Regulatory Efficiencies

Creating efficient regulations to power small-scale restoration.

California leads the way in tackling numerous social and environmental challenges. Nevertheless, the sweeping and rapid impacts of climate change and biodiversity loss pose grave threats to this and future generations. We must restore and manage natural resources at a scale, pace, and quality sufficient to meet these threats.

However, under our current suite of environmental laws and regulations, restoration projects are evaluated in terms of their potential impacts, with few tools to also consider their long-term benefits or the risk of inaction. This has had the unintended consequence of fostering a system that creates significant barriers to conservation and restoration.

To address those barriers, the Network is continually working on programmatic, legislative, and systems solutions to increase the scale, pace, and quality of restoration. One where “landscape restoration is critical” and “inaction is risk”.

Problem solving in partnership

Addressing regulatory inefficiencies related to restoration has remained a Network focus since the issue surfaced at its first convening. A collaborative approach has allowed the difficult conversations needed to foster real change and help create new pathways to do environmentally beneficial work on the ground.

Shifting the regulatory paradigm

a group of stewardship practitioners stands for a group photo — Cutting Green Tape Roundtable participants; photo by CLSN.

In 2019, California Secretary for Natural Resources Wade Crowfoot and other leaders in the Newsom Administration partnered with the CLSN to hold five visionary and action-oriented roundtables to improve permitting and funding efficiencies for natural resource restoration and stewardship. These meetings brought together regulatory agency staff, local governments, Tribes, environmental conservation groups, and a range of other stakeholders and experts from across the state. Together, they created ways to “cut green tape” through specific recommendations for how to increase permitting effectiveness, expedite project review and approval, improve cross-jurisdictional collaboration, and more.

How is cutting green tape helping?

Momentum is building for transformative and durable changes that remove barriers to restoring, enhancing, and preserving our natural resources and ecological systems. The 2019 – 2020 roundtables created a set of tangible, discrete, and time-bound recommendations, along with tactics and mechanisms to advance these recommendations.

Today, we’re thrilled to see the interagency initiative issue its 2^nd Secretarial Memo, titled Institutionalizing Cutting Green Tape Improvements, which outlines how these recommendations will be made permanent in the coming years.

Read the Secretarial Memo Here

Learn More

Steering Committee member Kellyx Nelson has been instrumental in spearheading the Cutting Green Tape initiatives along with the Network’s other regulatory efficiency work. To learn more, email Kellyx@sanmateorcd.org.

Kellyx Nelson

Executive Director, San Mateo Resource Conservation District

Contact Kellyx about: Project & Program Development, Management, and Implementation, Ecological and Habitat Restoration, Strategic Partnership Formation and Delivery, Outreach and Community, Engagement, Permitting Strategy, Organizational Capacity Building, Funding Strategy, Development, and Management

Kellyx Nelson has spent 28 years in the private and public sectors in program and project development and implementation, environmental education, organizational capacity building, community outreach, building partnerships, and developing solutions to difficult resource problems. She has served as the Executive Director of the Resource Conservation District since 2006. Her diverse career has included 14 years as an environmental educator for underserved communities in New York and San Francisco, driving a Freightliner cross-country as a long-haul trucker, delivering packages as a motorcycle messenger, and managing conservation projects for Peninsula Open Space Trust. She has an undergraduate degree from Columbia University in Political Science and Environmental Science and a Master’s Degree in Public Policy from UC Berkeley.

Under her direction the RCD has achieved distinction, receiving the 2016 Sustainability Award from Sustainable San Mateo County and 2012 District of the Year from the California Association of RCDs. In 2015, Kellyx was inducted into the San Mateo County Women’s Hall of Fame in recognition of her contributions to the overall well-being of the County.

Roles

San Mateo Resource Conservation District: Executive Director
Santa Cruz Mountains Stewardship Network: Partner
CA Network: Representative

Contact

kellyx@sanmateoRCD.org
650-712-7765 Ext. 102

Permitting & Compliance Resources

Regulatory Challenges and Solutions for Sierra Nevada Meadow Restoration

Sierra Meadows Partnership Regulatory Workgroup, August 2021

Identifies permitting barriers and proposes solutions to scale up meadow restoration in the Sierra Nevada.

Details

Permitting and environmental compliance is acknowledged as an onerous, time consuming and costly component of meadow restoration projects and is recognized as a bottleneck for implementation on the ground. There is a need to improve the permitting processes for meadow restoration in order to increase the pace and scale of restoration to meet the targets of the Sierra Meadows Partnership and state and federal agencies, and to achieve benefits at the regional scale.

This white paper is the result of three years of knowledge gathering by the Sierra Meadows Partnership (SMP) Regulatory Workgroup and draws on the collective experience of Sierra Meadows Partnership practitioners implementing projects for more than 10 years. The SMP Regulatory Workgroup convened meetings between meadow restoration practitioners and regulatory agency staff, reviewed literature, participated in high-level initiatives including the CDFW-led Restoration Leaders Committee (RLC), and coordinated with other groups including Sustainable Conservation who are working to streamline permitting in California.

