 Thank you all for coming. My name is Norma Bastion. I'm a congressman and I need to get legislative director. And I just want to say welcome and give a huge welcome to the department. I represented to get worked with ESI to set up this briefing because the impacts of climate change in the Southwest pose a very serious challenge. As you can see from this truly excellent panel, everyone is facing the challenge of climate change. State and local government, federal agencies, landowners and philanthropy are all feverishly working to respond. But they are sometimes hampered by a patchwork of jurisdictions and authorities, state lines, state, federal, private lands and diverse water right regimes, just to name a few, while their foe knows no boundaries. The groups here today are working together and getting results. But representative to get believes that congress should pitch in and should ease some of that burden. So thank you all for coming and John Michael Cross from ESI is going to give introductions of the panel. Good morning everyone and thank you for coming. We're going to start this morning with Dr. Patrick Gonzalez, who is a forest ecologist and serves as a National Park Service climate change scientist. He conducts research on ecological impacts of climate change and works with the national park managers to adapt natural resource management to climate change. Here in his PhD at the University of California Berkeley and has worked as a scientist for the U.S. Geological Survey and the University of California Center for Forestry. He has served as a lead author for the U.S. National Climate Assessment and the IPCC. When I was eight years old, my mom and dad piled the family into the station wagon for summer vacation and five kids in all. And my dad drove us from Ohio across the country to Colorado and up to Rocky Mountain National Park. And of course we enjoyed hiking, seeing bears, the beautiful scenery. Even as a kid I loved trees. So one thing I remember particularly were the mountain sides clothed in green forests of pines and that great scent of pine. 38 years later I returned to Rocky Mountain National Park as an employee of the National Park Service. And those memories were in my mind. But instead I found hillsides that were patchy and covered with a forestated turned brown. Because in the intervening years temperatures in Rocky Mountain National Park had increased a degree Celsius or two degrees Fahrenheit. And this allowed mountain pine beetles to survive winters to move farther up in elevation into forests that had previously had not known them. And the mountain pine beetles bore under the bark and kill extensive stands of trees. And this is just one of the impacts of climate change in the southwestern United States. Today I'm going to present published scientific information reviewing the historical and projected climate change and ecological impacts in the southwestern U.S. And we'll cover it in these four sections, historical and future, climate and ecological impacts, historical climate trends. Now this graph is going to show the progress of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is the main gas regulating the temperature of the earth. This axis starts 800,000 years ago and goes up to 2010, about today. And this axis is the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. And you can see that in geologic time carbon dioxide goes up and down following orbital cycles. But you see that straight line at the very end that goes straight up. That's 200 years of industrial human history. And carbon dioxide has gone way above the natural range of variability to 400 parts per million. Now what has caused it to go that high? Well every year our cars, power plants and deforestation pump 9 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere. But oceans and forests and soil can only naturally withdraw or absorb 5 billion tons. So 9 billion tons goes up into the atmosphere, 5 billion tons is naturally absorbed, and the balance 4 billion tons remains and accumulates in the atmosphere. And it's this fundamental imbalance that is causing climate change. Consequently temperatures have increased to their warmest levels in 1,200 years. And analyses of the different factors that could cause the increase in temperature, El Nino, volcanoes, solar cycles, our emissions from cars and power plants and deforestation, and the influence of the Atlantic Ocean. Analyses of each of these factors compared to what we actually observe show that it's our emissions of greenhouse gases from cars, power plants and deforestation that is causing climate change. Human activities are causing climate change. Scientific agreement on that for many years. Across the southwestern United States then, in the past century, 1901 to 2002, temperature has increased up to 2 to 4 degrees Celsius, or 4 to 8 degrees Fahrenheit. And we see the greatest warming here in Arizona and in Southern California. And up there, the graph from NOAA shows the statistically significant trend in the six southwestern United States. Climate change is also altering the patterns of rainfall and snowfall around the world. And we see here in the southwestern United States some areas of statistically significant increase in precipitation, but a large area of drought caused by climate change in the southwestern United States. So that was the historical climate trends. How does that translate on the ground in nature? Well, in the Rocky Mountains and across the western United States, climate change has reduced winter snowfall by about 7% since 1950, including here in Rocky Mountain National Park. And climate change has also advanced spring warmth into winter by about a week since 1950, including here at Sequoia National Park in California. And one thing I intended to say at the beginning was all of these results are from published scientific research that detected changes in the environment, in ecosystems, and looked at different causal factors and attributed the changes to human climate change. So that's what these examples are, the major impacts in the southwest, quite notably wildfire, where an analysis of a century of historic wildfire records and climate data show that climate has dominated all other factors in explaining the extent of wildfire here in the Santa Clara Pueblo in New Mexico and across the southwestern United States. And as I talked about in my introduction, climate change has contributed to outbreaks of mountain pine beetles and other beetles that are killing forests across the southwest and across all of western North America. And in fact, climate change has contributed to the worst outbreaks in 125 years. So the combination of pine beetles, bark beetles, drought, and wildfire has actually doubled tree mortality in the western United States, including here in Rocky Mountain National Park. In Yosemite National Park, field research has shown that climate change is shifting vegetation upslope and also shifting the ranges of small mammals upslope because as the temperature warms, the warmth moves up to higher and higher elevations. And climate change has also heated water in the oceans, expanding the water, and melted ice from land that is drained into oceans. And the combination of that has raised sea level about this much since 1855 here in San Francisco where the National Park Service hosts the title gauge right here with the longest time series in the western hemisphere, operated by NOAA and hosted by the National Park Service. So those were the historical climate and the historical ecological impacts. Now we'll look at the future and hold on, don't do it. So NOAA and a lot of other scientific groups around the world have used atmospheric models to model what might happen under certain scenarios if we don't reduce our greenhouse gas emissions under certain scenarios of economic output and energy use. And so what this movie is going to show, it's going to show the progression of temperatures from 2015, hold on, from 2015 up until towards the end of the century, go ahead. And we see the darkest reds actually represent about 7 degrees Celsius or 15 degrees Fahrenheit. Quite substantial increases in temperature. And precipitation, you can show it. The darkest blues here are increases of over 25%, and the darkest browns are decreases of over 25%. And we see here in the southwest, of course it varies over space, but a lot