To the CARB Board:I write to express my support for the
California Air Resources Board (CARB) 2022 Climate Change Scoping
Plan and offer suggestions to 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. We've already lost
much of our historic wetlands; we can't afford to relinquish any
more.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,
Bonnie Thompson
Baywood-los Osos,
California 93402
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