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Comment 36 for 2030 Target Scoping Plan Concept Paper (sp-concept-paper-ws) - 1st Workshop.
First Name: George
Last Name: Leonard
Email Address: gleonard@oceanconservancy.org
Affiliation: Ocean Conservancy
Subject: Ocean Conservancy comments on 2030 Target Scoping Plan Concept Paper
Comment:
Dear California Air Resources Board Members; Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the 2030 Draft Scoping Plan Update (Plan). We applaud the Board for including in the Plan a focus on Natural and Working Lands, including wetland, riparian, estuarine, coastal, and ocean habitats. Investments in California’s coast and ocean can play a critical role in reducing the state’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and combating climate change, and can also produce a range of co-benefits that will help ensure oceans continue to provide the services upon which all Californians depend. The Plan, along with the associated Discussion Paper on California’s Climate Change Vision and Goals for Natural and Working Lands (Discussion Paper) released for the March 23rd 2016 public workshop, recognizes the importance of ocean and coastal habitat to California’s climate change strategy. In this letter, we offer additional support for the importance of this focal area, and provide several recommendations and comments on the Plan. We greatly appreciate the state’s efforts on climate change, and support the most ambitious actions recommended in the concepts in an effort to limit global warming below 2 degrees C. We note, however, that even this goal is increasingly considered inadequate, as evidenced by the aspirational limit of 1.5 degrees C at the Paris climate talks. For the ocean in particular, a lower limit is critical to preventing the worst consequences of climate change, including sea level rise and storm surges, species shifts due to increasing temperatures, habitat loss, and synergistic effects among them. We urge the ARB to include reference to this aspirational limit and to encourage the most stringent, efficient, and fastest means of achieving greenhouse gas reductions. For this reason, Ocean Conservancy commends the current inclusion of ocean and coastal habitats in the Plan, and recommends even greater recognition of their importance in the overall strategy for using the inherent capacities of natural and working lands to increase carbon storage and mitigation and provide economic and environmental co-benefits. For example, we recommend that the ARB specify “coastal habitats” whenever different habitat types are mentioned. We also recommend four key strategies for better incorporating natural and working lands, and in particular, coastal and ocean ecosystems, into the State’s climate change strategy through the Plan. These are: 1. Protect and restore near-shore habitat and ecosystems; 2. Restore offshore marine food webs to utilize food web dynamics as a carbon management tool; 3. Advance seaweed aquaculture as a mechanism to remove CO2 from the ocean, while providing jobs and biofuels to benefit all Californians; and 4. Create an “Ocean Carbon Strategy Workgroup” to identify, advance and test new, science-based ocean initiatives to mitigate and adapt to climate change. Ocean Conservancy concludes that there are a number of investments the State can make in our coast and ocean to reduce, mitigate and/or sequester carbon that advances California’s AB 32 goals, positions the State to combat climate change more broadly, and maximize co-benefits to our natural resources. Please see our detailed comments attached. Thank you very much. Very truly yours, George H. Leonard and Anna M. Zivian
Attachment: www.arb.ca.gov/lists/com-attach/39-sp-concept-paper-ws-VzgFYANnBTcGbgNc.pdf
Original File Name: Ocean_Conservancy_ARB_Plan_Comments.pdf
Date and Time Comment Was Submitted: 2016-07-08 14:52:37
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