Boiling Point: California's role in the global fight to protect nature

A man walks along a dirt road leading into a canyon.

Oct. 29, 2024 6 AM PT

Good morning and welcome to the final week of the spooky season. I’m environment reporter Alex Wigglesworth, filling in for Sammy Roth.

California is home to more species of plants and animals than any other state in the nation. So maybe it’s no surprise the state has sent a large delegation to the United Nations summit on biodiversity (COP16) in Cali, Colombia.

The aim of the two-week conference is to figure out how to achieve the goals of a landmark agreement signed by more than 190 countries in Montreal two years ago — including the protection of 30% of the world’s land and water by 2030.

The United States technically isn’t a party to the Convention on Biological Diversity, as Republicans have blocked ratification of the treaty. Even if it were, California wouldn’t be directly involved in these negotiations since it’s not a nation-state.

But the Golden State is still playing a big role as an advocate and model for protecting nature, said state Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot. Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2020 issued an executive order that included California’s own 30 by 30 target, which was followed by a state law, a strategic road map and a recent announcement that the state is closing in on its goal. Other counties are now looking to its implementation as an example.

I caught up with Crowfoot, who’s in Colombia, to learn more. The following interview has been edited for length.

What’s California doing at a global biodiversity summit?

Much like we’ve been leaders on climate change for the last 20 years, we really feel like we have leadership to share on protecting nature.

We did a big 18-month process to develop an implementation pathway [for 30 by 30], including tribal consultation and public engagement. We now have this implementation plan called pathway to 30 by 30, and we are sprinting down the field to achieve 30 by 30 in our jurisdiction. That’s something the rest of the world is really interested in: How did we achieve it? What mistakes did we make? What lessons can we share?

At the same time, we are learning about it because other jurisdictions are working toward 30 by 30. Quebec, the Campeche state in Mexico, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, Wales in the United Kingdom — all of those governments that are considered sub-national governments because they’re not in the negotiating room — are driving toward 30 by 30.

The way I think about these biodiversity negotiations is, national leadership is necessary but not adequate. What are needed also are states, provinces and even cities to drive forward on this.

How is biodiversity connected to climate change?

I think part of the problem is for too long the crisis of climate change and the crisis of biodiversity loss were treated as separate crises. But the way I talk about the biodiversity crisis is as a crisis of nature. It’s losing nature off our planet. What the world’s best climate scientists have said is that nature-based solutions, protecting and restoring nature, are critical to meeting our near-term and mid-term climate targets.

We all had a blind spot on the role of nature in climate change, even in California. While we led with AB 32 [the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006] and our climate policies on energy and buildings and transportation, historically there wasn’t enough focus on how we actually have to help nature help us on climate change. So part of 30 by 30 is about protecting nature and biodiversity, but part of it is about restoring the health of our lands so they can sequester more carbon.

What do you hope to accomplish at COP16?

One, speaking with a strong voice for California on the need to do more. We’re fanned out across a giant conference center giving talks about what California is doing. Part of this is we have to act more aggressively, more ambitiously to achieve 30 by 30. We came here to advocate for faster, stronger global action. We’re definitely sharing what we’re doing in California as a model.

So to advocate, to share, and the last one would be to learn. We have been learning from the leaders who are driving 30 by 30 and nature-based solutions across the world.

Yesterday we sat in on a panel on how the Canadian government is working with what they call First Nations, what we would call tribal governments, on land back to achieve their 30 by 30 targets. That’s a key area of priority for us. They’ve got some legal designation for land up there that we’re now taking a look at.

Another example is what’s happening with states in Brazil as it relates to the restoration of land. They have some really interesting ways to scale up restoration that we’ll look at as well.

The U.S. is the only country, other than the Vatican, that hasn’t ratified the biodiversity treaty. Does that affect your participation in the summit at all?

Maybe it makes our presence even more important. Because those following wonder what’s happening, is there leadership in the U.S.? Our point is, yes, there’s great leadership.

I will note the Biden-Harris administration played an active role in 2022 in Montreal. The first ever presidential envoy for nature, Monica Medina, she was up there. And from the White House, Brenda Mallory, chair of the Council on Environmental Quality, is coming over the next two days. We have a dysfunctional situation with our U.S. Senate that disallows us from ratifying treaties, but that doesn’t mean the federal government is entirely absent in these discussions.