of the southwest covered by projected decreases in precipitation. And overall, if we take the six southwestern states as a whole, the projection is for a two to four and a half degree increase in temperature if we don't reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and an overall decrease in precipitation, so more drought. Now we've already experienced some of this in the past century, 0.9 degrees Celsius or 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit. And that might not seem like a lot, but this amount of warming is the equivalent of pushing a mountain down about 150 meters or about the height of the Washington Monument from areas of cooler temperature to areas of warmer temperature. Or it's the equivalent of taking a town like Pueblo, Colorado and moving it southward to the New Mexico border from areas that are cooler to areas that are slightly warmer. So very small changes in precipitation, very small changes in temperature can lead to substantial changes on the ground. Okay, so finally, how do those projections of climate translate into potential impacts on the ground? Well, hotter summers are already increasing wildfires in mid-elevation conifer forests across the west. Field research shows this. Oh, and this is the Nahuila National Forest in New Mexico. And here's the rimfire just last year near Yosemite National Park. And this map shows fire projections for the end of the century under the hottest scenario. And the hottest reds here are an increase of about 25 percent. And we see actually much of Colorado here, the Sierra Nevada, California, projections of increased fire across the southwest. Climate change may reduce Colorado River stream flow 10 to 45 percent by 2055 if we don't reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. And we're going to hear later some of the potential impacts on water resources from my colleague here. And drought from climate change is causing extensive dieback in the pinion pine woodlands of the southwest, including here in Bandelier National Monument. And increasing temperatures may lead to even more dieback in southwestern woodlands and forests. And Joshua trees, Joshua Tree Small Tree, which is this plant species right here, are highly vulnerable to death in Joshua Tree Capitalty National Park and across three quarters of their range due to climate change. Now, when climate change kills trees, alters stream flow, alters the patterns of ecology and wildlife, American Indians who depend very much on natural resources in the environment and actually have a lot of cultural significance in a lot of species in natural areas may also feel the impacts of these changes. The American pika, which lives in the rocky areas at the highest elevation, is vulnerable to losing its habitats from warming as warming shifts up mountains and moves their habitat completely off the top of mountains. And in desert areas, as adapted as cacti and other desert plants are to hot conditions, even they are vulnerable to death here in Saguaro National Park in Arizona and across the southwest. And finally, this map shows the results of a vulnerability analysis that I and colleagues have published. And it's the vulnerability of ecosystems to these whole scale changes in the biome or the most fundamental vegetation in an ecosystem. And so it's changes from forest to grassland or changes from grassland to desert. The biggest changes that can occur in an ecosystem. And you see here the red areas are high or very highly vulnerable. And we see in the southwest, especially the sky islands in Arizona and in southern California and in other parts of California, very high vulnerability of those ecosystems to this fundamental change. And in response, the National Park Service has developed a strategy for how to respond that has these four components, science, that is conducting applied research on the ground to answer resource managers' questions. How do we manage national parks in a time of climate change? Adaptation, how to improve the resilience of ecosystems? Mitigation, how do we actually reduce the cause of climate change by reducing the emissions from our vehicles and improving the energy efficiency of our operations? And communication using the national parks and natural areas as classrooms to help kids understand and all types of visitors understand that the future is in our hands. None of these projections are inevitable. A billion small actions cause the problem and only a billion small solutions can help solve it. So thank you very much. Thank you Dr. Gonzalez. His presentation slides were not available as a handout up front but they will be posted on our website at EESI.org. We have a webpage for each of our briefings where you can find the full video of today's briefing as well as slides and other resources. So that full website, all the features of that page should be available sometime early next week. The slides will be up this afternoon. And in my getting too much attention to the door earlier I neglected to thank Eleanor and all of Congresswoman DeGette's office both of their leadership on these issues and also for helping today's event happen. I've done it without them. Next up is Chris Trees who is the manager of external affairs for the Colorado River Water Conservation District. More commonly known today as the River District. Chris manages a department that is responsible for the River District's legislative and regulatory governmental relations in Denver and D.C. As well as the district's water education and public information efforts. In short, Chris describes his job responsibilities as everything you don't want lawyers and engineers doing. And then I'll just say that Chris was very grace, very flexible with his travel to join us here today. Some of you may know that we had to cancel and all our speakers were very flexible. We had to cancel our briefing originally scheduled for February because it was one of our also glorious snow days this year. And the irony of a briefing called drier and hotter managing climate risks in the Southwest being canceled due to snow was not lost on us. But just in case it was, many people emailed to make sure we knew about the irony of that. So thank you if that was any of you. All right, Chris. Welcome everybody. Thank you for the introduction. Thank you EESI for the invitation. So I'm the practitioner. I'm the one who has to deal with whatever the future is and all we really know is that it's an uncertain future. Whether you're a climate denier or a doubter, if you know anything about the arid Southwest, you know ours is a history of drought and flood. Ours is a history not just of annual drought and flood but prolonged multi-year, multi-decade periods of drought and periods of plenty. Accordingly, and you saw from Patrick's slides that the Southwest is ground zero for reduced precipitation as well as some increased temperatures, all of which is going to impact my world, which is water management. And the Colorado River Basin. So you saw the seven states of the Colorado River Basin. The Colorado River Basin is a story of, it's a binary story. We have 90% of the water originating in the upper basin, 90% of the people live and are served by the Colorado River in the lower basin, both in the United States and Mexico. You see here importantly that not only is there service within the basin, but here is from Pueblo that was mentioned earlier to Fort Collins and Cheyenne and Wyoming, Salt Lake City, and all of the greater LA Basin from the international border up to Ventura is all served outside the natural basin of the Colorado River by the Colorado River. Denver in Colorado receives 50% of its water from the West Slope from where I live from the Colorado River. 