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, the site of a National Estuary Program,
has experienced a massive die-off in the 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. 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,
Michael
Henson
Los Angeles, California 91307
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