City of SLO wins award for best climate plan in nation
City recognized for ‘projects, policies, plans, and people who show exemplary leadership, inspiration in sustainability planning and implementation’
City recognized for ‘projects, policies, plans, and people who show exemplary leadership, inspiration in sustainability planning and implementation’– The City of San Luis Obispo announced this week that it has won the 2023 National Environmental, Climate, and Energy Award for its climate action plan for community recovery. The American Planning Association Sustainable Communities Division organizes the awards for excellence in sustainability to honor the projects, policies, plans, and people who show exemplary leadership and inspiration in sustainability planning and implementation.
The City of San Luis Obispo Climate Action Plan for Community Recovery (CAP) is a climate action plan that provides a pathway to carbon neutrality with a “deep focus on people, equity, and economic recovery.” It begins with a storybook from the future in 2035, illustrating a day in the life of a carbon-neutral, equitable, and thriving San Luis Obispo. Volume 2 establishes the goals of achieving carbon neutrality community-wide by 2035 and in government operations by 2030—some of the most ambitious goals in the nation.
In December 2022, the San Luis Obispo City Council adopted the most current version of the work program. Volume 3 reflects a cross-departmental and multi-sector approach to climate action implementation that incorporates learnings from two years of planning and learning, community guidance gathered through stakeholder working groups and the community “climate party” in August 2022, and is aligned with the federal government and State of California’s funding and policy support for climate solutions.
The plan also includes a “commitment to implement every single foundational action and work program task through an equity lens that examines representational equity, distributional equity, and systemic equity.” This commitment to equity reflects the desire to not only protect underserved communities from facing disproportionate impacts of climate change, but to also ensure that the benefits of local climate solutions are distributed equitably across different demographics within the community, according to the city.
Read the 5 things you should know about the Climate Action Plan here.
Read more about the American Planning Association Sustainable Communities Division at www.apascd.com and www.planning.org/divisions/sustainable/.
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