To the CARB Board:Thank you for the excellent California Air
Resources Board (CARB) 2022 Climate Change Scoping Plan. However,
the plan should include within the natural working lands targets
the protection and restoration of California's coastal wetland
habitats and their immense carbon-absorbing potential, which is
greater even than that of the Sacramento delta per unit
area.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, cultural,
societal, 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, littoral
transition, 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. • 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, site of a
National Estuary Program, has experienced a massive die-off in
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,
Isabelle Kay
San Diego, California
92037
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