University of California, Davis
EN-14: Participation in Public Policy

At the direction of the UC Davis Chancellor, UC Davis advocates within the local community for sustainability related policies, programs, and funding. The campus participates formally in local community transportation and transit planning efforts, downtown redevelopment, habitat conservation, water supply, groundwater sustainability, homelessness resources, and housing advocacy on the topic of rental resource for tenants that affect many aspects of sustainability.

Examples of this advocacy include the formal participation by UC Davis in multiple local governmental entities including local cities, counties, and joint-powers authorities enacted for specific sustainability measures. UC Davis staffing and advocacy details and priorities are led by the UC Davis Office of the Chancellor. Through these governmental entities, UC Davis advocates for funding, policies, and organizational management with a perspective of utilizing the best available data for long-term success and careful consideration of public policy tradeoffs.

For the Yolo County Habitat Conservancy, UC Davis initiated and has participated in early planning to protect the critical habitat of threatened, endangered, and sensitive species for more than 20 years. UC Davis participates as a formal board member to the Yolo Habitat Conservancy Joint Powers Authority and assists with land acquisition, organizational management of the authority, grant funding, and permit acquisition to comply with the state and federal endangered species acts and to enact land conservation beyond the required minimums of the state and federal acts. The advocacy role of UC Davis to protect 12 identified sensitive species has resulted in securing funding, permits, and land protection expected for more than 30,000 acres of critical habitat in Yolo County during the 50 year period of the adopted habitat conservation plan. This long-term advocacy effort has shown that sustainability efforts are best coordinated with the assistance of multiple public partners. The collaborative effort of UC Davis, Yolo County, and the cities of Davis, Winters, Woodland and West Sacramento has created land development policies that were then adopted at the local level as development regulations. These efforts focus on efficient protection and conservation of habitat lands and provide long-term funding and public oversight to maintain the high habitat values of each land parcel.

Other similar examples include the UC Davis leadership participation in the Yolo County Transportation District, downtown redevelopment within the City of Davis to limit suburban sprawl, surface water supply to avoid use of groundwater, groundwater sustainability planning, homelessness resources to rehouse individuals. As another example, UC Davis is advocating for rental resources for protecting the needs of tenants and improving energy efficiency of rental properties within the City of Davis.

Yolo Habitat Conservancy: https://www.yolohabitatconservancy.org/

UC Davis engages in public policy advocacy for sustainability at the state/regional level in a variety of ways.

AT THE STATE AGENCY LEVEL:

In 2020, UC Davis’ Office of Campus Counsel and Government & Community Relations (GCR) helped UC Davis’ Policy Institute for Energy, Environment and the Economy submit comments and become a party to the California Public Utility Commission’s (CPUC) regulation making process on autonomous vehicles. Multiple recommendations were made, including that with additional funding the UC system would likely be able to create or use an existing data repository with adequate usability, features and formats for secure storage of AV Pilot data.

SITE VISIT BY LEGISLATORS:

In 2019 GCR staffed the Institute for Transportation Studies (ITS) on an Assemblyman Quirk visit. The Assemblyman received presentation on active transportation and land use issues, alternative fuels, hydrogen, electrical vehicles and UC ITS research and SB 1 programs.

GCR worked with the Pro Tem's Office to have a press conference at the campus' solar farm regarding SB 100. SB 100 was the Pro Tem’s 100% Clean Energy bill, related to California’s Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) and planning for getting to 100% clean and renewable energy (May 2017)

ADVOCACY DAYS:

In March of 2019 graduate students from all ten UC campuses were in Sacramento for UC Graduate Research Advocacy Day. They shared their research with members of the Legislature and discussed the importance of graduate research along with advocating for additional funding. More specifically, the UC Davis legislative delegation consisted of Dean Jean-Pierre Delplanque, Assistant Dean Kellie Sims Butler, Jan Ng, Ph.D. student in Forest Fire Ecology and Noelle Patterson, M.S. student in Hydrology. GCR’s team of 5 met with the offices of Assembly Members Wood, Cooper, Cooley, McCarty, Kiley and Gallagher along with the offices of Senators Dodd, McGuire and Pan. They also had the opportunity to meet with Assemblywoman Aguiar-Curry and Assemblyman Dahle. Topics of discussion included wildfires, hydrology, water and other issues revolving around sustainability and climate change.

LEGISLATION:

SB 442 (Dodd) – GCR worked on this piece of legislation, which was sponsored by the University of California, through the entire legislative process in 2019. Ultimately, the bill was signed into law and provides a limited exception for certain individuals and qualified institutions of higher education to commercialize discoveries coming from California State Parks. Allowing for the commercialization of research products extracted from state park resources in certain specific, limited instances, will help to provide researchers and scientists with the financial capability to produce and make more widely available to the people of California those beneficial inventions and discoveries generated through such investigations. While the potential possibilities for such discoveries is impossible to estimate, we have already seen that these discoveries have the potential to improve agricultural output, reduce reliance on toxic alternatives, and potentially mitigate issues plaguing the California ecosystem.

