Contact: Sarah Birch DIRECTORATE: CLIMATE CHANGE 021 483 2753 REFERENCE: 12/1/5/TheClimateGroup_FutureFund ENVIRONMENTAL AFFAIRS AND DEVELOPMENT PLANNING: INTERNATIONAL VISIT REPORT OFFICIAL VISIT TO THE GOVERNMENT OF CALIFORNIA FUNDED BY ‘THE CLIMATE GROUP –Under2 Coalition– FUTURE FUND’ FROM 19-26 MAY 2018 Sarah Birch & Goosain Isaacs 2nd Floor, Property Centre, 1 Dorp Street, Cape Town, 8001 Private Bag X9086, Cape Town, 8000 tel: +27 21 483 4656 fax: +27 21 483 3254 www.westerncape.gov.za/eadp 1. PURPOSE 1.1 To provide The Climate Group –the Under2 Coalition- Future Fund with a brief overview of the official visit by Mr Goosain Isaacs and Ms Sarah Birch to the Government of California from the 19 – 26 may 2018. The intent of the learning exchange was to peer learn on climate change adaptation, resilience and risk response strategies between Western Cape Government (hereafter WCG) and the State of California. 2. BACKGROUND 2.1. Minister Bredell, and International Relations approved that Mr Goosain Isaacs and Ms Sarah Birch could travel to visit the Government of California, in order to benefit from the opportunity sourced through the WCG’s membership to The Climate Group1, and specifically the opportunity secured on application through the Future Fund. 2.2. Western Cape Government became a beneficiary of the Future Fund initiative of The Climate Group through an application for funding by the Climate Change Directorate in DEA&DP. The overall aim of the Future Fund is to empower subnational governments of the Under2 Coalition to accelerate climate action. This is achieved through financial contributions and in-kind resources to developing and emerging economy regions from peer member governments of the Coalition. 2.3. The purpose of the secondment and learning exchange was to visit California for 3 working days of meetings and exchange to share and learn about the State of California’s climate change response programmes and find learnings and linkages to the Western Cape Climate Change Response Strategy. To understand how other regions like California have been setting both ambitious and realistic targets in responding to climate change including events such as drought, floods and fires. 3. OBJECTIVES 3.1. To learn from the Californian experience with regards to their leadership approach, programmes and policies, institutional arrangements, and financial mechanisms in moving towards a climate change resilient and less risk prone region. To share best-practices between the two regions. 1 Western Cape Government became a member of ‘The Climate Group – States and Regions Alliance’ in November 2016. This is an international non-profit network of like-minded regional governments determined to contribute to the international response to climate change in order to keep the global average temperature increase below 2°C. As part of this, in April 2017 the WCG signed the Subnational Global Climate Leadership MOU ‘Under2 MOU’, a commitment to contribute to reducing global GHG emissions to net-zero by 2050. 3.2. To explore possible networking, collaboration and learning exchange opportunities with various officials from the State of California. 3.3. To collaborate and engage with the network of regional governments participating in the Under2 Coalition by undertaking peer-learning and sharing best practices. To report on the trip and its findings and share these with the network through The Climate Group website and media platforms and showcase findings at the Global Climate Action Summit. 4. STRUCTURE OF THIS REPORT 4.1 This report is structured to cover brief points from each of the meetings held. Followed by a more in-depth analysis of the lessons learnt, messages and way in which Western Cape Government can catalyse new vigour into the Western Cape Climate Change Response Strategy and its implementation as a Transversal policy dealing with all of the risks associated with climate change. It ends with recommendations to the Future Fund for similar programmes to consider in future. 5. Sacramento, California State Government Agencies 5.1 Meetings: Please note a number of documents and websites might be referred to, and these can be requested if required. 5.1.1 California Governor’s Office of Planning and Research (OPR) Location: Governor’s Office, State Capitol Building; Sutter Conference Room Participants: • Nuin-Tara Key, Resilience Program Manager • Greta Soos, Assistant Planner and Program Analyst • Leah Fisher, Senior Intergovernmental Program Analyst Key points: • This team is based in Governor Browns office, and is facilitated by a State Law: Bill 246. They provide vertical integration services on climate change adaptation planning. The programme is called: Integrated climate change and resiliency programme – ICARP. They focus on climate financing; the State Adaptation Clearing House (a website stocking all resources); and the Advisory Council for the State. • The Bill 246 indicates that all investment plans must include climate change risk response. They, similar to WCG, are seeking ways to integrate climate