Comment Log Display

August 17, 2015

Chairman Mary D. Nichols and Executive Officer Richard Corey
California Air Resources Board
1001 I Street
Sacramento, CA 95814

Dear Chairman Nichols and Executive Officer Corey:

The Alliance of Regional Collaboratives for Climate Adaptation
(ARCCA) welcomes the opportunity to provide comments on the Joint
Agency Symposium on Climate Goals and Natural and Working Lands.

ARCCA is a network comprised of existing regional collaboratives
from across California. ARCCA’s members represent leading regional
collaboratives that are already coordinating and supporting climate
adaptation efforts in their own regions in order to enhance public
health, protect natural systems, build economies, and improve
quality of life. Through ARCCA, member regional collaboratives have
come together to amplify and solidify their individual efforts, as
well as to give a stronger voice to regionalism at the state and
federal levels. ARRCA members share information among regions on
best practices and lessons learned; identify each region’s most
innovative and successful strategies; and then determine how these
strategies could be adapted to another region’s particular needs.
As a result, ARRCA bolsters the efforts of member regional
collaboratives and empowers those interested in forging new
regional partnerships.

California has been tremendously successful in developing and
executing mitigation strategies to respond to the challenge of
climate change. In recent months, the urgency and opportunity of
addressing climate change through accelerated mitigation and
adaptation activities have become even more clear, as Governor
Brown outlined in his recent Executive Order (B-30-15). 

We are grateful to see the administration’s key principles and
concepts reflected in the current draft, especially those related
to climate impacts and resiliency.	 We are also very appreciative
that the guidelines recognize the importance of coordination with
local governments, as well as with rural communities. As we look to
accelerate our greenhouse gas reductions across the state, we know
you are aware of the challenges that managing farm and rangelands,
forests, and wetlands to store carbon can present. To realize
success, we encourage continued efforts from the State to engage
and empower local communities, particularly in California’s rural
areas, to take action and implement investments that strengthen the
state’s overall economic, environmental, and social resilience.
Additionally, taking a regional approach to climate adaptation to
support greenhouse gas reduction goals is critical to protecting
and managing land to minimize greenhouse gas emissions, increase
carbon sequestration, and build resilience. Within these contexts,
we offer a few broad comments that might strengthen the State’s
management of natural resources to address climate change and
achieve California’s climate goals.

It is clear that the State recognizes the critical role that rural
communities play to help advance climate mitigation efforts.
However, climate change impacts—including decreased snowpack,
continued droughts, and more numerous and damaging wildfires—grow
in severity while investments in important land and water resources
to address those impacts, especially in the forested headwaters of
the Sierra, declines. The well-being of all Californians is
inextricably tied to the goods and services, such as clean water,
clean air, carbon storage, and recreation, that are provided by
resource-rich, rural areas; thus protecting California’s rural
communities and regions is equally important to meeting long-term
urban sustainability goals. Investment in the upper watershed is
also critical to urban adaptation strategy to ensure reliability of
water, energy, recreation, and other resources urban areas rely
upon. Through ARCCA, both urban and rural areas are working
together to begin changing how funds get allocated in annual budget
discussions, future investment plans, and ongoing agency grant
programs to ensure that more funding is available for rural
projects that have statewide benefits.

Reducing our risks and increasing our capacity to respond and
become more resilient to the changing climate will require a new
and unprecedented degree of collaborative action throughout
California. Climate change mitigation and adaptation conversations
must occur at scales above city and county footprints to be
relevant and most effective as an integrated, landscape-scale
approach is required to properly manage the State’s natural and
working lands to achieve California’s climate goals. Communities
are already bound together at a regional scale by shared geography
and mutual reliance on resources that span across jurisdictions,
such as watersheds, forests, agricultural lands, rangelands, and
grasslands, and regional adaptation efforts are more likely to have
shared priorities and common goals with greater potential to have a
more holistic impact that address the region’s needs. Adopting a
regional approach that engages key stakeholders from all
sectors—urban and rural, public and private, decision-makers and
implementers—will be critical to respond to climate change quickly,
effectively, and equitably.

Because adapting to climate change will require significant
resource investments, great changes to the status quo, and
engagement of people from all sectors of society, it is important
to prioritize those actions that yield the greatest collective
benefits. Managing natural and working lands to increase carbon
sequestration presents a great opportunity to employ strategies
that will yield co-benefits to California’s environment, economy,
and public health, such as investing in urban greening to enhance
carbon sequestration, increase energy efficiency, and improve air
quality. We encourage the State to employ strategies that yield the
greatest collective benefits by adopting landscape or watershed
scale analyses, focusing on natural system function and services,
and establishing a preference for green or nature-based responses
to the maximum extent feasible.

We hope these comments are helpful to your efforts, and welcome the
opportunity to provide additional clarification or support
development of specific language as desired. 

Sincerely,
 
Krista Kline
ARCCA Chair
The Los Angeles Regional Collaborative for Climate Action &
Sustainability
 
Larry Greene
ARCCA Vice-Chair
Capital Region Climate Readiness Collaborative
 
Cody Hooven
The San Diego Regional Climate Collaborative
 
Allison Brooks
Bay Area Regional Collaborative and the Alliance for Climate
Resilience

Kerri Timmer
Sierra Climate Adaptation & Mitigation Partnership