75% of Colorado Springs relies on the Colorado River for service outside the basin. Similarly Los Angeles and the greater LA Basin relies on water both from the Colorado River and from Northern California for most of its water supply. So we demand a lot of our water resources in the arid Southwest. The Colorado River Basin, not today, but in the future, this is what we're looking at. It will remain seven states and the size won't change, but the demands will. We're going to have more than double the population. We're going to see that the irrigated acreage just by virtue of the growth in population, that the irrigated acres will be displaced by housing, and that we are looking at conservatively a reduction in the supply due to climate change, and simply a return perhaps to what is what we now know to be historically a more normal hydrology. Additionally, and this isn't new, but there is some new or recent recognition that not only do we have seven Basin states, but we have sovereign nations from the Native Americans to work with and address as well as the Republic of Mexico. So we need to plan for that future. One of the things that was recently completed was the Colorado River Basin study. This is a cooperative study that was published by the US Bureau of Reclamation, composed by the seven Basin states and the Bureau of Reclamation cooperatively, that involved extensive scenario planning about the future, future growth and future notably climate change. That's only roughly a year old now. And to ensure that it didn't end up just being another very good, fascinating study sitting on a shelf, there are three action teams and some other efforts that have arisen from that that are ongoing. And I want to talk to you, I want to spend three slides on talking about what the conclusions were from this study. That the imbalances between supply and demand, the haves and the have-nots will continue to grow. There are no silver bullets for answering the questions, for addressing the gap between supply and demand. It is going to take a basket of responses that we are all going to have to speak a common language, some of which has been helped by the Basin study and the cooperative efforts to achieve the Basin study and publish that report, that the current demands outstrip the supply already. We're not talking about the future. Right now demand exceeds supply on a basin-wide basis. The current gap is covered by storage. We have the two largest reservoirs in the United States in Lake Powell and Lake Mead. Those serve the arid southwest and we are drawing them down. Future actions are needed to change that direction. In the lower basin, they are already overusing their available and legal supply. It is a matter of when, not if. In the upper basin, the imbalance is not there now, but it is a greater than 0% chance that it will occur and planning is needed. For the upper basin, the issue is hydrology. What is that future precipitation pattern? For the lower basin, it's how are they going to manage their demands? The Basin study, as I mentioned, looked at scenarios. The only thing that's important here is that the red lines, the red squiggles, these are all future projections. These are all the scenarios of future water demand. The blue is water supply, reflects a great deal of uncertainty, but notably that you look at the preponderance of demands and the preponderance of supply scenarios, demand exceeds supply. We need options. We need to look at how we're going to deal with this. I mentioned that we have some action groups and they are dealing with these issues. One, if you're talking about demand and reducing that demand, you're talking about conservation. We're looking at new supplies, whatever they might be, and what are the institutional changes? What are the governance issues, not just legal but institutional cooperation, breaking down some barriers? Is water development in its traditional form of constructing a dam, building new supplies, or can we find some new ways on that old theme of storing water? Are there groundwater resources that can be augmented, that can be supplemented, and then drawn? This is my gratuitous climate change or my gratuitous hydrology and the look at current conditions. I will tell you that your eye is not to be attracted to the red in the southwest. The good news is that this slide that was prepared for the February presentation looks a lot better than the slide back in February. There's less red, notably in California, but it is still predominantly red. One of the things we're looking at, this is only the upper basin, but we're looking at how do we manage our biggest reservoirs? What can be done to deal with the supply demand imbalance? Something we're calling contingency planning, and it is going on now. This is not an exercise for what may happen in the future. This is a current practice, a current effort to look at what are we going to do when Lake Powell doesn't get to zero, that's not the critical level. Critical level is only about 50 to 70 feet in elevation below where the current lake levels are. That's when it falls below where the Bureau of Reclamation, the Western Area Power Administration, can draw water and produce hydroelectricity. At that point, when you're no longer producing hydroelectricity, you're no longer providing preference power to the Western Area Power Administration to farmers and ranchers and communities throughout the southwest. You're no longer providing funds for the Colorado River Salinity Program. You're no longer providing federal funds for the Colorado River Endangered Fish Programs and a variety of other programs including the Grand Canyon, the efforts to restore the environment in the Grand Canyon. So can we look at some of the, it's only 3 million or 4 million acre feet compared to 26 million acre feet in Lake Powell, but can we look at Flaming Gorge? Can we move some of that water down so we increase the levels? It's obviously not a permanent solution, but it will help us in managing the river and managing for the future, just some of the things we're looking at. So Lake Powell, you've got a history of Lake Powell from 1992. Here's the last time it was full was 1998. That's also the last time that the Colorado River reached the Gulf of California. Physically reached the water, reached the Gulf of California until today or tomorrow, excitingly. But what you have there from 2000 on, this is the drought we've been living in in the southwest. We then got a wonderful year and we've had a chance to increase some of our storage for a few years, but now you see us dropping right back down at an elevation now of about 3,500, 3,600 feet. In Lake Mead we have a similar situation, but more dramatic. We had one or two good years where hydrology, the snow in the upper basin, provided for a boost in Lake Mead levels, but you see the overall trend is a decline and that is the over demand, the excess of demand over supply in the lower basin. So Lake Mead's water budget is simply that inflow is about 9, outflow we're running about almost 10. Evaporation off Lake Mead is half a million acre feet. We have a structural deficit, if you can call it that, of over a million acre feet a year. So we're looking at, you know, what are we going to do? We can either rely on hope for change. That's just fingers crossed, that doesn't work particularly well. So we're looking again at decreased uses, voluntary or incentivized demand management, improved system efficiencies, re-operate some of our reservoirs to improve storage. We know that the past will not be the future, but the past is all we have to rely on as we look toward the future. So we're trying to build on both the information of the past as well as the mistakes of the past. So an opportunity to provide a congressional briefing, I'm going to take the opportunity to make some specific asks. So here's, we want greater cooperation with the federal agencies across the states and across water users in the full geography of the basin. Excuse me. We need demand management pilot programs to provide those incentives. We will, we need water reuse, conservation and other new supplies. We need to be flexible. We need to be creative. And I think we need some bipartisanship here in Washington DC and elsewhere. I just had to ask. So it's going to take a lot of people. It's going to take a lot of creativity. This was a much nicer slide when I was, when it was Valentine's Day and we were presenting in February. So I thank you all for your attention. Thank you, Chris. Next is Margaret Bowman, who is the Acting Environment Program Director at the Walton Family Foundation, which pursues lasting conservation, conservation solutions for oceans and rivers while recognizing the role these waters play in the livelihoods of those who live and work nearby. A core focus of Margaret's work is ensuring healthy river flows in the Colorado River. Prior to joining the foundation in 2008, Margaret directed the Lenfest Ocean Program at the Pew Charitable Trust. And for over a decade she worked at American