Sustainable & Resilient California: The Central Valley Project provides and enables climate-safe infrastructure solutions
The United States Bureau of Reclamation and the Western Area Power Administration should utilize principles of California law to demonstrate how the CVP is essential[i] for making California climate safe by reducing GHG emissions, promoting both working and natural lands and augmenting global food security.[ii]
Executive Order B-30-15
In April 2015, Governor Brown signed this Executive Order to set a new interim statewide target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. State agencies’ planning and investment shall give priority to actions that both build climate preparedness and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, use flexible and adaptive approaches to prepare for uncertainty, and implement natural infrastructure solutions. This was codified by SB 32 and SB 1000 in 2016. Listed here are two quotes relevant to the CVP’s present and future value to California.
The California Natural Resources Agency shall update every three years the state’s climate adaptation strategy, Safeguarding California, and ensure that its provisions are fully implemented. The Safeguarding California plan will: Identify vulnerabilities to climate change by sector and regions, including, at a minimum, the following sectors: water, energy, . . . , agriculture, … biodiversity and habitat, and ocean and coastal resources.
State agencies’ planning and investment shall be guided by the following principles - Priority should be given to actions that both build climate preparedness and reduce greenhouse gas emissions; [and] Where possible, flexible and adaptive approaches should be taken to prepare for uncertain climate impacts; [and] Natural infrastructure solutions should be prioritized.
Both Reclamation and WAPA (power and O&M branches) are influential actors to ensure the CVP achieves climate preparedness. Similarly, the CVPIA SIT advocates an adaptive management approach, and the decision support model should accentuate using natural infrastructure solutions together with engineered solutions.
SB 1386: Resource conservation: working and natural lands
In 2016, the Governor approved Senate Bill 1386 which declared that conservation and management of working and natural lands, in addition to being a key strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, will provide multiple public benefits such as assisting with adaptation to climate change, flood protection, food production, and enhancing fish and wildlife habitats.[iii] The CVP provides multiple benefits such as these listed by interdependently supporting both agricultural lands and natural lands.
Safeguarding California Plan (“Plan”)
The latest update to California’s Climate Adaptation Strategy was issued in January 2018.[iv] The update sets forth a multitude of principles and recommendations applicable to all state agencies including the Conservancy. The CVP infrastructure and operations can fit within the many principles and recommendations listed below.
Principle 1: Consider climate change in all functions of Government.
Principle 2: Partner with California’s most vulnerable populations (e.g., San Joaquin Valley) to increase resilience through investments.
Principle 5: Prioritize natural infrastructure solutions to build climate preparedness, reduce greenhouse gases and produce other multiple benefits.
Principle 6: Promote collaborative adaptation processes with federal, local and regional government partners.
Recommendation L-4: Integrate economic development initiatives with programs designed to bolster resilience.
Recommendation L-6: Provide financial assistance support to promote investment in climate adaptation through land use and community development.
Recommendation B-1: Strengthen the climate adaptation component of conservation planning efforts at multiple scales.
Recommendation B-3: Increase restoration and enhancement activities to increase climate resiliency of natural and working lands.
Recommendation B-4: Increase biodiversity monitoring efforts.
Recommendation B-5: Continue incorporating climate considerations into state investment decision processes related to fish and wildlife conservation.
Recommendation W-1: Vigorously prepare California for flooding.
Recommendation W-4: Reduce Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta climate change vulnerability.
Recommendation W-5: Prepare California for hotter and drier conditions and improve water storage capacity.
Recommendation W-6: Address water-related impacts of climate change on vulnerable and disadvantaged populations and cultural resources.
Recommendation W-9: Require closer collaboration and coordination of land use and water planning activities to ensure that each reinforces sustainable development that is resilient to climate changes.
Recommendation W-10: Protect and restore water resources for important ecosystems.
