To the CARB Board:I support the California Air Resources Board
(CARB) 2022 Climate Change Scoping Plan but changes are needed
strengthen the natural working lands targets 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 Change
methodologies for these habitats. And 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. And
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.These
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,
Mha Khalsa
Los Angeles, California
90035
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