Vote Smart's Synopsis:

Vote to pass a bill that requires protection for 30 percent of the state's land and water resources by 2030.

Highlights:

• Specifies that it is the goal of the legislature to protect at least 30 percent of California’s land areas and waters and help advance the protection of 30 percent of the nation’s oceans by 2030 (Sec 2).

• Authorizes the state, in order to achieve the goals described in the above highlight, to do any of the following, including but not limited to (Sec 2):

• Work with the federal government, local communities, Native American tribes, other countries, and private landowners to conserve natural places and resources;

• Improve access to nature for all people in the state, with a specific emphasis on increasing access for communities of color and economically disadvantaged communities;

• Prevent extinction by recovering and restoring biodiversity, including species listed under the California Endangered Species Act;

• Enhance climate resilience by protecting genetic diversity;

• Sequester carbon and greenhouse gas emissions through natural measures in the land, waters, and ocean;

• Focusing work at a scale that is biologically and ecologically meaningful, including at a landscape or seascape scale, where appropriate;

• Collaborating with federal, regional, and international government to support and advance protections for habitats that lie outside of the state’s jurisdiction to ensure effective protections for California species that travel, are migratory, or have ranges that extend beyond the borders of the state;

• Stabilize, restore, maintain, and enhance ecosystems, including functional ecological connectivity across the state’s landscape in the face of human development and climate change;

• Align the state’s economic purchasing power with efforts to protect ecosystems and threatened biodiversity within the state, nation, and world;

• Ensure that protected areas within the state are effectively managed and enforced; and

• Secure protections for habitat types that are underrepresented in protected areas.

Full Bill Text