Rivers with various titles including Vice President for Conservation. Margaret? I'm Michael and thanks EESI for sponsoring this briefing. By now you've gotten a lot of information about the challenges in the West due to climate change. I'm not going to go into any more detail about those challenges. What I'd like to talk about is how we respond to those challenges. And I want to focus on water issues. I'd like you to leave this briefing today remembering two things. The first is that there's a water crisis in the West. And as a result, business as usual has got to change and it's got to change now. But second, I want you to remember that this is a crisis that is solvable. And if we take action now, there are solutions that exist that we can provide economic, social and ecological benefits through our solutions. I work for the Walton Family Foundation. This is founded by the Walmart icon, Sam Walton, who I'm sure you're familiar with. Our work on water is focused in the Colorado River Basin, so I'm going to be focusing my remarks on that. But it is applicable. My solutions are applicable throughout the West. At the Foundation, we have a vision for the future in the Colorado River Basin. In that vision, the region's agricultural industry will be modernized with more efficient irrigation technologies. Modernization will not only increase the productivity of agriculture, but will also result in a surplus of water that farmers can voluntarily sell or lease to cities or for in-stream flows. In our vision, the cities of the basin manage their water supplies smartly and with improved efficiency and recycling technologies. Residents transform their landscaping to look like the beautiful arid western landscapes where they live rather than eastern green grass communities. With these changes, cities can become more resilient to unpredictable weather. And they won't be rendered bankrupt due to expensive and environmentally damaging Rube Goldberg plans to pipe water in from far away lands. In our vision, the iconic rivers of the Colorado River Basin remain healthy and resilient. And as a result, the region's $26 billion recreation and tourism industry continues to grow. And residents looking for a high quality of life are attracted to the basin to work. Fish and wildlife are healthy in our vision. And as a result, the region is not subjected to divisive and expensive endangered species act fights that are the bane of other basins existence. And finally, in our vision, cities, towns, federal and state agencies, water utilities, farmers and ranchers, tribes and conservationists all work together to adapt our system of managing water. So that our energy can be spent on sharing their water most effectively rather than litigating old disputes. With a more fluid market for sharing water, private capital can be attracted into investing in the region's water solutions. Added to federal and state funding, this private investment can finance the infrastructure improvements that are needed to transform our West. This may be a bold vision, but it's not a crazy one. All of it is achievable. And for the most part, the solutions in our vision are already being experimented with at the local level. What we need now is the political will to scale these changes up to the regional level. About a year ago, as Chris Trees mentioned, the US Department of Interior released a collaborative water supply and demand study for the Colorado River Basin. And they concluded that by 2060, the gap between water supply and demand in the basin will be greater than 3.2 million acre feet. We've done some number crunching and we believe that there's enough water to meet those projected water gaps in the Colorado Basin States if we invest in a few critical solutions. First, we need to upgrade irrigation infrastructure in the basin and implement other agricultural water saving techniques. And we need to utilize water banking mechanisms to bank and then share this saved water throughout the basin. Voluntarily implemented irrigation efficiency deficit irrigation and other innovative irrigation technologies are concepts that many farmers are already using in the basin. Combined with these water saving techniques, water banking is a market based approach that allows farmers and others to bank their unused water voluntarily. This saving for a non rainy day approach is a common sense way of making our water supplies more resilient in the basin. We estimate that 1 million acre feet of saved water can be generated from agriculture in the basin while keeping farming and ranching a vibrant part of the region's economy. Farmers and ranchers need to stay on their land, not only to grow food, but also to maintain the western culture and landscape of the region. And from an environmental standpoint, farmers often call water down the river rather than having it sent out of the basin to distant cities. Without farms, a lot more rivers would be dry. Second, we need our cities to ensure that they use their water as efficiently as possible so that they can continue to grow while living within their water means. Water efficiency programs have worked time and time again and usually represent the lowest cost and fastest option for new water supply. We estimate that 1 million acre feet of additional water savings can be gained through urban water efficiency. Conservation can occur through improved landscaping techniques, requirements that new construction be water efficient and other conservation approaches. In addition, municipal water audits routinely result in dramatic savings. Third, we need to stretch our water supplies further through recycling. Wastewater, stormwater and graywater can be treated and reused for irrigation, industrial processing and cooling, and even in many places for potable use. In addition, recycled water can be used to maintain river flows and to replenish groundwater supplies. Our analysis estimates 1.2 million acre feet can be gained through these recycling approaches in the basin. The estimated savings from these three solutions may be enough to fill the projected water gap in the Colorado Basin. But to be cautious, Colorado River Basin State should pursue some targeted water augmentation projects. If new solutions are narrowly targeted to address specific water supply needs and can do so without environmental harm, they can be an important part of the solution. In contrast, large water import schemes are expensive, they're energy intensive, environmentally harmful and are often not targeted to the locations where water is needed. For the most part, the solutions I've outlined are not untested ideas. Communities across the basin are already using promising practices that can serve as a model to others across the region. Let me just share just a couple examples. Temporary agricultural fallowing arrangements in Yuma, Arizona and Palo Verde, California have generated saved water for urban areas and also cash for farmers without widespread loss of agricultural lands. The town of Sierra Vista, Arizona and the surrounding Cochise County have both passed laws that required certified water efficient appliances in new homes. And they're also dedicating recycled water for groundwater recharge near the San Pedro River, reducing the impact of the city's groundwater pumping on the river. And several community leaders across the West have banded together into a network called the Western Adaptation Alliance. Through this, communities are comparing approaches to water efficiency and recycling and exploring other ways to make their water supplies more secure and adaptable. Efficiency, recycling and carefully targeted water augmentation solutions can generate the water needed to meet the Colorado Basin's future needs. What may be the hardest part of our vision is taking the first steps to make that happen. It's building the political will in the region to work together to craft these solutions. A key lesson from the extreme weather events of the past few years is that our communities and economies are interdependent. Solving the region's urban water needs by drying up agriculture will end up harming cities due to the lack of food supply and also the local economy will be disrupted. Further draining rivers to meet water needs will harm the important tourism economy and make communities in the region undesirable places to live. Working together to stretch