And you’re also highlighting the need for President Biden to designate three new national monuments — the Sáttítla National Monument in Northern California, and the Chuckwalla and Kw’tsán National Monuments in the state’s deserts. How does that fit into this?

We’ve been supporting tribal leadership on these three national monuments, and to me one of the most powerful changes in California but also in the United States and internationally is the growing voice of Indigenous leaders.

If you walk around this conference center where I’m at right now, you see Indigenous leaders from all around the world. And they’ve been present in the past, but I’m hearing way more than I ever have about the need to support leadership of Indigenous communities, including ancestral land return, which we’re doing in California, and co-managed lands. So I’m really proud to be here in part to support two tribes that are here driving two of the three national monuments. One is the Pit River Tribe in far Northern California; the other is the Fort Yuma Quechan Indian Tribe.

I think it’s this total paradigm shift where we understand that if we’re going to do what we need to do to protect the environment, we have to support and empower tribal leaders.

POLITICAL CLIMATE

A single massive wildfire can cost billions of dollars to fight and recover from. Long-standing policies and procedures dictate that states such as California — the site of some of the most destructive fires in history — share this cost burden with the federal government. But former President Trump has repeatedly threatened to block federal fire aid to a state he perceives as politically unfriendly — most recently in remarks to reporters at his Rancho Palos Verdes golf course and again at a rally in Coachella.

Now, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration is working on contingency plans in the event that Trump returns to the White House and makes good on those threats, according to Politico.

Newsom told the outlet that he’s working with other officials to create plans in the state budget for an account California can draw from to pay for responses to fires, earthquakes and other disasters.

In another attempt to get ahead of uncertainty about the upcoming presidential election, federal and state agencies are looking to lock in new rules for California’s major water delivery systems in the coming weeks, our water expert Ian James reports.

The rules will determine how much water may be pumped from rivers to supply people and farmlands while providing enough to protect imperiled fish species.

A Trump victory would probably bring new attempts to weaken protections for fish, while Vice President Kamala Harris would probably seek to maintain stronger environmental protections, James reports.

Still, California environmental groups are criticizing the proposed changes, saying the preferred proposal laid out in a federal draft environmental review would actually make things worse for imperiled species. State officials disagree with those claims.

Time is of the essence: Federal and state officials have been operating the water systems under a court-ordered interim operations plan that will expire in December, James writes.

AROUND THE WEST

Speaking of biodiversity, the Biden administration has approved a massive lithium and boron mine in Nevada despite concerns from some environmentalists that the project could kill off an endangered wildflower, according to the Washington Post.

The project is the latest to highlight the tension between the need to transition to clean energy and the desire to preserve rare species, the article notes.

The Rhyolite Ridge Lithium-Boron Project is expected to produce enough lithium to power about 370,000 vehicles annually for more than two decades, the Post reports. But the Center for Biological Diversity is planning a court challenge, alleging the Bureau of Land Management is violating the Endangered Species Act. Tiehm’s buckwheat, which was listed under the act in 2022, grows only on lithium- and boron-rich soil in Esmeralda County, Nevada, and mining is the No. 1 threat to its existence, according to the article.

Some activists also fear the project could deplete scarce water resources and disturb Western Shoshone sacred sites, the Hill reports.

ONE MORE THING

More than a century ago, Los Angeles embarked on a scheme to drain the Owens Valley by quietly buying up water rights in the Eastern Sierra and then building a massive aqueduct to fuel its own urban growth.

In 1924, the Owens Valley fought back. Residents seized the aqueduct’s control gates and diverted its flow into the Owens River channel. Hundreds of people gathered with the occupiers for a massive community picnic. The event, known as the Alabama Gates occupation, lasted for four days.

An upcoming weekend of free events in Lone Pine will commemorate what organizers call a “legendary act of civil disobedience, which reverberated worldwide, illuminating these two regions’ complicated and intertwined water history.”

“But it also reflects how white settlers had previously confiscated and occupied Payahüünadü, the ancestral lands of the Paiute and Shoshone People in what is now called Owens Valley, along with the repercussions of this settler colonialism on contemporary Tribal residents who continue to live here,” says the announcement for Alabama Gates 2024, produced by There It Is —Take It! in partnership with nonprofit Sierra Forever.

The weekend of panel discussions, film screenings, a walking tour and — yes, a picnic — is set for Nov. 15 to 17. A full schedule can be viewed here.