In 2020, the Governor’s Office of Land Use and Climate Innovation (LCI) published an updated general plan guidance document for local governments. General plans are policy documents that outline a city or county’s long-term plan for growth and are used to guide decisions about land use, development, and public services. This update, following the directive of Senate Bill 1000 (SB1000), included a new section on incorporating environmental justice (EJ) policies and initiatives into general plans. Following feedback on the original guidelines, LCI determined that updates were needed to streamline guidance in an approachable and digestible manner. To achieve this, LCI collaborated with a group of graduate students from the University of California, Davis, in the Environmental Policy and Management (EPM) program to implement necessary updates, resulting in a concise yet comprehensive final product.
For the Policy Clinic, this team worked with the California Coastal Commission to examine the relationship between ecological restoration and environmental justice within the coastal zone and how the compensatory mitigation process can be used to advance environmental justice in compliance with the Commissions EJ Policy.
The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, renowned for its rich soil and biodiversity, faces unique challenges as climate change and development threaten its agricultural landscape through increasing saltwater intrusion, sea levels, and temperatures. Our group collaborated with the Delta Stewardship Council to dig deeper into these pressing issues and explore strategies that help farmers adapt to these changes.
Oregon’s marine reserves are protected areas of the ocean that conserve key coastal areas and function as refuges for marine life. Canary rockfish, aggregating anemones, ochre sea stars, and bull kelp are just some of the species thriving in these protected environments. However, a key question arises: how do marine conservation efforts impact human well-being? This question is central to our Environmental Policy and Management Policy Clinic project, conducted in collaboration with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) and UC Davis partners.
In early June, the UC Davis Graduate Program of Environmental Policy and Management hosted the third annual UC Davis Environmental Policy Symposium, marking another successful year of bringing together students, professionals, and community members to address pressing environmental issues.
There are over 400,000 farmworkers employed in the agricultural industry in California (California Employment Development Department, 2022). Despite only making up a small proportion of the total 40 million people in the state, their work is fundamental to everyone’s daily life. The significance of their work is a contrast to the difficult working conditions they face on a daily basis– strenuous tasks, poor living conditions, exposure to extreme heat, wildfire smoke, and toxic pesticides.
Consider this: the coffee you drink in the morning, and the chocolate you eat at night, were both grown by a farmer somewhere in the world. You feel good knowing that the coffee was produced sustainably through the farmer's partnership with Fair Trade USA™. However, growing concerns regarding climate change and deforestation have increased pressure on farmers to mitigate harm to the environment, which begs the question, how? And what role can a nonprofit certifying agency, like Fair Trade USA (FTUSA), play?
For the Policy Clinic, our team worked alongside NOAA Fisheries to analyze the impacts of salmon extirpation on communities in the San Joaquin River Basin.
This team of students partnered with the California Ocean Science Trust to research existing data on blue carbon ecosystems and frontline communities in California, along with conducting informational interviews to provide research and policy recommendations.
A hallmark of the Graduate Program of Environmental Policy and Management is the annual Policy Clinic, a capstone class where student teams partner with environmental organizations to address an environmental policy or natural resources management issue.
Our Policy Clinic team partnered with the non-profit organization Friends of the River to better understand the potential impacts of the proposed Del Puerto Canyon Reservoir.
A lack of clean, drinkable water was a problem society faced before modern water treatment and transportation systems, so why do some San Joaquin Valley residents still lack access to safe drinking water?
Five Environmental Policy and Management graduate students examined regulatory code changes with the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, a bi-state regional environmental planning agency, to increase climate resiliency in the Tahoe Basin.
