’s Sunday Telegraph newspaper reported that homeowners were refused mortgages by banks and building societies (e.g. Barclays, Santander and Lloyds Banking Group) due to the presence of Japanese knotweed (Fallopia japonica) in the vicinity of their homes (Gray, 2010), which can push through concrete and cause damage to buildings. Affected properties could be devalued by over £10,000 (Gray, 2010). Biosecurity approaches also respond to or produce a particular future-orientated ‘affect’. This can take a variety of forms. These include the anxiety, fear and worry of producers (foresters, farmers, etc.) who wait for the next pest or disease to arrive on their land, or of people who see cherished landscapes being altered through forces apparently beyond their control (this can induce a condition for which the term ‘solastalgia’ has been coined – Albrecht, 2005). Then there is the excitement and passion of community groups involved in native restoration projects. For example, the Dorset Wildlife Trust held a raffle to decide which lucky volunteer got to cut down the last rhododendron on Brownsea Island, marking the end of a 50-year eradication programme to restore the native wooded nature reserve (BBC News, 2011). Seen from the point of view of climate change, both the present and the future

are in a state of dynamic flux. Increasing emissions of greenhouse gases over the last century are now generally accepted as the main drivers of increased global temperature by about 0.5°C since 1970 and changes in the hydrological cycle (IPCC, 2007). Conservative estimates of future climate change indicate global warming of mean surface temperatures by 2-4.5°C, accompanied by changes in rainfall patterns and an increased frequency and severity of extreme environments, such as drought and heat waves (IPCC, 2007). Allen et al. (2010) indicate that at least

some of the world’s forested ecosystems are already responding to drought-and heat-induced tree mortality, exemplifying the risks of climate change to forests. The speed of temperature change has a global mean of 0.42 km/yr (AIB emission scenario) and ranges from 0.08 km/yr in tropical and subtropical coniferous forests to 1.26 km/yr in flooded grasslands (Loarie et al., 2009). For plants and animals to survive, they must keep pace with and adapt to climates as they move (Pearson, 2006). The rate of northward tree migration during the Holocene after the retreat of the glaciers is estimated at c. 1 km/yr (Pearson, 2006), and may have been as slow as c. 0.1 km/yr if refugia (i.e. areas that remained ice-free during the last glaciation) reseeded the landscape (Loarie et al., 2009). Given the current level of habitat degradation and fragmentation resulting from anthropogenic activities, Loarie et al. (2009) predict that large areas of the globe (28.8 per cent) will require velocities faster than the more optimistic plant migration estimates. In other words, plants will not be able to move fast enough to keep up with changing conditions, resulting in communities being out of step with the local climate, which could lead to widespread decline. Best estimates of species loss indicate extinction of c. 10 per cent of species for each 1°C temperature rise (Fischlin et al., 2007; Convention on Biological Diversity, 2009). Meanwhile some species will persist and others migrate, potentially forming new combinations of species. The future survival of those that remain is further threatened by the release of introduced pests and diseases from climate-limiting factors, such as the occurrence of spring frosts in the UK (e.g. Broadmeadow and Ray, 2005). This suggests that the maintenance of biodiversity requires an increase in the ability of plants and animals to disperse and for flexible and adaptive management plans, which is in some tension with lock-down approaches to biosecurity measures. This final chapter will function as a conclusion for the edited collection as a

whole. We will begin by taking the concept of the future of biosecurity, and the future in biosecurity practices, broadly conceived, and weave this with themes and threads from the preceding chapters, by way of an overview/review. We will then explore the future of biosecurity through the lens of climate change. This chapter will consider the ways in which climate change challenges biosecurity through the need for species migration; the ways in which climate change increases biosecurity threats; and the use of climate modelling in predicting future invasive patterns. Will climate change demand a new paradigm of ecological management through the growing disparity between ‘native’ species and suitable ecological conditions? Will we learn to live with and value ecological change or will climate change be used to justify greater biosecurity control, as pest species and diseases escape their barriers and expand their ecological ranges?