Our native habitats pull carbon out of the atmosphere, lessening global warming. California should be investing.

California has been a global leader in the fight against climate change. It has greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction targets and a “cap and trade” program administered by the Air Resources Board (ARB) to help reach the targets. Tradable “credits” to emit carbon within the cap are sold to industry at auction, but the cap decreases over time. 

Auction proceeds are used for a variety of purposes that reduce carbon pollution, from transit oriented development to insulation. Natural and working lands are one of categories eligible for auction proceeds. While some uses of the funds have been criticized, the ARB has developed metrics to support the expenditures.

EHL and its allies at the California Habitat Conservation Planning Coalition have successfully argued to ARB that protecting habitat lands should be a component of the program. Habitat not only sequesters carbon day in and day out – in the case of Southern California scrub vegetation particularly in the soil – but protecting habitat also prevents conversion to GHG-intensive suburban sprawl. And if plants and animals are going to survive climate change, they will need interconnected regional habitat reserves.

To date, however, implementing the goal of protecting habitat has lagged far behind other program components. Only farmland has been approved for protection on the basis of avoided conversion, and only active restoration – like tree planting – rather than baseline carbon sequestration has received auction proceeds under the category of habitat lands. Internationally, the situation is quite different, with forest protection per se a recognized GHG benefit.

EHL believes that completing our regional habitat reserves is an excellent fit for the investment of GHG dollars. We will continue to work to improve the Cap and Trade program to achieve this goal.