Climate Ready: Regional Climate Protection Authority Municipal Users Group


Above: Overall Climate Readiness Sequence for Sonoma County

Table of Contents:

Downloads:

Back to the Climate Ready North Bay Homepage


Management Priorities

Responsibilities and Jurisdiction

The Regional Climate Protection Authority, RCPA, was formed in 2009 to coordinate countywide climate protection efforts among Sonoma County’s nine cities, the county, and multiple agencies. The RCPA fosters collaboration, helps to set goals, pools resources, formalizes partnerships, and works across silos. The RCPA aims to create local solutions to complement State, Federal, and private sector actions – all showing that a better future with lower emissions is possible.

Its members - the County of Sonoma and the nine incorporated cities - are responsible for promoting healthy, safe, and prosperous communities through planning, permitting, infrastructure, utilities, transit, education, public health, law enforcement, and other services.

Climate-related Concerns and Management Priorities

The RCPA and its members are working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050, and to demonstrate a model for other communities to follow in pursuit of similar reductions. However the RCPA and its members acknowledge that even if aggressive mitigation efforts are successful, climate changes cannot be avoided entirely. Climate change creates myriad challenges for the long term well-being of communities within Sonoma County.


Management Concerns for Future Analysis


Local government leaders recognize that climate change affects most existing management challenges of local government in providing for community well-being. A highlight of climate related vulnerabilities of concern to local governments include:

  • Increased heat-related and respiratory illness, particularly among those inland, in poor health, working outdoors, in urban heat islands, and/or without air conditioning
  • Premature death
  • Added stress on emergency services and health care systems
  • Water and food shortages, or higher prices
  • Potential pressure on housing and social services due to climate migrants
  • Economic loss from decline in water-dependent recreation and tourism activities
  • Potential increase in disease vectors such as mosquitoes and rodents
  • Drowning, injury, and economic loss caused by flooding
  • Damage and disruption to buildings, transportation, utilities, and other infrastructure
  • Limitations on access to critical services
  • Loss of habitat, agricultural lands, and prime recreational and natural areas

In response to these concerns, a coalition of community leaders helped to draft the following adaptation goals for Sonoma County at the first Sonoma Adaptation Forum and Climate Ready Roadmap Workshop. They have since been adopted by the RCPA Board as essential aspects of the mission to “Increase the health and resilience of social, natural, and built resources to withstand the impacts of climate change.”

Climate Change Adaptation Goals and Opportunities

Goals Opportunities Climate Hazards Addressed
Promote healthy, safe communities Invest in measures to increase community knowledge and capacity to respond and adapt to climate hazards, including improving baseline health, well-being, and financial security, especially in vulnerable populations. Link vulnerable populations to services that reduce the safety, health, and financial risks related to climate hazards. Reduce non-climate economic and health stressors. All hazards, especially those sensitive to demographic and economic changes
Protect water resources Conserve and reuse water, protect and enhance groundwater recharge areas, capture storm- and flood water, protect streamside areas, invest in natural infrastructure. Reduce non-climate stressors such as hydro-modification, pollution, and overuse of water. Drought, flooding, and infrastructure failure risks to water quantity and quality
Promote a sustainable, climate-resilient economy Better define the economic risks of climate change. Communicate to businesses and the broader community about practices that contribute to climate resilience and how to implement them. Reduce non-climate stressors. All hazards, especially those sensitive to demographic and economic changes
Mainstream the use of climate projections (not just past patterns) in planning, design, and budgeting Educate and share information among government agencies. Create and promote guidelines for how to use climate information in planning and decision making. All hazards, especially sea-level rise, drought, wildfire, and flooding
Protect coastal, bayside, and inland buffer zones Protect, expand, and enhance wetlands, water source areas, fire management zones, and flood zones. Review/revise land management plans, development codes, parks plans, and prevention and response plans for floods and fires. Reduce non-climate stressors in these areas. Sea-level rise, changing temperature and rain patterns, drought, wildfire.
Promote food system security and agricultural climate preparedness Promote peer-to-peer agricultural adaptation networking, including potential need to cultivate alternative crops or adopt new agricultural land management strategies. Reduce non-climate stressors, such as the high cost of land for food production. Changing temperature and rain patterns, drought, higher food prices
Protect infrastructure: buildings, energy systems, communications systems, water infrastructure, and transportation systems Conduct a risk assessment by evaluating potential climate impacts on key infrastructure, buildings, and transit systems. Invest in strategies to ensure the long-term sustainability and reliability of energy resources. Reduce non-climate stressors such as deteriorating infrastructure. Drought, flooding, wildfire, and extreme heat
Increase emergency preparedness Support continued interagency emergency planning. Educate the public about climate hazards. Assess and address gaps in vulnerable populationsÕ capacity to respond to extreme events. Reduce non-climate stressors such as forest health problems and provide adequate funding for emergency preparedness and response. Public health and safety impacts of heat, flooding, and wildfire
Monitor the changing climate and its biophysical effects in real time Measure actual conditions to validate and/or refine models of climate and climate change effects in order to plan and manage with better information. All hazards
Protect coastal, bayside, and inland buffer zones Protect, expand, and enhance wetlands, water source areas, fire management zones, and flood zones. Review/revise land management plans, development codes, parks plans, and prevention and response plans for floods and fires. Reduce non-climate stressors in these areas. Sea-level rise, changing temperature and rain patterns, drought, wildfire
Promote food system security and agricultural climate preparedness Promote peer-to-peer agricultural adaptation networking, including potential need to cultivate alternative crops or adopt new agricultural land management strategies. Reduce non-climate stressors, such as the high cost of land for food production. Changing temperature and rain patterns, drought, higher food prices
Protect infrastructure: buildings, energy systems, communications systems, water infrastructure, and transportation systems Conduct a risk assessment by evaluating potential climate impacts on key infrastructure, buildings, and transit systems. Invest in strategies to ensure the long-term sustainability and reliability of energy resources. Reduce non-climate stressors such as deteriorating infrastructure. Drought, flooding, wildfire, and extreme heat
Increase emergency preparedness Support continued interagency emergency planning. Educate the public about climate hazards. Assess and address gaps in vulnerable populationsÕ capacity to respond to extreme events. Reduce non-climate stressors such as forest health problems and provide adequate funding for emergency preparedness and response. Public health and safety impacts of heat, flooding, and wildfire
Monitor the changing climate and its biophysical effects in real time Measure actual conditions to validate and/or refine models of climate and climate change effects in order to plan and manage with better information. All hazards