and share the region's water supplies may be difficult, but it is the only solution that will ensure a resilient region into the future. Just this week, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its most recent report on climate changes. It's focused on adaptation. The report identified a lot of freshwater-related risks from climate change, particularly in the West, as we've heard today. But it also highlighted the need for flexible and low-regret solutions that can build resilience to climate change. And it highlighted resilience strategies that can provide co-benefits for human health, livelihoods, social and economic well-being, and environmental quality. Also this week, an exciting collaborative restoration experiment occurred in the Colorado River Delta in Mexico. And this experiment highlights the co-benefits of resilience solutions that are mentioned in the IPCC report. A pulse flow of water, also known as a managed flood, was released into the dry riverbed of the Colorado and Mexico. This experiment was designed to restore riverside trees and wetlands for birds and other wildlife. But it was just one result of a groundbreaking international agreement between the U.S. and Mexico that was signed in 2012. This five-year agreement also provided additional water for California, Arizona and Nevada, and committed Mexico to work with the U.S. in times when reductions in water supply are needed. It's too soon to know the ecological results of this experiment. We must wait for the flood waters to recede to understand that. But the social benefits of this experiment are already quite clear. Hundreds of residents of the Mexican town of San Luis, Colorado, a town whose name includes their lost river, they've been out celebrating the river's return. Young children who have never seen the river were playing in the water. Elders who remember the river before Hoover Dam was built were watching the river return. And teenagers were dancing in the river, yelling, thank you, America, for bringing back our river. And perhaps equally exciting to this, state and federal officials from both sides of the border were celebrating an increased level of cooperation. And hopefully they were looking for the next opportunity to design agreements to share water to make the whole region more resilient. The old adage rings, too, with our water supply. A stitch in time saves nine. If we can develop the courage to work together today to address our shared water needs, we can not only address these challenges in a more cost-effective fashion that brings benefits to all involved, but we can also avoid the divisive battles that break down the interdependent strings that will keep our region resilient into the future. Over a century ago, the West was built by innovative pioneers working together to harness the region's natural resources. We can't build our way out of the current water supply challenges the way those pioneers built their early water systems. There simply isn't enough water left. But it is time to reinvigorate that pioneering spirit. It is time to transform the West again, but this time we need to transform it into the most water-efficient region in the world. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for mentioning the IPCC, which Working Group 2 just came out in the last couple of days. Working Group 3 will be out soon. I also wanted to mention that the National Climate Assessment, which in many ways is the United States version of the IPCC, will be out in approximately one month, the final version, the draft of the latest one, has been out for approximately one year. One of the things we wanted to do, and this briefing is the kickoff of a series looking at different regions of the United States and what the National Climate has to say about those, and certainly getting into a lot more than just the NCA. But we don't have the next one scheduled yet, but be on the lookout soon for more briefings in different regions. Finally today, before we move to an extended Q&A, we have Lewis Blumberg, who is the Director of the Climate Change Program for the Nature Conservancy's California chapter. He's been directly involved in the development of climate policy in California for more than a decade. Prior to joining the Nature Conservancy in 2004, Lewis served as the Deputy Director of External Affairs for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Lewis? For the opportunity to be here today. There's a secret service agent standing in a field in the Central Valley. This was February two months ago. But what is a secret service agent doing there? Well, President Obama came to look at California's drought. We're three years into a drought. I can't say if it's the middle of the drought or the end of the drought or the beginning, but we're having a drought. And we know that climate change is making the drought worse. And if we didn't know that already, we got a reminder on Monday with the release of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Report. So we need to take action now. That's one of the lessons from the report. And we know that the longer we wait, the more difficult it will be to address the problem and the more costly it will be. And at the Nature Conservancy, we believe nature is a powerful tool in the fight against climate change. There are three essential strategies to address climate change. One is to reduce emissions, the cause of the problem. One is to restore carbon, return it back to the trees and the earth from where the disparity came that Patrick talked about. And the third is to respond to the impacts. And nature plays a role in all three. And often you can address all three strategies with one action. So we need action now. And I would agree with Eleanor Congress has a role. We all in the room have a role to play. We need to plan now and get projects going and get activity happening. I was really pleased with Margaret's positive, hopeful stories of her talk because things are happening. And we know that nature needs to be a part of it. We know that natural infrastructure works. It can reduce risk from climate, magnified extreme events, and it can provide the multiple benefits that are essential. So I'm going to talk about three themes here. First around some of the water issues in California. The second is around natural infrastructure, reducing climate risk. And the third is California's response to the current situation. And the three themes are going to be kind of interwoven here. We know that the state is doing much. There's a lot going on in its response to the drought. A lot of this has been sort of emergency planning. We've had a declaration of emergency by the governor, a drought task force, legislation passed that allows movement of water more quickly. But it's like the state went out to buy a fire extinguisher while the fire was burning. This is not really going to get the job done. In the long run, we need to plan ahead. We need to manage better in advance. This means conserving water resources in times of drought so that we have them when we need them. We need to make sure that we avoid no harm. In the late 80s, California had another drought and increased pumping significantly in the delta that caused a lot of environmental damage. And we also need to deploy natural solutions. So what does that mean? In California, that means like in the Sierra Nevada mountains and other mountain headwaters, we need to restore degraded forests and meadows so that they can act as a sponge like they do and hold water and release it in the dry parts of the year. We need to do ecologically based thinning of the unhealthy forests, as Patrick talked about, to reduce the catastrophic wildfires that are increasing all the time. Along our rivers, we need to reconnect the rivers to their natural flood plains. This can help recharge groundwater basins. And in the California delta and other estuaries, restoring marshes and wetlands can reduce the risk of levee failure protecting communities and farms, can reduce the risk of flooding and can enhance environmental benefits for fish, birds, while increasing water supply reliability for 25 million Californians. And even in the tropics, there's a role for nature here, for California's water. So the protection of the rainforest is critical for our water supply. One recent study found that the forestation of the Amazon would decrease