Tools & Resources

The San Francisco Estuary faces complex challenges for communities and nature, including improving water quality while also protecting shoreline habitats, infrastructure, and frontline communities from sea level rise and flooding. Policy drivers at the local, state, and federal level all push toward the use of nature-based approaches that incorporate green solutions at the shoreline at rapid pace to meet the urgent needs of our region. Meanwhile, centering community voices and building trust requires patient and purposeful relationship building. So how do we speed up the pace of adaptation while slowing down the intentional process of equity-centered community engagement?  

​Hosted by the Bay Area Regional Collaborative, the San Francisco Estuary Partnership and Association of Bay Area Governments, this special session for SF Climate Week focused on community-driven work and the intersection of nature-based design solutions and SLR adaptation for the SF Bay shoreline.  

​Projects + Speaker Lineup

​Nature-based Solutions Overview - Heidi Nutters, Principal Program Manager, San Francisco Estuary Partnership

​Oakland-Alameda Adaptation Committee: Chris Guillard, Principal, CMG Landscape Architecture 

​North Richmond – Wildcat Watershed Initiative Naama Raz-Yaseef, Senior Manager – Climate Ready Watersheds, The Watershed Project and Tim Molette-Parks, Partner, Mithun 

​Palo Alto Horizontal Levee Project - Jennifer Adams, Environmental Justice Senior Program Manager, Nuestra Casa and Samantha Engelage, Senior Engineer, City of Palo Alto   

​Colma Creek Resilience Projects - Johnathan Perisho, Project Manager, San Mateo County Flood Control & Sea Level Rise Resiliency District (One Shoreline) 

Published by Rebuild by Design and One Architecture & Urbanism, Toward a Rainproof NYC, outlines a comprehensive plan for how New York City can leverage nature-based solutions to address predicted flooding due to the climate crisis. The report takes cues from experts and successful programs in other cities around the world, such as Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Singapore, and Hoboken.

The Bay Area Regional Collaborative (BARC) Shared Work Plan outlines several initiatives to better understand and optimize the roles of specific regional agencies — and state agencies with Bay Area districts — in meeting the climate emergency. Building off work in which the seven participating agencies are already engaged, the Shared Work Plan aims to foster greater collaboration and an inclusive environment in which the agencies’ work can be continually informed, enriched, and improved.

The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) and its transportation agency partners in Marin, Napa, Solano, and
Sonoma counties, along with the regional Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), are preparing a Planning and
Environmental Linkages (PEL) Study for State Route 37 and would like your input!

The intensifying effects of climate change pose a clear threat to the health and well-being of Bay Area residents. That’s particularly true for communities that experience health inequities—systemic and unjust disparities in health outcomes that exist by race, income, and other factors. 

Farther Together lays out a path for transforming how public agencies engage communities in climate resilience planning and disaster response to foster a healthy, resilient future for everyone who calls the Bay Area home. 

On September 17th, 2021, the BARC Governing Board unanimously approved a Joint Resolution to Address Climate Change, through which its member agencies committed to working with BARC staff to develop a Shared Work Plan that will advance coordinated implementation of some of the highest-priority actions identified in the key regional agency plans and platforms over the next one to five years. Through this Shared Work Plan, BARC will help to advance the visions and goals that its member agencies have formed to address the escalating impacts of climate change affecting the Bay Area, including sea level rise, flooding, drought, extreme heat, and wildfires. 

"Not merely a symbolic commitment to coordination, or a repackaging of existing agency plans, the Joint Resolution to Address Climate Change will serve as a catalyst for more aligned and efficient regional action," wrote BARC Executive Director Allison Brooks in a memo accompanying the Joint Resolution. "In this way, the resolution advances the key guiding principles included in the strategic plan developed and approved by the BARC Governing Board in 2015."

This newly-released report from the Resources Legacy Fund and OnClimate explores new or expanded funding sources and financial tools that state and local governments in California can use to prepare for and respond to the effects of climate change in a fiscally responsible and equitable manner. This report identifies four proposed funding pathways to address pressing climate resilience needs in California, with a corresponding equity analysis and implementation strategy for each. The proposals serve as a starting point for further discussion of potential funding sources and financial tools to enable state and local governments to prepare for and respond to the effects of climate change in a fiscally responsible and equitable manner. The four pathways focus on funding for regional transportation planning, extreme heat policy reform, resilience finance districts, and wildfire risk reduction. This report was developed with input from a wide range of stakeholders, including BARC.

In light of the drastic shift to remote work as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, this report provides a foundational analysis of remote work eligibility in the Bay Area. It also seeks to begin understanding the economic, equity, and environmental considerations surrounding a potential sustained increase in remote work adoption in the region.

The ouR-HOME sea level rise response projects are linked to the health and financial well-being of residents that have been traditionally shut out of opportunities to improve health and family wealth. Small lot housing, a community land trust, social impact bonds and community infrastructure combine to lower the cost of entry to home ownership. Green infrastructure proposals to bring the ‘marsh to Main Street’ with a horizontal levee, and plant 20,000 trees to filter air and water, are strategies that can be implemented through existing local job and career programs – benefiting the people in North Richmond.