California: Legal Framework for the Adoption of the Universal Declaration of Tree Rights by Cities, Counties, and Local Authorities — Special Focus on San Francisco

On June 9, 2026, the Municipal Council of Terrasse-Vaudreuil, Quebec, adopted Resolution No. 2026-06-111 concerning the Universal Declaration of Tree Rights. Within the institutional framework stewarded by La Compagnie des Papillons Bleus, that decision opened a new phase: local authorities can formally recognize a common set of principles and organize their progressive implementation without confusing such recognition with the immediate creation of a new private-law regime or automatic legal personhood for Trees.

The same question now arises in California: may a city, county, city and county, or other local authority adopt the three articles of the Universal Declaration of Tree Rights together with the Fifteen Commitments of Local and Regional Authorities, and then progressively translate that framework into public policy, tree management, land-use planning, public works, and democratic governance?

As a matter of general legal architecture, the answer is yes for an institutional adoption of principles and a progressive local roadmap, subject to the authority’s legal status, the scope of its powers, federal and California preemption, procedural requirements, and the precise content of any later binding measure. A resolution, ordinance, permit condition, ballot measure, charter amendment, procurement rule, and administrative program do not have the same legal effect and cannot be treated as interchangeable instruments.

The case of San Francisco deserves particular attention. The City and County has a home-rule charter, a developed Urban Forestry Ordinance, an Urban Forest Plan, a Precautionary Principle embedded in its Environment Code, and an existing Urban Forestry Council. San Francisco therefore offers an unusually mature institutional setting in which the Fifteen Commitments and a territorial Assembly of the Tree can be examined against existing law rather than introduced as an isolated or purely symbolic initiative.

The Universal Declaration of Tree Rights is developed and institutionally stewarded by La Compagnie des Papillons Bleus, which is responsible for the official framework, current versions, institutional guidance, documentary continuity, and the International Register of Signatory Authorities associated with the initiative.

1. Legal and institutional nature of the Declaration

The Universal Declaration of Tree Rights is the foundational text of an initiative that connects science, law, ethics, democracy, culture, education, and public action. It states principles of recognition, respect, protection, and human responsibility toward the Tree.

The Declaration is not a legal person, public agency, court, certifying authority, or intergovernmental organization. Its institutional stewardship is exercised by La Compagnie des Papillons Bleus.

The three articles — official English version

For any California initiative, the official English wording should be reproduced without paraphrase. The three articles are:

The Three Founding Articles — official English text

Local adoption of the Declaration does not, by itself, constitute:

• signature or ratification of an international treaty;
• accession by the United States, the State of California, or the local authority to the proposed International Convention on Tree Rights;
• an amendment to the U.S. Constitution or the California Constitution;
• automatic legal personhood for Trees;
• automatic standing, a private cause of action, or a right to sue in the name of a Tree;
• an automatic change to title, easements, vested rights, compensation rules, or other property-law interests;
• a transfer of governmental authority to La Compagnie des Papillons Bleus, the Assembly of the Tree, or the Defender of the Tree;
• or the immediate creation of binding duties for property owners, businesses, developers, utilities, or public agencies.

Within the Declaration, the expression “common good of humanity” is a principle of collective responsibility toward the living world and future generations. It is not, by itself, a rule transferring ownership or converting privately owned Trees into public property.

2. Legal architecture: United States, California, and local government

In the United States, a local adoption must be situated within a layered legal structure: the U.S. Constitution and federal law; the California Constitution and statutes; the local charter, if any; municipal or county codes; and the administrative powers of the relevant local bodies.

Article XI, section 7 of the California Constitution provides that a county or city may make and enforce within its limits local police, sanitary, and other ordinances and regulations that do not conflict with general laws. California Constitution, article XI, section 7

That provision supplies a general local-government foundation for matters closely connected with Tree policy: public property, streets, parks, public works, land-use administration, public health and safety, stormwater, urban heat, climate adaptation, biodiversity, contracting, and local infrastructure. The precise reach of local authority must nevertheless be examined issue by issue against federal and state law.