Vulnerability Assessment Results

Key Vulnerability Assessment Findings for Sonoma County

  • Rising temperatures across the region will generate unprecedented warm conditions for both summer and winter seasons
  • Rainfall is likely to be more variable in the future in terms of both low and high annual extreme
  • The North Bay region is becoming more arid (subject to drier soil conditions) due to rising temperatures
  • Runoff may be increasingly flashy, with rates of groundwater recharge relatively less variable over time
  • Protecting available recharge areas will be critical to water supply sustainability
  • Water demand for agriculture may increase on the order of 10%
  • Fire frequencies are projected to increase on the order of 20%, requiring additional readiness planning and more aggressive fuels management
  • Vegetation may be in transition, meriting additional monitoring and consideration of a more drought-tolerant planting palette for restoration

See Climate Ready North Bay: Region-wide Findings and Applications for vulnerability assessment findings for the North Bay Region.


Potential Climate Ready Sonoma County Watershed Data Applications


An an ongoing basis, climate readiness strategies need to be explicitly integrated into existing plans and programs that are used by local governments to promote public health, safety, and prosperity in Sonoma County, including:

  • Hazard Mitigation Plans. Sonoma County’s 2016 hazard mitigation plan will be the first to incorporate current knowledge about climate change and climate hazards facing the county.
  • General Plans, specific plans, and the Local Coastal Plan, particularly as they relate to locations vulnerable to flood, landslide, and coastal hazards, and locations important for water supply, groundwater recharge, and shoreline protection. As required under new state law (Senate Bill 379, 2015), general plan safety elements must include “climate adaptation and resiliency strategies,” including “goals, policies, and objectives for their communities based on the most current information available regarding climate change adaptation and resiliency.” Senate Bill 379 also allows jurisdictions to use adopted climate action plans, such as CA2020, to meet this new requirement.
  • Parks, trails, and open space plans.
  • Water supply, stormwater, and flood management plans and ordinances. Sonoma County Water Agency is also undertaking an in-depth climate adaptation plan for its operations.
  • Environmental impact reports.
  • Transportation and other capital improvement plans.
  • Public health monitoring.
  • Emergency preparedness plans.
  • Street tree and water-efficiency ordinances.
  • Zoning, building, and fire codes.
  • Groundwater management plans.
  • Administrative policies, procedures, and initiatives.


Future Analyses

In every area, from road-building to public health to transit, help is needed to translate technical information about a changed climate future into appropriate actionable steps. Climate adaptation efforts in Sonoma County have already identified a need for Climate Ready Advisors who can help residents, businesses, local governments, and non-governmental organizations make sense of the growing volume of climate hazard information and produce climate-smart decisions, plans, budgets, and priorities.

Local leaders, residents, and stakeholders, such as RCPA, must work together to respond to the county’s climate vulnerabilities, implement the goals in the table above, and evaluate how well current and new strategies are increasing community readiness for climate change.

An effective response to the climate challenge requires substantial investment, and therefore calls for a deep analysis of how to make that investment cost effective. As the cities and County have already done with Health Action and an array of new clean-power programs, the community will need to re-imagine and re-align its investments so that new and existing incentives, disincentives, and funding streams result in climate-resilient behavior throughout Sonoma County.

Back to the North Bay Climate Ready Homepage