change considerations into project designs, specifications and standard operations (i.e. it is not a standalone funded item, it is integral to engineers plans etc). They have documentation to share on this, particularly in the transport sector which will be helpful for WCG as we have a Transport Climate Change Response Strategy planned for 2018/19. • The work of the State is coordinated by the ‘Safeguarding California Plan’ which is similar although more detailed per sector than the Western Cape Climate Change Response Strategy. Their work is also split into Low Carbon focused work and Adaptation work, whereas in the Western cape (and SA context) we undertake both under the same strategy, and it is managed by the same team. The Safeguarding California Plan is for adaptation only. • They utilize incentives – for example if a local government has included climate change risk and vulnerability adequately into their planning they qualify for special funding they can then utilize for climate change adaptation and resilience. • They also have challenges with disaster funding whereby they build back to the same specifications, instead of building back to be more resilient. • Insurance industries are pulling out of high risk fire regions in California. 5.1.2 California Environmental Protection Agency (CalEPA) Location: 1001 I Street, Sacramento, CA 95812; Conference Room 2550 Participants: • Ashley Conrad-Saydah, Deputy Secretary for Climate Policy • Heather Hickson, Intergovernmental Relations Key points: • The history of California and its culture play a big role in how it is that California is now such a leading region on climate change – they had severe air pollution problems that led to social movements, and people live in the region for its natural beauty and are thus more engaged in being proactive about climate change. This for the Western Cape is similar in some respects, although not to such a large degree across all segments of society. • The Deputy Secretary is a political appointee, and most of the high level government officials like herself that have driven the advancement of the climate change strategies and their implementation are all senior level and driving aggressive transformation agenda’s which is what has contributed to the success of their programmes. Each department/state entity has a climate change champion at least, if not a unit. • They are also able to raise their own taxes, and create innovative finance mechanisms such as the Cap and Trade system from which they use funds for adaptation and resilience programmes (http://www.caclimateinvestments.ca.gov/). • In relation to the drought, many farmers have “grandfather rights” which allow them to use as much groundwater as they want. New farms do not have these rights, and so their water policy space is very challenging. As a result, they think that our SmartAgri plan and Agriculture’s strong response to climate change here in the Western Cape is different to the sector in their region, and are quite surprised by the progress in this sector here. • They have a 30-year cycle of 5 year droughts, but this might be getting worse; in addition, they also have the snow-melt issue (which slowly released water, but now water is not captured for as long in the snow and glaciers in the north of California where most of their water capture takes place). • Their fire season is now all year round! • Over abstraction of groundwater has caused 20-30 feet of subsidence in many places. They have passed the State Ground Water Monitoring Act to regulate groundwater abstraction and recharge. • They are using Climate Change to breathe new life into industry, business etc – i.e. the challenge can be good, and bring new opportunities/workforce etc., this is evident in their booming economy, where they have decoupled GHG emissions from economic growth, aim to be a Zero Carbon State, and have become the 5th largest economy globally. They are the proof that we have shown can happen through the recently commissioned “Economic Risks and Opportunities of Climate Resilience in the Western Cape” reports just completed by DEA&DP (https://www.westerncape.gov.za/eadp/files/atoms/files/Modelling%2 0Summary%20Report%20Dec%202017_0.pdf) – if you invest in climate change resilience early. • The State of California is hosting the upcoming “Global Climate Action Summit”, and there will be a very strong water focus at the summit. They would welcome a political leadership representative from WCG. • California has a Sea Level Rise Guidance Document which has just been updated (http://www.opc.ca.gov/webmaster/ftp/pdf/agenda_items/20180314/ Item3_Exhibit-A_OPC_SLR_Guidance-rd3.pdf) it provides guidance based on best available science to determine state wide consistent approaches to dealing with the challenge. • Part of the success of the climate programmes in California was starting with very strong monitoring and evaluation. • California invested substantial amounts of money into ensuring the best most robust available science base is utilized in all the work, as well as in M&E.