Greenbelt Alliance is a

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Go ...

nonprofit organization founded to help the region handle a

climate change In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to ...

. The organization's mission is to protect precious open spaces while focusing equitable, climate-smart growth within existing urban areas.

History

Greenbelt Alliance was founded in 1958 as an organization called Citizens for Regional Recreation and Parks. One of its first campaigns was helping to halt the filling of San Francisco Bay for development. In 1969, the organization was renamed People for Open Space to reflect the organization's additional interest in preserving

ranch A ranch (from es, rancho/Mexican Spanish) is an area of land, including various structures, given primarily to ranching, the practice of raising grazing livestock such as cattle and sheep. It is a subtype of a farm. These terms are most ofte ...

lands, agricultural lands, and

wildlife Wildlife refers to undomesticated animal species, but has come to include all organisms that grow or live wild in an area without being introduced by humans. Wildlife was also synonymous to game: those birds and mammals that were hunted ...

preserves. In the 1970s, People for Open Space helped to establish a public park district called the

Mid-Peninsula Regional Open Space District Formed in 1972 by voter initiative, the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District (MROSD) is a non-enterprise special district in the San Francisco Bay Area. It has acquired and preserved a regional green belt of open space land and provides o ...

(1972), as well as

Suisun Marsh Located in northern California, the Suisun Marsh ( ) has been referred to as the largest brackish water marsh on west coast of the United States of America. The marsh land is part of the San Francisco Bay tidal estuary, and subject to tidal ebb ...

(1974). The organization also involved in campaigning for a regional government for the Bay Area, but was defeated in

Sacramento ) , image_map = Sacramento County California Incorporated and Unincorporated areas Sacramento Highlighted.svg , mapsize = 250x200px , map_caption = Location within Sacramento ...

by one vote. In 1976, People for Open Space added the goal of establishing a permanent regional

greenbelt A green belt is a policy and land-use zone designation used in land-use planning to retain areas of largely undeveloped, wild, or agricultural land surrounding or neighboring urban areas. Similar concepts are greenways or green wedges, which h ...

to its agenda, and in 1984 created a group called Greenbelt Congress to work on open space protection through activism and grassroots organizing. In 1987, Greenbelt Congress and People for Open Space merged to become Greenbelt Alliance, and established a dual focus of grassroots activism and policy research. Greenbelt Alliance expanded outside

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

with a field office in the South Bay in 1988. In 1995,

East Bay The East Bay is the eastern region of the San Francisco Bay Area and includes cities along the eastern shores of the San Francisco Bay and San Pablo Bay. The region has grown to include inland communities in Alameda and Contra Costa counties ...

and Sonoma- Marin field offices opened, and in 2001, a Solano- Napa office opened in response to growth along the Interstate 80 corridor between San Francisco and Sacramento. In the 1990s and 2000s, Greenbelt Alliance was involved in stopping sprawl development proposals and protecting

Pleasanton Ridge Pleasanton Ridge Regional Park is a park in the East Bay Regional Park District overlooking Pleasanton, California and the Livermore Valley to the east. The park is scheduled to grow by almost (''sic'') with the acquisition of the Tyler Ranch.'' ...

(1993), Bear Creek Redwoods (1999), and Cowell Ranch/John Marsh SHP (2002)Cowell Ranch/John Marsh SHP, CA State Park

(accessed 2 Nov 2010) as state parks or open space preserves. It helped to create the

Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority The Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority (OSA) is an independent special district in Santa Clara County, California, U.S. A bill signed by Governor Wilson in 1992, SB2027, created the district as the Santa Clara County Open Space Preserve a ...

in 1994, and was part of defeating a freeway proposal called the Mid-State Toll Road in 1995.

References

External links

Greenbelt AllianceResilience Playbook
{{Authority control Organizations established in 1958 Environmental organizations based in the San Francisco Bay Area Non-profit organizations based in San Francisco Climate change organizations based in the United States 1958 establishments in California

History

See also

References

External links