3. Charter cities and general law cities: two frameworks that must be distinguished

Charter cities

Article XI, section 5 of the California Constitution authorizes a charter city to make and enforce ordinances and regulations with respect to municipal affairs, subject to the limitations of its charter. In that sphere, a charter provision or local enactment may displace inconsistent state legislation; outside that sphere, general state laws remain applicable. California Constitution, article XI, section 5

The California Supreme Court has repeatedly emphasized that “municipal affairs” is not a fixed category. The home-rule analysis depends upon the subject matter, whether there is an actual conflict, whether the state law addresses a matter of statewide concern, and whether the state rule is reasonably related and appropriately tailored to that concern. See California Fed. Savings & Loan Assn. v. City of Los Angeles (1991) 54 Cal.3d 1 and State Building & Construction Trades Council v. City of Vista (2012) 54 Cal.4th 547. California Fed. Savings — California Supreme Court resource City of Vista — California Supreme Court resource

General law cities

General law cities operate within authority conferred by the California Constitution and statutes. Government Code section 37100 provides that the legislative body may pass ordinances not in conflict with the Constitution and laws of California or the United States. California Government Code section 37100

For purposes of the Declaration, this difference primarily affects the legal foundation and drafting of implementation measures. It does not create a categorical rule that only charter cities may adopt the Declaration. A general law city can adopt a policy resolution and progressively implement the Fifteen Commitments within its lawful powers; it must simply ground each binding measure in the authority conferred by state law.

4. Counties, special districts, and territorial cooperation

California counties possess local powers under article XI of the California Constitution and statutes, but their authority differs from that of cities and varies by subject. Charter counties may structure certain aspects of county government through a charter, while all counties remain subject to state law in the fields assigned to them.

A county may have significant responsibilities relating to county-owned land, parks, roads, unincorporated territory, planning, fire safety, watershed protection, public health, and environmental review. Those responsibilities can support a county-level adoption, provided the instrument is carefully tied to county powers and does not purport to regulate incorporated cities beyond lawful authority.

Special districts and joint powers authorities require a different analysis. They are creatures of statute and may act only within the powers conferred by their enabling law, formation documents, and agreements. A parks district, water district, transit authority, or joint powers authority may support or operationalize parts of the framework where those actions fall within its mission, but it should not be presented as possessing the general legislative authority of a city or county.

Regional cooperation may nonetheless be especially valuable for canopy connectivity, watersheds, wildfire resilience, habitat corridors, data standards, procurement specifications, and public education. The Declaration can therefore operate as a common reference even where implementation is distributed among several legally distinct authorities.

5. Three legal levels that must remain distinct

The distinction is critical. Adoption of the Declaration and the Fifteen Commitments does not eliminate the need to use the legal instruments required for each subsequent measure. A local authority should therefore resist drafting a single resolution as if it could simultaneously perform the work of a policy statement, zoning ordinance, permit code, budget appropriation, adjudicative decision, and ballot measure.

6. CEQA, environmental law, and limits of integration

The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), Public Resources Code section 21000 et seq., establishes California’s environmental-review framework for activities subject to the Act. The threshold question is not whether a measure has an environmental purpose, but whether the activity is a CEQA “project” and, if so, what review or exemption applies.

Public Resources Code section 21065 defines a “project” as an activity that may cause a direct physical change in the environment or a reasonably foreseeable indirect physical change and that is undertaken by a public agency, supported by public-agency assistance, or involves a public-agency lease, permit, license, certificate, or other entitlement for use. California Public Resources Code section 21065

A resolution limited to institutional recognition, policy direction, and a request for future study may present a different CEQA question from an ordinance, capital project, land-use decision, or program that commits the authority to physical changes. The responsible local agency should therefore determine the CEQA status of the instrument actually proposed and document any applicable exemption or review pathway rather than assuming either that CEQA necessarily applies or that the environmental purpose of the measure necessarily removes it from CEQA.

The Declaration and the Fifteen Commitments do not replace CEQA, enlarge CEQA jurisdiction by themselves, or alter statutory exemptions. They can, however, improve the substance and timing of local decision-making by encouraging earlier consideration of Trees, soils, root systems, future canopy, ecological continuity, alternatives, cumulative loss, and long-term effects before formal project review is complete.

A city or county may also use the framework in general plans, urban forest plans, climate-adaptation strategies, capital planning, internal design standards, procurement, and public participation. Where any later policy, ordinance, plan, or physical undertaking constitutes a CEQA project, the authority must follow the applicable CEQA process.

7. What a local act of adoption may contain

A carefully drafted California adoption instrument may, depending upon the authority and its rules:

• formally adopt the three articles of the Universal Declaration of Tree Rights using the current official English text;
• formally adopt the Fifteen Commitments of Local and Regional Authorities as the common roadmap associated with the Declaration;
• identify the exact versions of both documents and attach them where local procedure permits;
• authorize the appropriate officer to complete the institutional formalities required for registration;
• state that adoption does not itself create legal personhood, standing, a private cause of action, or new coercive authority for the Assembly of the Tree or Defender of the Tree;
• direct staff to prepare a baseline assessment of existing tree law, plans, inventories, budgets, procurement rules, and public works practices;
• launch or update an inventory of public Trees and, where lawful, broader territorial tree data;
• direct preparation of an implementation plan with priorities, costs, responsible departments, indicators, and a timetable;
• establish or adapt a consultative mechanism consistent with the first Commitment and applicable open-meeting law;
• provide for periodic public reporting and evaluation;
• and reserve any new enforceable rule for a later ordinance, regulation, permit rule, or other legally appropriate instrument.

