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Understanding inequality in groundwater access and cropland ownership is critical for assessing the sustainability and equity of agricultural systems, especially in regions facing climatic and socioeconomic patterns such as drought and cropland consolidation. These two forms of access are deeply interconnected: for instance, cropland ownership often determines who can access and control groundwater. Due to data challenges, however, few studies have quantified groundwater access inequality in the same ways that land ownership has been quantified. Similarly, the regional scale of most analyses to date limits our understanding of factors that shape and modify these interconnections. Our study aims to address this gap by constructing a novel geospatial dataset by matching groundwater wells with cropland parcels across California’s Central Valley. We quantify the magnitude and spatial patterns of groundwater and cropland inequality and examine how it scales with land ownership, crop types, and surface water access. Our results indicate substantial inequality in both groundwater access and land ownership, with the top decile of well owners possessing 46.4% of the region’s total well capacity. These well owners are more likely to allocate groundwater to high-revenue, water-intensive perennials such as almonds and walnuts. Furthermore, large landholders tend to have far more wells, deeper and higher-capacity wells, and greater access to surface water resources. However, we observe consistently wider inequality in land ownership than water access, and larger landowners possess less well depth and capacity per hectare. We discuss the implications of these findings in the context of California’s historical lack of regulation on groundwater, particularly with respect to inequality in open access vs private property resources. We also consider possible lessons for future groundwater regulation and distribution mechanisms for groundwater rights under California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. 

Abstract Despite the reality that advocates frequently expend significant resources to pass symbolic policies, this policy design has often been neglected by policy studies scholarship. We combine policy design and policy feedback theory to examine this oft overlooked policy design in practice using the case of California's human right to water law (Assembly Bill 685, or AB 685). Through semi‐structured interviews, archival research, and document analysis, we reveal how grassroots advocates deliberately and effectively pursued AB 685 to build power across the water justice movement and catalyze narrative change about drinking water access, while also building state responsiveness on the topic. These interpretive policy feedback effects then accelerated the policy's resource effects through formal policy changes in funding allocations, administrative structures, and regulatory systems. Collectively, feedbacks from AB 685 have transformed the sociopolitics of drinking water access. Contrary to prevailing wisdom, the policy's ambiguity proved key to building the broad coalition necessary to accomplish these changes, and it facilitated work across policy venues and governance scales through time, which is critical to enacting transformational change. Based on these findings, we argue that symbolic policies merit attention as a potentially advantageous policy design for social movements seeking social change and transformation. 

Abstract   Rapid adaptation is necessary to maintain, let alone expand, access to reliable, safe drinking water in the face of climate change. Existing research focuses largely on the role, priorities, and incentives of local managers to pursue adaptation strategies while mostly neglecting the role of the broader public, despite the strong public support required to fund and implement many climate adaptation plans. In this paper, we interrogate the relationship between personal experiences of household water supply impacts from extreme weather events and hazard exposure with individual concern about future supply reliability among a statewide representative sample of California households. We find that more than one-third of Californians report experiencing impacts of climate change on their household water supplies and show that these reported impacts differently influence residents’ concern about future water supply reliability, depending on the type of event experienced. In contrast, residents’ concern about future water supplies is not significantly associated with hazard exposure. These findings emphasize the importance of local managers’ attending to not only how climate change is projected to affect their water resources, but how, and whether, residents perceive these risks. The critical role of personal experience in increasing concern highlights that post-extreme events with water supply impacts may offer a critical window to advance solutions. Managers should not assume, however, that all extreme events will promote concern in the same way or to the same degree. 

Frontline communities of California experience disproportionate social, economic, and environmental injustices, and climate change is exacerbating the root causes of inequity in those areas. Yet, climate adaptation and mitigation strategies often fail to meaningfully address the experience of frontline community stakeholders. Here, we present three challenges, three errors, and three solutions to better integrate frontline communities' needs in climate change research and to create more impactful policies. We base our perspective on our collective firsthand experiences and on scholarship to bridge local knowledge with hydroclimatic research and policymaking. Unawareness of local priorities (Challenge 1) is a consequence of Ignoring local knowledge (Error 1) that can be, in part, resolved with Information exchange and expansion of community-based participatory research (Solution 1). Unequal access to natural resources (Challenge 2) is often due to Top-down decision making (Error 2), but Buffer zones for environmental protection, green areas, air quality, and water security can help achieve environmental justice (Solution 2). Unequal access to public services (Challenge 3) is a historical issue that persists because of System abuse and tokenism (Error 3), and it may be partially resolved with Multi-benefit projects to create socioeconomic and environmental opportunities within frontline communities that include positive externalities for other stakeholders and public service improvements (Solution 3). The path forward in climate change policy decision-making must be grounded in collaboration with frontline community members and practitioners trained in working with vulnerable stakeholders. Addressing co-occurring inequities exacerbated by climate change requires transdisciplinary efforts to identify technical, policy, and engineering solutions.