PALO ALTO, California, November 13, 2024 — In a unified call to action, more than 40 Bay Area organizations have issued a joint statement urging the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC) to resist calls to weaken the Regional Shoreline Adaptation Plan (RSAP). These groups represent a broad coalition of environmental, climate action, and environmental justice advocates and community-based organizations committed to protecting the San Francisco Bay and its communities from the impacts of climate change and sea level rise. Together, they work to promote climate action and equitable, sustainable solutions that enhance the resilience of the region's ecosystems and its vulnerable populations.

The organizations emphasize the importance of a regionally coordinated approach to sea level rise adaptation that prioritizes equity and protects communities and the Bay using natural and nature-based solutions (NNBS), while safeguarding against threats of toxic contamination.

BCDC’s Draft RSAP Exemplifies Strong Regional Leadership

The organizations applaud BCDC’s efforts to develop a holistic, strategic RSAP that promotes a forward-looking regional response to sea level rise. They say the RSAP’s framework, guided by a “One Bay Vision,” fosters collaboration across the Bay Area and aims to safeguard shared assets, preserve environmental integrity, and support the area’s economic and social resilience. According to the joint statement, the RSAP’s minimum criteria and standards offer both a framework for essential priorities and the flexibility for local communities to tailor solutions to their unique needs and resources.

Concerns Over Potential Weakening of RSAP Standards

Recent calls to dilute the RSAP’s standards in favor of more shoreline development have raised significant concern among these organizations. They argue that such changes would jeopardize critical natural and nature-based solutions to sea level rise resilience. According to Carin High, Co-chair of Citizens Committee to Complete the Refuge, “The Bay’s wetland ecosystems—such as tidal marshes and other crucial habitats—provide irreplaceable economic and ecosystem benefits that cannot be replicated or relocated. We all depend on their natural ability to reduce flooding and storm surge impacts, sequester carbon, filter pollutants, lower our temperatures, and sustain the Bay’s globally important biodiversity. Without strong RSAP standards,” she continued, “these essential public assets would drown or be squeezed out by unsustainable land use practices, resulting in lost ecosystem services, increased long term costs, and decreased climate resilience for our communities, producing long term regional impacts.”

The organizations strongly oppose downgrading the RSAP’s standards from requirements to recommendations, cautioning that such a shift could allow private development interests to overshadow the pressing need for coordinated regional adaptation to climate impacts. This, they warn, would fragment the region’s response to sea level rise, increase costs, and erode accountability to regional goals, negating the benefits of the RSAP .

Effective Coordination is Key to Regional Resilience

The groups argue that effective regional coordination is crucial for ensuring an equitable, holistic, and coordinated response to sea level rise across the Bay Area. “The public draft RSAP creates a unified approach that supports localized adaptation efforts while ensuring that negative impacts on adjacent communities are avoided. Such impacts include increased erosion and flooding of shorelines in other communities due to wave deflection” noted Arthur Feinstein, Chair of the Sierra Club’s coordinated Bay Alive Campaign. “A strong RSAP requiring coordinated standards and regional collaboration is essential to protecting public infrastructure—including natural ecosystems, transportation networks, and emergency services—that sustains the entire Bay Area.”

The draft RSAP’s standards also prioritize the needs of historically marginalized and frontline communities, helping to ensure that adaptation strategies do not perpetuate or worsen existing inequities, and assuring that the concerns of frontline communities are incorporated into the process of developing and implementing sea level rise adaptation strategies. “By establishing consistent priorities, minimum criteria, and regional standards, the RSAP reduces the influence of special interests and promotes forward-thinking, community-based planning,” said Gita Dev, Bay Alive Campaign. “Downgrading the RSAP’s standards from mandates to mere recommendations would represent a significant step backward, sending the wrong message: that development interests can override the urgent need for regional climate adaptation. The RSAP would become just another toothless source of ‘advice,’ defeating the entire purpose of acoordinated regional response to this shared threat.”

A Call for a Stronger, Not Weaker, RSAP

The organizations call on BCDC to strengthen the RSAP by enhancing its focus on natural and nature-based solutions, setting measurable regional habitat goals, and addressing key gaps in adaptation standards, particularly those related to contamination risks from legacy toxins along the Bay shoreline. They also call on BCDC to prioritize public trust resources over private interests in managing competing land use demands.

“We are united in our strong opposition to weakening the RSAP’s Standards and in our vigorous support for centering equity and natural and nature-based solutions throughout the RSAP ,” the statement reads. “We ask BCDC to uphold its leadership in this effort by maintaining the integrity of the RSAP [and] resisting calls to weaken its Standards,” and to “continue to champion a bold vision for a resilient Bay Area and an RSAP that secures a safe, sustainable future for the Bay and all our communities for generations to come.”

JOINT STATEMENT SIGNATORIES