Systems Thinking and Change: A Guide for Landscape Stewardship Practitioners

California Landscape Stewardship Network, March 2021

Introduces systems thinking tools to help practitioners navigate complexity and drive adaptive landscape change.

Details

In an effort to create a shared language and understanding for landscape stewardship practitioners, terms related to systems, such as systems thinking and systems change, are defined in this guide. Systems in three classifications—biosphere, social, and technosphere—are highlighted. These three systems all share the characteristics of interconnectedness, interdependency, and dynamism

Systems thinking is a lens through which we can understand, diagnose, and solve complex issues, in addition to a lens for decision-making and future planning. Both a process and an outcome, systems change is the action-oriented side of systems thinking, intended to produce long-lasting change.

This guide concludes with a checklist that can be used when approaching problems through a systems-thinking and systems-change perspective. When applying this perspective, the practice of collaborative leadership is highlighted as the most effective approach to tackling today’s complex problems.

Shifting the Regulatory Paradigm Toward Bold Immediate Action for a Resilient California

California Landscape Stewardship Network, 2019

Proposes reforms to streamline permitting and accelerate restoration, urging bold regulatory shifts to meet California’s urgent climate and ecological challenges.

Details

Wildfire. Drought. Flooding. Species extinction. Climate change. California faces grave threats that require bold, immediate action. An essential part of any solution is to restore and proactively manage California’s lands and natural resources at a scale and pace sufficient to result in meaningful benefits.

The purpose of this paper is to help catalyze new conversations and strategies to reduce persistent barriers to environmental stewardship, conservation and restoration of California’s lands that are unintended consequences of essential environmental regulations. It summarizes and assesses key advances in addressing these barriers—including legislative and policy approaches as well as approaches based on coordination, collaboration, and trust building—and includes recommended next steps.

This white paper includes a problem statement, key findings (p. 3), assessment of recent efforts (p.3), models outside the field of conservation (p.17), and conclusions and recommended next steps (p.19).

An Environmental Regulation Paradigm Shift: The Cutting Green Tape Story

March

2023

Details

A paradigm shift is inherently complex and difficult to achieve. It is particularly challenging within a layered, multiagency regulatory environment that has been built over decades. However, it can be done. This case study examines one promising example—Cutting Green Tape (CGT)—that not only aims to increase regulatory and permitting efficiencies, but also to shift our collective thinking about how multibenefit environmental restoration projects in California can happen.

The CGT case study allows us to explore the evolution and current status of a perceived paradigm shift. This case study’s researchoriented lens and consideration of Kuhn’s seminal work on shifting paradigms (1970) reveals CGT’s progression in a way that can be applied by a wide range of professional audiences. Insights are shared with those seeking to create such a shift within regulatory (or similar) contexts.

Findings indicate that a paradigm shift for environmental restoration work in California is indeed underway. CGT is moving into the final phase of a five-phase process (see Five Phases of a Paradigm Shift). Two of the four signs of a true paradigm shift (see Four Signs of a Paradigm Shift) have been fulfilled, and there are initial indicators of progress towards the third sign of change as well. However, while promising, CGT as a new paradigm (i.e., a profound change in approach or underlying assumptions) has yet to be fully realized.

Cutting Green Tape: Regulatory Efficiencies for a Resilient Environment

November

2020

Details: The State of California has identified “Cutting Green Tape” as a signature initiative to increase the pace and scale of environmental restoration. California has a proud tradition of strong laws that protect our environment from the effects of development and resource extraction. Unfortunately, projects that are beneficial to the environment can be slowed by the same processes and procedures that are designed to protect it. Cutting Green Tape seeks to remedy this problem. This report is the product of the insights and experiences of more than150 people who gathered at a series of roundtable workshops and others to whom the authors reached out from fall 2019 to fall 2020 about ways the state can increase regulatory efficiencies to increase the pace and scale of restoration and stewardship work.

Shifting the Regulatory Paradigm Toward Bold Immediate Action for a Resilient California

2019

Details

Wildfire. Drought. Flooding. Species extinction. Climate change. California faces grave threats that require bold, immediate action. An essential part of any solution is to restore and proactively manage California’s lands and natural resources at a scale and pace sufficient to result in meaningful benefits.

The purpose of this paper is to help catalyze new conversations and strategies to reduce persistent barriers to environmental stewardship, conservation and restoration of California’s lands that are unintended consequences of essential environmental regulations. It summarizes and assesses key advances in addressing these barriers—including legislative and policy approaches as well as approaches based on coordination, collaboration, and trust building—and includes recommended next steps.

This white paper includes a problem statement, key findings (p. 3), assessment of recent efforts (p.3), models outside the field of conservation (p.17), and conclusions and recommended next steps (p.19).

Regulatory Efficiencies

Creating efficient regulations to power small-scale restoration.

Problem solving in partnership

Shifting the regulatory paradigm