Climate Action Wrapped 2024

What were your environmental milestones this year? While November brought challenging news for climate leadership on the federal scale, the Bay Area and California’s 2024 tracklist is full of breakthrough hits that prove real change starts at home.

Greenbelt Alliance’s Climate Action Wrapped celebrates how the Bay Area and California kept the beat goin’ all year as champions for climate and housing initiatives! We’re connecting you with just a snapshot of policies, regional plans, and local actions in the Bay that have moved the needle on conservation, climate change, and housing work to benefit our natural lands and communities.

Check out the full playlist to see how our region showed up for climate action in 2024:

An unstoppable movement was born in Solano County this year: When a group of Silicon Valley investors secretly bought over 60,000 acres of Solano County farmland, the community answered with unity.  In February 2024, over 250 Solano County residents showed up to officially launch the Solano Together coalition, bringing together farmers, elected officials, and community leaders to express concern with California Forever’s plans for the region. Solano Together emerged as a powerful voice for protecting agricultural lands and investing in existing cities instead of sprawl development.

In July 2024, after months of grassroots outreach and advocacy, the power of organized communities forced California Forever to withdraw their controversial East Solano Plan from the ballot at the last minute. Despite spending $10M to promote their new city proposal, the developers couldn’t overcome the opposition from residents concerned about farmland loss, strain on existing cities, impacts on Travis Air Force Base and local infrastructure, and more.

But this is just round one—California Forever still owns thousands of acres of farmland and plans to return with a revised proposal in 2026. The Solano Together coalition continues to organize and advocate for smart growth within existing cities while protecting vital agricultural lands.

In November, we wrote about how each election cycle raises the stakes to act on climate change and how our elected leaders should play a critical leadership role in tackling this critical challenge. 

Beyond the nail-biting presidential elections, local and regional races can deliver impactful transformation to our lives in California and the Bay Area. We are thrilled that among the 15 propositions and measures that Greenbelt Alliance endorsed on our Voter Guide, 10 resulted in wins. Some of these huge WINS are:

• California Passes Landmark $10B Climate Investment: Voters made history by passing Proposition 4 with 58%, a $10 billion climate bond representing the state’s largest-ever investment in climate resilience. As climate impacts intensify, from record wildfires to rising seas, this investment demonstrates that voters are ready to fund solutions at the scale of the crisis.
• Petaluma Votes to Protect Open Space for Another Generation: In a decisive victory for SMART growth, Petaluma voters renewed their Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) for another 25 years with nearly 70% support. Greenbelt Alliance is proud to have led the charge for this campaign alongside Sierra Club and other local organizations in support of Petaluma’s UGB renewal.
• San Mateo Removes 30-Year Barrier to Climate-Smart Housing: In a breakthrough for sustainable growth, San Mateo voters passed Measure T with 59% support, ending a 1991 law that severely limited building height and density. This change opens the door for badly needed housing near transit, particularly around the city’s three Caltrain stations and along El Camino Real.
  

In 2024, we’re celebrating two remarkable achievements to return indigenous lands: our partners Sogorea Te’ Land Trust and Eden Housing just announced in November the return of three acres of land along the San Lorenzo Creek in Castro Valley to its ancestral caretakers.  Also known as Lisjan Creek, the site is culturally significant for the Confederated Villages of Lisan Nation tribe and is the first waterway to be returned to the Indigenous women-led Sogorea Te’ Land Trust.

Earlier in February, the Chochenyo Ohlone people and Sogorea Te’ Land Trust celebrated a momentous victory after an eight-year struggle: the return of a 2.2-acre sacred site to Indigenous stewardship. The Shellmound in West Berkeley, where Ohlone people lived, fished, and gathered for over 5,000 years, was one of the 425 shellmounds that once surrounded the Bay. Through a $27M community-driven deal, what was once a parking lot will be transformed under Indigenous care.

In 2024, the Alliance for Housing and Climate Solutions (AHCS) launched its Common Ground Learning Series, bringing together environmental activists, housing advocates, and community leaders across California. Through monthly online sessions and in-person gatherings, participants are discussing solutions that create affordable homes while protecting our climate and environment. By uniting these movements, we’re showing that smart housing solutions are climate solutions.

Additionally, two groundbreaking housing projects in the Bay Area were just approved: 

• The Northgate Town Square project in San Rafael was unanimously unapproved on December 2, 2024!  This represents a historic win for Marin County: the project has been in the works since 2017, and is one of the biggest multifamily projects in Marin County in decades. 
• Seven years after it was originally proposed , the 5212 Broadway project–the former California College of the Arts campus in Rockridge—was unanimously approved by the Oakland City Council on December 3, 2024. This innovative development project will bring 448 much-needed new homes, including a commitment to 45 affordable homes onsite.

Seven major state and regional agencies, including the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC), signed a historic agreement to coordinate their response to sea level rise and flooding across the nine-county Bay Area. Led by the Bay Area Regional Collaborative (BARC), this partnership will speed up adaptation projects, compete more effectively for funding, and prioritize protection for vulnerable communities.

With an estimated $110 billion funding gap for coastal adaptation, this unprecedented coordination between BCDC and other regional agencies marks a crucial shift toward faster, more equitable climate resilience planning across the region.

Greenbelt Alliance’s longstanding effort to protect Contra Costa County’s Tassajara Valley reached a crucial win in February 2024 when courts halted the 125-home Tassajara Parks development, ruling its environmental review inadequate. The Tassajara Valley project, which ignored voter-approved urban boundaries and lacked a viable water supply from East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD), would have set a dangerous precedent for sprawl development in protected open spaces. This victory builds on decades of community organizing to maintain urban limit lines and preserve this vital greenbelt between Dublin and San Ramon.