The Plan defines “climate-smart restoration” as restoration activities that prepare the system for the impacts of climate change. The CVP can fit this definition by proposing multi-benefit restoration activities to improve species habitats, reduce flood risk and mitigate water supply issues caused by drought. The CVP operation can provide natural infrastructure solutions coordinating land use and water planning by enabling fluvial geomorphological processes to restore the habitat and improve its capacity to support a diversity of species.
California’s Fourth Climate Change Assessment (“4th Assessment”)
This report was just issued on August 27, 2018.[v] The 4th Assessment is part of California’s comprehensive strategy to act based on cutting-edge climate research. It was designed to address critical information gaps that decision-makers need at the state, regional, and local levels to protect and build resilience of California’s people and its infrastructure, natural systems, working lands, and waters. Key quotes from the 4th Assessment are included below.
California is one of the most “climate-challenged” regions of North America and must actively plan and implement strategies to prepare for and adapt to extreme events and shifts in previously “normal” averages.
Agriculture is one of the most vulnerable sectors under climate change. Sustaining agricultural productivity in the San Joaquin Valley will require improved adaptation and mitigation strategies . . . Managing sustainable agroecosystems in the San Joaquin Valley will require a systems approach that accounts for resource linkages to other economic sectors, such as waters for cities and the environment . . . Building resilience in ecosystems through active management, developing physical and biological connectivity, and restoring key biological processes will greatly improve ecosystem response to acute climate event and chronic anthropogenic stressors.
Resilience is a concept that recognizes the interconnections and interdependencies across people, nature, and infrastructure. Social cohesion and a healthy economy are important determinants of resilience, alongside stable infrastructure and healthy natural systems. California uses a definition of resilience that defines outcomes across people and communities, natural systems, and infrastructure and built systems. Resilience also depends on interconnections across these systems.
Increasingly, adaptation and resilience solutions are taking a more integrated approach that considers how climate change will affect systems, or the networks that connect people, infrastructure, and nature.
There must be a “Prioritization of natural infrastructure solutions.”
There must be a “Promotion and prioritization of integrated climate actions” to include adaptation solutions building resilience while promoting the state’s greenhouse gas emission reduction goals.
The 4th Assessment deals extensively with Natural Systems and Working Lands and Waters. It states that California’s natural landscapes include riparian and wetland habitats and working lands include agricultural lands. These interconnected landscapes provide habitat for biodiversity, produce food, support healthy soils to store water and carbon. Notably, it states that natural and working lands provide important opportunities for natural infrastructure solutions.[vi]
The 4th Assessment promotes adaptation and resilience in the face of climate change through two important prongs: (1) the capability of built infrastructure systems to withstand changing conditions and shocks while continuing to provide critical services; and (2) using natural systems that can adjust and maintain desirable ecosystem characteristics. In support of these prongs, the 4th Assessment presents new research affirming that natural infrastructure is a key tool for building this resilience.
AB 2800: Climate-Safe Infrastructure Bill
In 2016, the Governor approved AB 2800 which established and directed the Climate-Safe Infrastructure Working Group (“CSIWG”). AB 2800 declared, among other things, that California will need to design and maintain infrastructure to withstand increasingly severe impacts. The impacts of climate change “will require significant changes in designing and building projects, such as . . . water infrastructure, and require planning for the resilience and restoration of natural systems.”[vii] On September 5, 2018, the CSIWG published its Report that was recently presented to the California Legislature.[viii] The Report referenced the 4th Assessment’s examination of interconnected lifelines and included recommendations to inform a comprehensive approach to building resilience in California, which recognizes the interconnections and interdependences across people, nature, and infrastructure. The Report suggests that Proposition 1 provides timely and proper funding to invest in “built and nature-based infrastructure.”[ix] In order to fulfill AB 2800’s legislative mandate, the CSIWG defined the scope of infrastructure and key definitions. I list the ones here that are particularly applicable to the CVP as a climate-safe infrastructure.
Infrastructure is defined as the system of interconnected natural or human-made assets, as well as physical and virtual structures and facilities embedded in built and/or natural environments, that is put to social/economic uses, operated by humans, and governed by institutions, rules, social norms and expectations of their service.
