Washington’s New Climate Plan Prioritizes Nature, Communities

State can cut carbon pollution across its economy by leveraging wetlands, forests, and other natural lands

Authors: Alex Clayton Moya

Article June 30, 2026

A person walks along a narrow water channel wending through a grassy marshland under a clear blue sky, with trees and mountains visible in the distant horizon. — Salt marshes such as this one in Willapa Bay, Washington, are central to recommendations in the state’s Comprehensive Climate Action Plan, which emphasizes the significant benefits that natural and working lands provide, including lowering costs to communities and improving public health.

Washington’s new Comprehensive Climate Action Plan (CCAP), released on Earth Day 2026, is a far-reaching document that identifies strategies across all sectors of the state’s economy to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions; improve air quality and public health; boost growth; and provide an affordable, healthy, and equitable future for residents.

Pew Points

Washington’s Comprehensive Climate Action Plan to Cut Emissions and Strengthen Communities

What it is: Washington’s first economy-wide climate roadmap that outlines key priorities guiding future policies and investments.
Scope: Covers all major sectors—including energy, transportation, construction and infrastructure, agriculture, and natural and working lands, which include a range of landscapes from fully natural habitats to farms and ranches—and outlines dozens of near-term priority measures.
Role of nature: Forests, wetlands, and other natural and working lands are central to the state’s strategy for reducing emissions.
Benefits: Measures such as managing forests for wildfire resilience and protecting wetlands can lower costs associated with disaster response and recovery, improve public health, and deliver other community benefits.
Possible barriers to success: Major wetland losses over the past 150 years in the Puget Sound region—where much of the state’s population lives and which suffered devastating flooding in 2025—could undermine the plan’s potential to reduce flood risk and carbon pollution.
What’s next: Effective implementation will depend on funding, legislative support, and coordination across state agencies, local governments, Tribes, and the private sector.

The Washington State Climate Partnership developed the CCAP as part of the state’s participation in the federal Climate Pollution Reduction Grant program. The program funded state, local, and Tribal governments to create and implement concrete, community-driven plans to reduce GHG emissions.

During a webinar announcing the plan, Riley Ellison, climate pollution reduction planning lead at the state’s Department of Ecology, describes the CCAP as a statewide planning tool that emphasizes the many tangible and practical benefits of emissions reduction, such as “lower costs to communities and businesses and improved public health.”

Elevating natural and working lands as climate solutions

The plan highlights the opportunity to improve management of natural and working lands to address and protect people from the effects of climate change, including severe storms and extreme heat. Natural and working lands, which include forests, wetlands, and grasslands, have extraordinary capacity to sequester carbon, filter water, and absorb floodwaters. They also have vital cultural benefits—including providing habitats for salmon—for many Washington Tribes.

The CCAP underscores the urgency of acting to protect and restore these critical areas, especially the state’s wetlands: Washington has lost more than 90% of its forested tidal wetlands, 99% of its scrub-shrub tidal wetlands in major river deltas of Puget Sound Basin, and 45% of its tidal marshes. The plan offers recommendations to address these losses, including strengthening land use planning and zoning; restoring blue carbon ecosystems, such as salt marshes that store carbon pollution; and removing dams, dikes, and other barriers to restore tidal flows. It also recommends linking science-based goals for natural climate solutions and working lands to the state’s existing GHG emissions limits, including its statutory requirement to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

The state projects that fully implementing the plan would save approximately $10 billion a year by 2030 in avoided damage to agriculture, property, and human health. That figure would rise to nearly $35 billion a year by 2050, when compared with 2024 emission projections.

Looking forward to a more resilient future

The CCAP makes clear that achieving Washington’s goals will require action across the state’s economy. To that end, it assesses existing state laws and efforts and identifies cross-sector priorities and new opportunities that can play oversize roles in making the state more resilient to climate change. But the real test of the plan will be whether the state commits to funding for CCAP implementation and boosts cooperation across state agencies, local governments, Tribes, and the private sector.

Along with the plan itself, Washington’s blue carbon inventory, set to be finalized in early 2027, and the Pacific Northwest Blue Carbon Calculator can help make the case for robust and ongoing funding by assessing the climate-related benefits of wetland protection and restoration.

If funded and implemented, Washington’s CCAP could emerge as a leading example of how states can pair climate resilience with cost-effective carbon reduction through the stewardship of natural and working lands.

Alex Clayton Moya works to advance state and federal natural climate solutions for The Pew Charitable Trusts’ U.S. conservation project.