Graphic that reads "Council Adopts First-Ever Climate Adaptation Plan for California's Delta"

Regional Climate Plan Sets Course

for a Resilient Delta

At its June 26, 2025, meeting, the Delta Stewardship Council adopted the first-ever comprehensive regional climate adaptation plan for California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Part of the Council’s Delta Adapts climate initiative, the Adaptation Plan details strategies and actions to improve regional resilience to climate change across four focus areas: flood risk reduction, ecosystems, agriculture, and water supply reliability. It also identifies equity considerations of adaptation, costs, and governance challenges.

The Council will work with its partners and other interested parties to implement the Adaptation Plan’s strategies, which will benefit current and future generations.

Visit the Delta Adapts web page for more information.

Lea el resumen ejecutivo en Español aquí.

VIEW THE ADAPTATION PLAN

A note from our executive officer

“As the climate continues to change, adaptation is no longer optional – it is essential,” says Executive Officer Jessica R. Pearson. “Investing in resilience today is how we safeguard our communities, water supply, ecosystems, and economies for tomorrow. Amazingly, when the Council embarked on its Delta Adapts initiative in 2018, there was no assessment of how vulnerable the Delta – a region California depends on – was to climate change. Today, thanks to the Council’s leadership and our collaborative partners’ efforts, that assessment exists, and has shaped the Adaptation Plan, which now forms the definitive blueprint for climate resilience for the Delta.”

Access the Vulnerability Assessment, Adaptation Plan, and their supporting materials on our Delta Adapts web page.

Cover of the Delta Adapts Adaptation Plan

Why this milestone matters

The Delta is critical to California’s residents, water supply, ecosystems, and economy. It is an ancestral homeland and a place of cultural significance to many tribes, a crucial source of drinking water for 27 million Californians, a biodiversity hot spot for more than 750 plant and animal species, and a major contributor to the nation’s agricultural economy, the fourth largest in the world, generating $4.5 billion each year. But like the rest of the state and the world, the Delta as a place faces the accelerating impacts of climate change. Addressing these climate impacts is critical to the Council’s mission.

Learn more about the Adaptation Plan here.

About the Council

The Council works to advance California’s coequal goals for the Delta – a more reliable statewide water supply and a resilient Delta ecosystem – while protecting and enhancing the Delta’s unique characteristics as an evolving place where people live, work, and recreate.

We carry out this mission by implementing the Delta Plan, an enforceable long-term sustainable management plan, to ensure coordinated action at the region’s federal, state, and local levels.