Washington HB 1170: Integrated Climate Response Strategy - Updates
Washington HB 1170, passed in April of 2023, looks to improve climate resilience in Washington by updating the state’s 2012 integrated climate response strategy. Legislative findings that climate change is rapidly progressing in Washington and its citizens are already facing its impacts indicate the need for an updated strategy. HB 1170 seeks to further prepare Washington’s population by updating its resilience strategy through better cross-agency coordination, which will lower the cost of resilience and be more efficient. HB 1170 follows and improves upon the state’s original legislation, passed in 2008, that required the first integrated climate response strategy but did not contain provisions to ensure implementation.
HB 1170 aims to improve inter-agency coordination by adding more agencies to the drafting process. The new statute includes the Departments of Commerce, Health, the state conservation commission, the Puget Sound Partnership, and the emergency management division, along with the already involved departments: Ecology, Agriculture, Fish and Wildlife, Natural Resources, and Transportation departments. In addition, tribal governments will assist with the new integrated climate change strategy. Other state agencies may join in its drafting and implementation.
In addition to adding the partner agencies, a new responsibility given to the Department of Ecology is to work with the University of Washington Climate Impacts Group to verify the scientific and technological information needed to draft an integrated climate change strategy using “best existing practices and new methods to measure and evaluate climate change resilience.”
HB 1170 requires the Department of Ecology to consult with nonpartisan scientific experts, including the Washington Climate Impacts Group, on the following matters:
- Identifying best practices for prioritizing resilience actions
- “Developing a process for identifying metrics and measuring progress and success towards statewide resilience goals
- Looking for opportunities to improve agency resilience efforts
- Identifying any other issue deemed necessary by the department.
The new strategy must include several new attributes beyond the requirements of the 2008 legislation. These are intended to facilitate the implementation of the actions recommended in the strategy, and include:
- A summary of “every agency’s current resilience priorities and actions”;
- A list of “strategies and actions to address the highest climate vulnerabilities to Washington’s ecosystems”; and
- Assignment of a lead agency to implement the state actions.
HB 1170 requires that the new strategy be guided by these key principles:
- Prioritizing mitigation actions and adaptation strategies;
- Focusing on protecting Washington’s overburdened communities;
- Focusing on natural solutions, such as restoring habitat or key stressors that worsen climate change impacts;
- Prioritizing human health protection;
- Taking several “[f]lexible adaptive approaches”; and
- Addressing each region of Washington’s geographic regions with the same “scope, scale, and urgency.”
The findings and new strategy will be sent to the Governor of Washington by the Department of Ecology and revised by the Department every four years after the initial approval, which is mandated by September 30, 2024. In the meantime, the Department of Ecology must provide interim biennial work plans to the Governor’s office every two years.
Finally, in addition to the new integrated climate strategy, HB 1170 requires that all state agencies must “consider current and future climate change impacts to the extent allowed under existing statutory authority and incorporate climate resilience and adaptation actions as priority activities when planning, designing, revising, or implementing relevant agency policy programs.”
Publication Date: April 26, 2023
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- Adaptation plan
- Laws
- Legislation
- Planning guides
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