To the CARB Board:I support the California Air Resources Board
(CARB) 2022 Climate Change Scoping Plan and offer suggestions to
better reflect the importance of California's coastal habitats. Our
state has felt firsthand the effects of intensifying wildfires,
record heat waves, and severe droughts, making nature-based
solutions that harness coastal wetlands' carbon-absorbing
properties a crucial element to advance emission reduction goals.
Specifically, I ask CARB to:• Endorse the draft plan's
recommendation to restore at least 60,000 acres of the
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to reduce emissions, restart carbon
burial, and provide flood mitigation, water quality, and
biodiversity benefits to the region and state.• Include an
acreage target and related management strategies for ALL of the
state's coastal wetlands, including San Francisco Bay, Eel River
Estuary, and Humboldt Bay, and the sloughs and pocket estuaries
found along the central and south coasts.• Improve accounting
for coastal wetlands, including tidal marsh, scrub-shrub, swamps,
and seagrass, in the state's Natural and Working Lands greenhouse
gas inventory, drawing upon established U.N. Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate guidelines. Collaborate with state agencies and
research institutions to incorporate newly released and existing
localized data sets into the inventory.California has lost an
estimated 90% of its wetlands after decades of diking, draining,
dredging, damming, development, and other impacts. For example,
eelgrass has faced extensive loss in the state because of excess
sedimentation resulting from land use practices, pollution, and
direct impacts from coastal infrastructure. Morro Bay, site of a
National Estuary Program, has experienced a massive die-off in
eelgrass habitat, with declines of more than 90% since 2007. Sea
level rise will accelerate this loss if eelgrass beds, tidal marsh,
and other coastal habitats are unable to migrate shoreward.Such
losses harm wildlife and people alike. Coastal wetlands sustain
resource- and recreation-dependent coastal people and economies,
protect cultural resources, improve water quality, and reduce
flooding. And the climate benefit of coastal wetlands can have a
flipside: Their destruction releases this stored carbon back into
the atmosphere. I applaud CARB for developing the draft 2022
Climate Change Scoping Plan and formally recognizing the role of
natural and working lands in this plan. I urge you not to miss the
opportunity to protect and expand the state's blue carbon sinks by
including strong measures for ALL of the state's coastal wetlands.
Thank you for your time and consideration of this important
issue.Sincerely, Stewart Wilber San Francisco, California
94114
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