Roadmap for Climate Resilience Launched in Sonoma County
The North Bay Climate Adaptation Initiative is proud to launch “A Roadmap for Climate Resilience in Sonoma County.” (See the fact sheet and full report here). Ag Innovations is thrilled to have been part of this unique, cutting-edge process.
The Roadmap is the first prioritization of how all types of actors in Sonoma County can do their part to achieve greater climate resilience. It’s a plan that facilitates and documents a shared understanding of climate resilience needs and roles, so that collectively we create an effective, comprehensive response to the climate threats in our county. By calling on on Sonoma County actors in government, business, non-governmental organizations (NGO), and agricultural and resource land managers, all the way to the household level, we are able to get a better understanding of our collective capacity to create resiliency solutions to climate change. The Roadmap, therefore, is more than a report: it’s a tool for having conversations that will forward climate adaptation in a robust way. Individuals reading the group’s documentation are urged to apply the concepts in the Roadmap to their own context and leverage-points in their communities
Along with its function of increasing conversation and planning around climate change, the Roadmap is supremely timely. It places Sonoma County, and other communities, in a proactive position to respond effectively to state-level imperatives, such as those in Governor Brown’s April 2015 Executive Order and new requirements for county general plans.
Adapting to climate change is fundamentally a local challenge, and is intermixed with Sonoma County’s unique challenges of land use, affordability, water, food, population changes, and energy security. Each community will need to assess its water, food systems, energy use, and more, to adapt to our changing climate.
The Roadmap is the only comprehensive document about surviving and thriving in a changing climate that covers all aspects of life in Sonoma County. It was built on dozens of first-time dialogues between people working in a variety of fields such as vulnerable populations, affordable housing, human services, parks, agriculture and working lands managers; water suppliers and managers; and forestry and conservation groups. These groups learned from other sectors about how they approach climate issues, and engaged them in creative brainstorming about the actions their sector can take in order to be “climate ready.”
Laslty, the Roadmap provides essential information for the Regional Climate Protection Authority (RCPA)’s Climate Action 2020 plan for Sonoma County and the nine cities, now in public review. It points out the magnitude of the climate challenge facing us, and the magnitude of the payoffs that are available if we address these challenges head-on.
This effort would not have been possible without the five-year support of Community Foundation of Sonoma County and the other critical partners represented by the members and allies of North Bay Climate Adaptation Initiative.