Under the current institutional procedure of the Declaration, the Declaration and the Fifteen Commitments form the basis of a signatory authority’s adoption together. A city may study the Declaration before adopting it, but an authority should not represent itself as formally registered within the initiative if it has not followed the official adoption procedure.

8. Public property and direct tree management: the first implementation lever

The most legally straightforward implementation often begins with property and operations directly controlled by the public authority. A city or county can evaluate Trees located in parks, civic campuses, rights-of-way under its jurisdiction, libraries, public buildings, fire or public safety facilities, public housing sites under its control, and other public land, subject to the powers of the relevant department and any special statutory regime.

Possible measures include:

• building and maintaining a georeferenced inventory;
• recording species, size, condition, risk, ecological context, irrigation needs, and management history;
• protecting soil volume, root zones, and water access;
• establishing pruning, construction-protection, and maintenance standards based on qualified arboricultural practice;
• favoring retention of established Trees before relying on replacement planting;
• establishing lifecycle planning for planting, establishment, maintenance, and eventual replacement;
• integrating urban heat, public health, biodiversity, stormwater, carbon, habitat, landscape, and cultural value into management decisions;
• and publishing reasons, alternatives considered, and follow-up measures for major public removals when lawful and appropriate.

Because public property is not legally homogeneous, agencies should still identify jurisdiction over each site. Streets, parks, ports, schools, utilities, transit property, state lands, and federal lands may be governed by different entities even when they lie within the same city boundaries.

9. Private trees, land use, preemption, and property rights

Trees on private property require more careful legal calibration. California local governments commonly regulate land use, development, hazards, heritage resources, and certain tree removals, but local rules can be constrained or preempted by state housing law, utility law, wildfire rules, vested-rights doctrines, constitutional protections, and other statewide regimes.

A binding local tree ordinance should define with precision:

• which Trees and properties are covered;
• objective thresholds or categories triggering protection;
• activities requiring a permit, notice, or administrative review;
• legally recognized grounds for removal, including public safety, disease, emergency conditions, infrastructure conflicts, and other applicable criteria;
• notice, hearing, decision, and appeal procedures where required;
• lawful replacement or mitigation requirements;
• coordination with zoning, housing obligations, infrastructure, easements, utility rights, and state-mandated development standards;
• and due-process, takings, exaction, and compensation constraints.

10. Procurement, contracts, and public works: an immediately usable lever

Procurement, contracts, capital projects, and construction specifications are powerful implementation tools because a public authority may define how its own projects and contractors must protect Trees, subject to procurement law, funding conditions, labor rules, technical standards, and competitive requirements.

Public contracts and specifications can address:

• root, trunk, and canopy protection zones;
• prohibitions on storage, compaction, staging, or vehicle circulation within protected root areas;
• excavation methods and utility crossings near roots;
• required involvement of a qualified arborist or other Tree professional;
• pruning standards consistent with Tree physiology and recognized professional standards;
• minimum soil volume, water, drainage, and establishment conditions for new plantings;
• documentation of damage and corrective obligations;
• post-construction monitoring;
• species and structural diversity, site suitability, and climate resilience;
• and survival and establishment metrics rather than simple planting counts.

The Fifteen Commitments can therefore influence public contracting immediately, even where the authority has not yet amended its general regulatory code. This is one of the clearest ways to move from principle to measurable institutional practice.

11. The Fifteen Commitments: operational implementation of the Declaration

The Fifteen Commitments of Local and Regional Authorities — official English text are the operational roadmap associated with local adoption of the Declaration. Their official text is common to signatory authorities; implementation is voluntary, progressive, and evolving, and may be adapted to the powers, resources, applicable law, and ecological realities of each territory.

These fifteen headings reproduce the structure of the official English roadmap. The explanatory language above is a California implementation analysis and should not be confused with a substitute text for the official Commitments. The official PDF should be attached or precisely identified in any formal adoption instrument.

12. Assembly of the Tree, Defender of the Tree, and California local-democracy rules

The Assembly of the Tree is conceived as a consultative, scientific, democratic, territorial, and interdisciplinary body. It does not replace a city council, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, a mayor, commissions, public departments, administrative agencies, or courts.

In California, a city or county establishing an Assembly must consider the Ralph M. Brown Act. Government Code section 54952 includes within the definition of a “legislative body” specified commissions, committees, boards, and other bodies — including certain advisory bodies — created by charter, ordinance, resolution, or other formal action. Government Code section 54953 establishes the general rule of open and public meetings for covered bodies. Government Code section 54952 Government Code section 54953

Depending upon how the Assembly is created and structured, meeting notices, agendas, public access, remote participation, deliberation, voting, records, conflicts of interest, and local sunshine requirements should be addressed at the design stage. A city may also be subject to transparency rules that exceed the Brown Act.