the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada by 50%. And we also know that the forest, tropical forests of the globe, provide the water, much of the water, that flows into the temperate regions. In California through these what are called atmospheric river events that bring a lot of our rainfall. So nature is a powerful tool in addressing these climate risks. And the climate risks in California are well known in their common. We've had wildfire, floods, coastal erosion and drought. And we know from the IPCC report, if we didn't know it already, that these are going to get more frequent and more extreme. And so we're promoting, again, nature, natural infrastructure as a solution. This is the YOLO bypass near Sacramento. It was a flood risk reduction project that can reduce the risk of floods, which climate will increase, to the city of Sacramento in the background. But it provides also many other multiple benefits, many other benefits like clean water, fish and wildlife habitat, recreation. Natural infrastructure can increase property values and build community support. It avoids the carbon dioxide emissions to come with building concrete levees. And in this case, there's farming as well on the land, whether it's rice growing at certain times of year. So we looked at what's happening in California and we produced a new report, and I'm pleased to say I have a few copies with me here today, about reducing climate risk with natural infrastructure in California, nine case studies. What we found in the report is that people are doing it. This works. It's proven. And it's also cost-effective. It's flexible and doesn't lock you into concrete solutions. It provides multiple benefits and it builds community support. So what's going on in California in terms of climate risk reduction and response planning? And I'm using the term risk reduction and response instead of adaptation. I think that's... the adaptation terms to me is problematic. So California has got a lot of activity going on, in addition to the drought response. There are over 20 plans, either complete or most of them on your way, that deal with climate response in some way. Different departments, different agencies, they're all over the place here. And the one John Michael asked me to talk about is the Safeguarding California Plan. And this plan has... it's in draft form. It was released in December. Comments closed Valentine's Day. And we hope it will be finished by May. It's fairly large. It's a textbook of information. A lot of description of risk, of what's happened. Where it's weak is on the specificity of the action items. Now, looking at the water issue, which we've been talking about today, the plan is good on a couple of issues. It talks well about flood risk reduction and the strategies to do that. And it really raises the importance of groundwater management in a way that has not happened in California. So there's an active conversation about groundwater in California now, which is not adjudicated in our state. So it's important to manage groundwater in wet years so that we can turn to those reserves in dry years and to manage them in a sustainable yield in conjunctive use with surface water, with monitoring and adapting when needed. Now, many of the other recommendations in this report are very general and nonspecific. And so overall, the plan here lacks specificity, it lacks timelines, and it lacks metrics. Now, there are two key water-related recommendations that are not in the report that we think should be. The first one is to increase above-the-dam natural water storage. And again, this is through building resilient forest and watersheds. The second is what Chris talked about, is re-operating the water system in the context of climate change. Historically, we look at each individual dam in a vacuum, and we need to figure out how to optimize the existing water infrastructure system-wide as a system to provide water for people and nature through both wet and dry years. So we've got a group of people together and provided some input to the State on this plan. We have science groups and public health groups and environmental groups and land trusts. And included in our voluminous letter here, we're four key areas for improvement. And we believe that this plan for the State, if it's going to safeguard California from the impacts of climate change, needs to have really smart actions. Actions that are specific, measurable, discrete actions that you can report on and that have timelines. We believe that natural infrastructure should be given a preference. There is good references to natural infrastructure in several places, but it's not coalesced in any coherent way. And it needs to be given a preference. The third is around avoiding hazards. We think it's unwise for the State to spend State dollars building State facilities without understanding what the risks are. And we believe State agencies should not permit new facilities in areas that are high risk from climate impacts. And the fourth and probably the most challenging, I guess, is to integrate climate change into the standard business practice of the State. This is also a recommendation in President Obama's climate action plan that he released in the summer. And so we think it's critical that climate change become just part of doing business. And the rationale, the caveat in the State's plan, the safeguarding plan is they don't have the money or the training. And that's just not acceptable, I guess. They need to figure out how to do this because it's foolish really to go forward without understanding the climate impacts. So we believe nature is a powerful tool in the fight against climate change. And to harmonize these various State planning efforts and to really give some sense of cohesiveness, we're promoting a set of climate smart principles for policymakers and planners. And those are to plan ahead to reduce risk, focus on the future, not today, prioritize natural infrastructure, which I've talked a lot about, collaborate better across sectors, take actions that produce multiple benefits. You've heard a lot about that today, and address greenhouse gas emissions, reduce them, quantify them, pay attention to the impacts that we have when we act, and employ adaptive and flexible approaches. So the benefits are clear. We can reduce climate-magnified risks to people, communities, and our environment, and we can generate a bushel basket of additional public and private benefits. We need to act now. The longer we wait, the more difficult and expensive it will be. The question that for us here in this room is will we act soon enough and with enough force that we leave a world that in some way resembles that with which civilization evolved? Thank you. Thank you, Lewis. Before I open up to the audience, I was wondering if any of our panelists had questions for each other or reactions to some of the different presentations. Thank you for that, and it's an honor to be up here with these panelists, fellow panelists. Lewis, I have my own guess, but I want to invite you to talk a little bit more on what is involved in natural infrastructure. So natural infrastructure is using the power of nature to fight climate change. So it can be a variety of strategies of active forest management that's ecologically sound, can reduce fire risk, can affect fire behavior. Strategies like wetland conservation, wetland restoration can help buffer coastal communities and other communities and farms from storm surge and sea level rise and the suite of coastal hazards that is involved and exacerbated by climate change. Issues like restoring natural flood plains, building restoring, restoring, repairing vegetation along rivers. All of these activities can help reduce flood risk which we know will get more severe. And as I mentioned, restoring forest watersheds helps with water supply as well. So it's all a system, not a surprise there. And using the power of nature is important. So in this report, what we've tried to do here, what we've done is talk about a gradient. It's not green versus gray. It's not a dialectic. There's a whole range of solutions. So preservation is the simplest, probably the quickest. Restoration is more active, involves some activity. So it's not necessarily green. It's using nature. Third on the spectrum would be using structures and nature. And the fourth would be using