A new report from UC Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy, & the Environment, and two nonprofits — the Institute for Local Government and Next 10 — found that many California municipalities, especially smaller ones, need to staff up and develop detailed climate action plans if they want a shot at competitive grants for the unprecedented funding.
“As the state faces worsening impacts from climate change, local governments are the front-line defense for our communities,” said F. Noel Perry, founder of Next 10. “We need to identify the barriers cities and counties face so we can take full advantage of the historic federal and state funding available to better protect ourselves now and in the future.”
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A rural community on the banks of the San Joaquin River was spared from flooding during last winter’s powerful storms after hundreds of acres of former farmland were restored to their natural state as floodplains, giving the rising water a place to go.
An immigrant family in the Central Valley city of Tulare got relief from 100-degree heat and sky-high energy bills with insulation and energy retrofits installed under a state program to weatherize the homes of low-income farmworkers.
A small town mayor in a region with some of the most polluted air in the nation launched a free rideshare program with a fleet of electric vehicles — the first step in his goal of creating hundreds of green jobs.
These are a few of the climate resilience strategies emerging in hard-hit agricultural communities in California’s Central Valley, supported by state and federal funds that could enable local initiatives to scale up. But the very places that need help the most may have the hardest time accessing the funding available, research shows.
Residents of San Joaquin Valley face a barrage of challenges as the planet warms and weather patterns shift, often with catastrophic results. Land development has been engineered over decades to maximize agricultural productivity, with little attention to environmental resilience. And low-income immigrant workers, who are the backbone of this economy, are on the front lines, living in communities that lack resources and critical infrastructure to cope.
Summer temperatures throughout the valley routinely spike into triple digits, making outdoor work dangerous and shoddily built homes stifling. Wildfires repeatedly blanket the region with smoke, exacerbating the air pollution that leads to the state’s worst rates of asthma.
Violent floods wash away homes and livelihoods in communities with neglected levees and insufficient storm drains. And recurring drought contributes to the fact that most of the nearly 1 million Californians who lack access to safe drinking water live in the Central Valley.
“The biggest problem is the combination of things: farmworker communities not having a rest from one climate impact to another,” said Pablo Ortiz-Partida, senior water and climate scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists. “All these things start interconnecting.”
Ortiz-Partida said policymakers must listen to those who live with these impacts daily.
“There needs to be some top-down solutions, but also some bottom-up solutions,” he said. “How can we start that process of equitable transition to cleaner energies? … How can we start bringing a new, more sustainable vision of agriculture in the San Joaquin Valley?”
Left behind in the clean energy transition
California has established itself as a national leader in climate policy. The Natural Resources Defense Council estimates the state has committed to spend more than $52 billion over the next several years to transition off fossil fuels and tackle the effects of climate change. That’s in addition to the hundreds of millions of dollars from President Joe Biden’s Infrastructure Act and Inflation Reduction Act that will soon flow to the state to fight climate change.
Yet low-income immigrant communities in rural areas that are among the most impacted have not always seen the benefit — and could be at risk of losing out again.
State Sen. Anna Caballero represents some of the San Joaquin Valley’s poorest places and said climate policies don’t work if they only benefit wealthier residents of coastal cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco.
She’s seen plenty of well-intentioned climate programs miss the mark for her Central Valley constituents. One example is rebates for purchasing electric cars and solar panels, which require paying the full price upfront and getting the discount later.
“The urgency of getting this right and including rural communities in our discussion about climate change is that we’re going to end up with two separate worlds,” she said. “If you can afford it, you have an electric vehicle and a solar rooftop. And if you can’t, there’s nothing for you. There’s no job. There’s no way to pay your bills. And your community has no way of sustaining itself.”
The region’s economy is dominated by agriculture and fossil fuel extraction industries, whose leaders trend Republican and have often resisted Democratic moves to slash carbon emissions and protect water and ecosystems.
Meanwhile, 55% of the San Joaquin Valley’s 4.3 million residents live in disadvantaged communities, according to California’s Fourth Climate Change Assessment for the region. Among California farmworkers, 9 in 10 are immigrants, and 8 in 10 are not citizens. Though their labor is essential, and many have lived here for decades, they can’t vote, so their voices and experiences aren’t always represented.
Yet Caballero, a Democrat, and many other lawmakers and advocates have been pushing for equitable solutions, and some are beginning to bear fruit.