GCR worked on AB 707 (Aguiar-Curry) throughout the entire legislative year of 2017, and helped prepare Geoff Schladow (Tahoe Environmental Research Center) and Jonathan London (referenced above) as expert witnesses. Ultimately the bill was signed into law and created a blue ribbon commission to improve the water quality at Clear Lake. GCR was able to work with the author to secure a couple million dollars for the publication of initial reports, and also worked with our faculty to get the Chancellor to appoint the appropriate person to the newly created commission.

UC Davis engages in public policy advocacy for sustainability at the federal level in a variety of ways. UC Davis is home to the top College of Agriculture and Environmental Science in the United States of America, and with its location in the northern part of the California Central Valley, sustainability and policies that promote it, are especially important to UC Davis, the region and industries therein. UC Davis is home to the Agricultural Sustainability Institute and the Tahoe Environmental Research Center, and has a long history of sustainability activism highlighted by UC Davis famously hosting President Clinton and Vice President Gore in 1997 on our Tahoe Research Vessel to conduct a clarity test and help enable the passing of Lake Tahoe Restoration Act of 2000 that launched an impressive public-private partnership that has since invested $1.9 billion in conservation, transportation, and restoration projects around the Tahoe basin.

Moreover, UC Davis is part of the University of California (UC) system and the system has been incredibly active on federal sustainability advocacy. Efforts include:

(1) On June 2, 2017, one day after the White House announced that the U.S. would be withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement, the University of California released a statement affirming its commitments to the goals of the Paris agreement and doubling down on its goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2025. UC simultaneously launched a call to members of the UC community through the university’s UC Advocacy Network (UCAN) urging students to make pledges to support and work with California’s Governor, Congressional delegation, and state legislators to ensure that California and the UC system stay at the forefront of combating global climate change.

(2) On February 6, 2018, the University of California announced that it had assembled an international coalition of 13 research universities across the United States, Canada and Mexico – called the University Climate Change Coalition, or UC3 – who were committing to work together to galvanize local and regional action on climate change. Member institutions represent more than 1.5 million students across North America. The coalition released a report entitled Research for Solutions: Convening Stakeholders to Galvanize Local Climate Action that serves as a roadmap for how local, state, and federal lawmakers, higher education institutions, businesses and community leaders can work together to achieve ambitious, research-tested climate goals.

Agricultural Sustainability Institute Website: https://asi.ucdavis.edu/

Tahoe Environmental Research Center Website: https://tahoe.ucdavis.edu/

Lake Tahoe Restoration Act of 2000: https://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=CBDE9C48-2C2C-4B85-9AD8-49FE67E377C9

Link to Research for Solutions report PDF: https://secondnature.org/wp-content/uploads/SecondNature_UC3_2018ProgressReport-Final.pdf

Joining over 300 other universities, UC signed the White House pledge "American Campuses Act on Climate Change" to amplify the voice of the higher education community in advance of the United Nations COP21 climate negotiations in Paris, and to inspire world leaders to commit to action on climate change.

In August 2019, UC Davis Chancellor Gary S. May signed higher education’s “Climate Emergency Letter” and took up his duties on the National Commission on Innovation and Competitiveness Frontiers. In November 2019, University of California as a whole reaffirmed its commitment to the climate.

The One Climate Initiative will lead the way forward to planetary resilience by using a holistic approach to catalyze a powerful, diverse nexus of change-makers—integrating across disciplines and with partners in industry, government, NGOs and communities to scale solutions. As an inclusive innovation ecosystem that prioritizes human health and environmental justice, we will create a new model for how public research institutions partner with stakeholders for the greater good.

“UC Reaffirms Commitment to Carbon Neutrality” Article: https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/press-room/uc-reaffirms-commitment-carbon-neutrality-sustainability-goals-following-paris-agreement

“UC President Napolitano’s statement on White House exit from Paris climate accord” Article: https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/press-room/uc-president-napolitano-s-statement-white-house-s-exit-paris-accords

“Chancellor Backs Climate and Innovation Efforts” Article: https://www.ucdavis.edu/news/chancellor-backs-climate-and-innovation-efforts/

One Climate Initiative: https://bigideas.ucdavis.edu/climate-solutions-carbon-farming

“UC Davis and Climate Change” Article: https://climatechange.ucdavis.edu/uc-davis-climate-change/

State Level: As a state agency we don’t take political positions. Just policy/advocacy.

National Level: UC has taken a strong position on Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and immigration issues, defending our students who live, work, and study in the only country they know as home.

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