structures alone. And we recognize some places will need to be armored to deal with climate risks. But where it's feasible, nature should be used. Anyone else? So open up to the audience. So we'd like a mobile microphone. Not that big a room. We should be able to hear each other. But I will be repeating the question just for the benefit of our online audience. So any questions? Yes. I'll call for an online precipitation. Okay. The future projections are from Canada on climate change, on which I sit. I'm a lead author for the IPCC. And also, NOAA, the U.S. government has produced projections as part of the group of IPCC projections. So the uncertainty in projecting the futures, there's two types of uncertainty. One is how is the future going to be? What is the population and how will we be using energy? Will we be more sustainable or not? And then within those types of scenarios, there's another uncertainty and that's how the atmospheric models vary among them. So for any of our analyses, we quantify those two types of uncertainties. And if you saw some of the results here, I always expressed the future projections as a range. So for the Southwestern U.S., the projections range from 2.5 degrees to 4.6 degrees. That accounts for that first uncertainty of what population and energy use will do. And then within each of those scenarios, we use every single atmospheric model and currently there are 33 different ones. So you can get the average of all of them and see how they agree amongst themselves. So we've quantified the uncertainty, but the bottom line is that through history, we've put enough carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to commit us to a certain level of climate change. And up until now, the global temperature has increased about 0.8 degrees Celsius, or about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit. And if we stopped everything now, the atmosphere would continue to warm at about that same rate. So that's what we're committed to, but above that, our choices in how we live and the legislation that is passed to reduce emissions and to increase energy efficiency can prevent us from going above that. You've identified high-risk areas based on temperature and precipitate. What should be done to form one of those people who live in high-risk areas relative to what they can do to prevent certain events from taking place? For instance, wildfires. Are there any solutions? California has had at least one to two wildfires every year for the past 25 years. There's been no solutions other than the governor declaring a state of emergency. Wildfire is a natural part of ecosystems, and we require a certain amount of wildfire, but of course as you've seen, climate change is increasing the number of catastrophic wildfires. Wildfires that get out of control and cause property damage and kill people. So what the National Park Service and the Forest Service and a lot of our partners are doing right now is trying to reduce the understory by reducing the fuels for fire by reducing the understory. All the small trees that are in the understory of the forest because a century of strict firefighting or fire suppression has causes a natural buildup of small trees and of fuels in the forests and that, combined with climate change, is increasing the hazards. So our main attack, line of attack here is to reduce the amount of fuels so you have forests that have bigger trees more widely spaced and a clear understory that doesn't have this accumulation of fuels. So the federal government, the state governments are collaborating on this to the extent possible. That defined the tenderest forest throughout the nation has the National Park Service used any of that data in the Patrick's group? Anyone else in on the fund? Yeah, I'll respond to two things. One is that in terms of protecting people it's really local county lanyards decisions that are putting more people at risk of wildfires. They move their homes into areas that are prone to risk. California has designated high fire hazard severity zones when you buy a new house in one of those zones and get insurance, they have to tell you that. People still do it so it's changing a lot of little behaviors is really critical. There's a role for local government in that and on the flip side, there's been a good so optimistic action in Congress where we've seen some bipartisanship on this issue with acts like the Healthy Forest Restoration Act that providing some funding to federal agencies and state governments to try to deal with the problem. Population growth, people moving is going to make it very intractable. Thanks, Lewis. Yeah, that's a really important point and another way to address this that the Park Service states and our partners is using prescribed fire or setting fires in a very controlled and scientifically determined way to mimic the natural fires that have not occurred in the past century. Other questions from the audience? Are you here? Some questions about population pressures in the region. Yes, climate change is not our only problem and population growth is exacerbating the challenge. I think the key question is how you manage that population growth and Chris and I were actually talking about this right before this panel that one of the really important piece is from a water supply perspective we've just heard about a key solution on a fire perspective is let's make sure we're not building houses in harm's way from a water supply perspective we need to better integrate local land use planning with water supply planning right now they're done by different agencies that rarely talk to each other. Some states and localities do it better than others but that link between water supply and planning has got to be much tighter and that's very much doable and even in short water supply areas you can if you have an area that really has reached its limit of water supply now but still wants to grow you can apply some market mechanisms where you say okay there's no more water left if you want to come in you need to invest in efficiency upgrades on these other houses or on these other companies or affect you know fix the leakage in the system and so that new development is helping to fund the efficiency upgrades on older buildings so that you can grow while living within that same water footprint but those decisions need to be deeply integrated if we're going to address this Did you want to add anything Chris? Well I think there's obviously two elements to population growth one is obviously organic growth births over deaths the other and the more significant for the arid southwest is I think you noted is the in migration and so education is an important part of this it is I grew up in the east I'm used to having lots of rain and more water than was desirable at any given time that irrigator farmers here aren't irrigators they're they're drainers they are moving that water off the field more than applying water to the field and that's a big educational shift there is a whole different orientation to water water is an abundant excess resource in the east it is a scarce resource in the arid west but we move to the west and we want to replicate our environments we plant our trees we plant our bluegrass lawns we want to replicate our environments we need to change we need to adapt we need to educate and begin to live as if we are in the arid west as arid westerners and that's a big change and in the you know institutionally tying land use with water supply planning it's been our complaint for a long time that throughout Colorado throughout the arid west we went through our most severe droughts when we implemented on a utility or a city level draconian truly severe water restrictions water conservation requirements and the city council would do that and then meet 15 minutes later as the land planning commission and hand out land use permits like they were Halloween candy there's a disconnect in our institutionally between land use and water supply planning and that needs to we need to marry those two conversations on an intimate level great there's a question right here question are there policy and legislative challenges that matter because I'm concerned about like both of the areas where understanding is appropriate from actually doing that thank you so the question is about how do we manage our forest fire fuel better two points first you are