Infrastructure supports the functioning of society, and its operation and maintenance are necessary for the public’s health, safety and welfare. . . . Some infrastructure is considered critical, i.e., so vital that its destruction or incapacitation would have a debilitating impact on the economy, security, public health, safety and welfare of society on a local, regional or statewide scale.
Climate-safe infrastructure is infrastructure that is sustainable, adaptive and that meets design criteria that aim for resilience in the face of shocks and stresses caused by the current and future climate. . . . In short, “climate safety” is not a world free from change and disruption, but a world in which California has committed to seeking the greatest possible safety for all of its residents through the best available knowledge, the best technology and engineering design, a strong workforce, equitably distributed resources and sustained political will.
Resilience is defined broadly as the capacity of an individual, community, organization, structure or environment and their associated human-made and natural systems to assess, prepare for, absorb, cope with, rapidly recover and learn from, effectively adapt to, or take advantage of, risks associated with shocks of adverse disruptive events and the stresses of continually changing conditions, including those associated with a changing climate.
Executive Order B-55-18 To Achieve Carbon Neutrality
On September 10, 2018, Governor Brown signed this EO to work together with SB 100 (60% RPS and zero-carbon electric sector by 2045). This EO establishes a new statewide goal to achieve carbon neutrality no later than 2045 and net negative emissions thereafter. It states that “[a]ll policies and programs undertaken to achieve carbon neutrality shall be implemented in a manner that supports climate adaptation and biodiversity, including protection of the state's water supply, water quality and native plants and animals.” If this EO truly portends California’s legal, regulatory and operational future, then it will impact all critical infrastructures in California and prudent planning for capital projects now means incorporating considerations for achieving carbon neutral interdependency by then.
Footnotes
[i] These materials are in support of proposed Assembly Constitutional Amendment Number 17 stating that: (a) It is the intent of the people that hydroelectric generation facilities be treated as the most environmentally protective and carbon-neutral electrical energy resources for purposes of all state-supported programs and electrical program-related laws; and (b) The State’s programs relating to renewable energy and climate change shall include hydroelectric generation facilities as renewable electrical generation facilities, eligible renewable energy resources, and zero-carbon resources, and shall not differentiate between the electricity generated by hydroelectric facilities and the electricity generated by other renewable electrical generation facilities, eligible renewable energy resources, and zero-carbon resources. ACA 17, Section 10(a)-(b), (presented July 7, 2019).
[ii] See IPCC Special Report on Climate Change, Desertification, Land Degradation, Sustainable Land Management, Food Security, and Greenhouse gas fluxes in Terrestrial Ecosystems, Summary for Policymakers Approved Draft, August 7, 2019.
[iii] SB 1386, Section 1(a), (d); Public Resources Code Section 9001.5.
[iv] California Natural Resources Agency. 2018. “Safeguarding California Plan: 2018 Update.”
[v] Bedsworth, Louise, Dan Cayan, Guido Franco, Leah Fisher, Sonya Ziaja. (California Governor’s Office of Planning and Research, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, California Energy Commission, California Public Utilities Commission). 2018. Statewide Summary Report. California’s Fourth Climate Change Assessment. Publication number: SUM-CCCA4-2018-013.
[vi] Medellín-Azuara, Josue, Daniel A. Sumner, Qianyao Yolanda Pan, Hyunok Lee, Victoria Espinoza, Spencer A. Cole, Andrew Bell, Selina Davila Olivera, Joshua H. Viers, Jonathan Herman, Jay R. Lund. (University of California, Davis and University of California, Merced). 2018. Economic and Environmental Implications of California Crop and Livestock, Adaptation to Climate Change. California Natural Resources Agency. Publication number: CCCA4-CNRA-2018-018.
[vii] AB 2800, Sections 1(b), (e).
[viii] Paying it forward: The Path Toward Climate-Safe Infrastructure in California. Report of the Climate-Safe Infrastructure Working Group to the California State Legislature and the Strategic Growth Council.
[ix] Paying it forward, Chapter 1 at 2.