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California’s land sector – forests, farms, wetlands, coasts, deserts, community greenspaces, and more – are a key pillar of California’s climate change agenda. Assembly Bill 1757 (C. Garcia, 2022) called on the Natural Resources Agency, in collaboration with the Air Resources Board, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Department of Food and Agriculture, to develop nature-based solutions climate targets for 2030, 2038, and 2045. This work builds on the elevated role of this sector called for in Governor Newsom’s Executive Order N-82-20, which increased state focus on nature-based solutions that deliver on our climate change goals and other critical priorities, such as improving public health and safety, securing our food and water supplies, and increasing equity.
Nature-based solutions that deliver on California’s climate change goals are land management practices that increase the health and resilience of natural systems, which supports their ability to serve as a durable carbon sink (lands that absorb more carbon than they release). For example, nature-based solutions in forests – such as reintroducing prescribed fire – reduce the threat of catastrophic wildfire, supports long-term carbon storage, and builds resilience of our forests to future climate impacts. Similarly, restoring coastal wetlands can reduce the risk of flooding, store carbon, and build community, economic, and ecological resilience along California’s coasts.
This priority emphasizes our commitment to achieving our nature-based solutions climate targets which will increase California’s communities and natural systems ability to thrive together in the face of climate change. While we all pay a price when our lands and waters are unhealthy – with our health, our economic prosperity, and our security – some of us are burdened more than others. As we accelerate nature-based climate solutions, a core goal for California is to do so in a manner that increases equity and environmental justice.