correct in wilderness areas the federal government is constrained on active management and that's true for the national national park system half of the area the national parks is in wilderness and so what occurs there occurs naturally without for the most part without active management so what I was talking about active fire management of prescribed burning occurs in the other half of the system which is still a substantial area the second point I want to make is that a lot of fire management is is wildland fire use or when a fire is ignited naturally by burning and the park service and the forest service and other federal agencies have organized fire plans organized and approved fire plans and if the fire isn't occurring in an area where we've already planned to burn then we can let it burn because it is a natural process it's an essential process for forest ecosystems and the lessons of the big fire in 1988 are very clear that fire is necessary that a resilient ecosystem can come back just as strong it's the excessive wildfire from climate change that we're trying to avoid let me just add too with Patrick was talking about the national parks also we have national forests and I don't speak for the forest service but my sense is that the policies and regulations are in place that would allow more of this type of activity and it's really funding that's the shortfall there more funding would actually get more acres treated I have a question about especially for those of you on the ground in California and in Colorado the interaction between the federal level and the state and local level whether it's decision making or planning are there ways that interaction could be improved or things that you all could use I'll start I'm sure there are a lot of thoughts here the half of the state of Colorado is federally owned the federal government is a partner by definition and so the federal government in its responses to water quality to the sedimentation that comes naturally from runoff off BLM lands relatively dry usually arid lands is a necessary part of meeting new storm water regulations for municipalities and I think there are a host that we've talked about fuel reduction, fire suppression fire management major element that addresses the forest and the Bureau of Land Management lands as well as National Park Service and others the federal government has a large role both regulatory and ownership and therefore land management role and I think that the federal government can provide a number of leadership roles one they can lead by example two they can become a partner become a better partner I don't mean to suggest that they're not one now but become a better partner in those joint responsibilities for meeting some of our environmental goals for our water supply goals I think there are a variety of opportunities for improvement as well as creating some new partnerships and some new relationships between the non-federal and the federal Other questions Just one The Basin Studies of Bureau of Reclamation Basin Studies says that when the projections for the Colorado were made 100 years ago it was during a form of wetter cycle and so it's over the fact that we would have more water than we actually do does that most of our water is from the snow path so where is that water going we've got to go somewhere else if we're having drier water if you remember the map of changes in the past century in rainfall precipitation most of the map was actually blue the tendency of climate changes is to increase energy in the weather system and that expresses itself by more storms and more rainfall so actually across North America 80% of the area has experienced increases in rainfall but it's just how the landscape is and how atmospheric processes go that the Southwest has experienced a decline it's part of the 20% that has experienced a decline and so where is the water going the water is going to other areas that have experienced increases in precipitation and sometimes that expresses itself as bigger storms and flooding so you see the two extremes that result from climate change extreme drought in some areas and then too much water and flooding in other areas I'm not sure it's entirely on point to your question but in Colorado Colorado is obviously arid as well as very wet in its mountain areas primarily as snow as you noted the climate scenarios the future forecast for climate change really have their greatest range of uncertainty right in Colorado and the dividing line seems to be about that median east-west across Colorado interstate 70 cutting east-west seems to be the dividing line and that is also our experience in Colorado in the recent past so that in fact we may get more precipitation in Colorado as a result of climate change as a result of the scenarios for climate change but more of that will come as rain than as snow it will come because it's warmer and the result of warmer temperatures means that we're going to have a longer growing period not just for farmers and ranchers but for the natural environment the net result though we may have more water you're going to have more growth more uptake both man-caused and natural so that the net effect is less water less water in the rivers and earlier water in the rivers so that's all part of the the planning that we need to do and the changes to some of our institutions some of our water rights limit when you can begin to store water behind 100 year old dams those may need to be reexamined they may need to be on those water rights decrees may need to be amended to address an earlier runoff a flashier runoff which will then get to some of the other armoring issues and erosion issues that were mentioned in a coastal context by Lewis we're almost out of time but Margaret I wanted to ask you you mentioned a private investment in water infrastructure and I was wondering if you could say a little bit more about that and maybe that's happening right now I remember from my economics 101 class that when something becomes scarce the value goes up and so yes there's a lot of interest from private investors in water because they think it's going to only increase in value our interest in finding ways to have investors who are interested in water invest in positive solutions rather than speculative investment in water rights that then will result in fallowed farmland and piping water to cities and so I think there is interest from the investment community in finding the solutions some of the interest and some of the things we're exploring are helping to invest in water cultural upgrades and in lining of ditches switching to more efficient irrigation technologies bringing private investment in for that upgrade and then finding revenue streams to pay that investor back through increased productivity but maybe you can put solar on the ditch while you're lining it and you have returns that way there are other kind of creative social impact bonds and others to find other solutions we're also promoting IRS ruling to say that if you result in safe water and you can dedicate that water in stream you can get a tax write off for that so there are creative ways of finding those solutions on the agricultural side I think it's a very new area and there are some investors out there that are interested in that and we're working to kind of see if we can help promote that there's also private investment opportunities on the urban side as well there's a lot of infrastructure transitions that need to be done there and opportunities to bring in private financing and again we are trying to find ways to promote the positive investments that are needed there great any last short questions no? ok well thank you everyone for coming today again the full video slides other resources will be available at EESI.org and we will have other briefings related to regional impacts from climate as well as adaptation strategies for those regions we'll be looking at water but also a number of other issues related to those as well also be on the lookout for the release of the final version of the national climate assessment which will have a chapter on the Southwest as well as I believe seven other regions of the United States as well as chapters on a variety of sectors public health, water, agriculture it's going to be a great resource and with that I'd like to just thank our speakers very much and thank you again