The Defender of the Tree

The Defender of the Tree may receive alerts, request information within the framework established by the authority, formulate recommendations, track responses, and issue reports. The role does not automatically include a power to fine, veto, annul, enjoin, prosecute, or litigate on behalf of Trees. If a local authority creates a formal public office or appointive function, it should specify appointment, independence, ethical duties, access to records, resources, reporting lines, and legal limits.

13. Guardian Trees and the Guardian Tree Passport: coordination with local legal categories

The recognition of Guardian Trees and the creation of a Guardian Tree Passport are components of the Declaration’s institutional framework. They may interact with existing California or local categories such as heritage Trees, landmark Trees, significant Trees, protected Trees, or historic landscape resources, but those categories should not be treated as legally identical without a local legal analysis.

A local authority may determine that a Tree already protected under local law also meets the criteria for Guardian Tree recognition, or may recognize a Guardian Tree institutionally without immediately changing its regulatory status. The Passport can document history, ecological function, condition, scientific characteristics, cultural significance, management history, threats, and applicable legal protections.

Institutional recognition and legally enforceable protection are distinct operations. If a city or county wants the designation “Guardian Tree” to carry mandatory legal consequences, those consequences must be created through the competent local legal instrument and coordinated with existing categories, procedures, and property rights.

14. Proposed institutional procedure for California authorities

1. Contact La Compagnie des Papillons Bleus

   The city, county, city and county, or other authority must contact La Compagnie des Papillons Bleus before initiating or presenting an official adoption within the initiative, so that the current official texts, institutional framework, and adoption procedure are correctly identified.

2. Identify the authority’s legal status and powers

   Determine whether the body is a charter city, general law city, charter county, general law county, special district, joint powers authority, or other entity, and identify the governing legal powers relevant to the proposed adoption.

3. Define the exact object of the first vote

   Separate formal adoption of the Declaration and the Fifteen Commitments from later ordinances, permit rules, budget decisions, staffing, or ballot measures.

4. Map existing law and policy

   Identify current tree ordinances, general-plan provisions, urban forest plans, climate plans, public works standards, procurement rules, inventories, CEQA procedures, advisory bodies, and public-participation mechanisms.

5. Obtain local legal review

   Have the proposed resolution, ordinance, or other instrument reviewed by the City Attorney, County Counsel, or other qualified U.S. legal counsel before adoption.

6. Adopt the official texts together

   The competent governing body adopts the Universal Declaration of Tree Rights and the Fifteen Commitments, identifying the current official versions with sufficient precision and attaching them where local procedure permits.

7. Complete local procedural requirements

   Observe agenda, notice, hearing, fiscal, CEQA, publication, voting, signature, and recordkeeping requirements applicable to the chosen instrument.

8. Transmit the adopted documents

   Provide La Compagnie des Papillons Bleus with the official act, confirmation of adoption of both texts, and the information needed for entry in the International Register of Signatory Authorities.

9. Establish the implementation architecture

   Define the Assembly of the Tree, Defender of the Tree, departmental responsibilities, timetable, resources, indicators, and mechanisms for public reporting.

10. Review and report periodically

    Evaluate progress, disclose results and unresolved issues, and update the implementation plan while preserving the common official texts.

15. Recognition of adoption and the International Register of Signatory Authorities

The Register is intended to:

• maintain a traceable institutional record of signatory authorities;
• identify the jurisdiction, category of authority, date, and reference of the adoption instrument;
• link, where appropriate, to the public adoption record;
• facilitate cooperation and exchange of experience among authorities;
• and document the territorial development of the initiative.

The legal effects of the local adoption remain those conferred by applicable federal, California, and local law and by the wording of the instrument actually adopted.

16. Institutional guidance, official versions, and intellectual property

Nature of institutional guidance

La Compagnie des Papillons Bleus may provide doctrinal, scientific, methodological, institutional, documentary, and educational guidance concerning the Declaration and its implementation framework.

Such guidance is not individualized legal advice under California law and does not replace review by a City Attorney, County Counsel, or attorney authorized to practice in the relevant U.S. jurisdiction.

Official versions and local adaptations

The three articles, the Fifteen Commitments, the Assembly of the Tree, Guardian Trees, the Guardian Tree Passport, and the other instruments of the initiative must be distinguished from local implementation documents. A local authority may adapt implementation methods to its legal system; it should not present an unapproved rewrite as an official version of the Declaration or the Fifteen Commitments.

Intellectual property and the United States

The French name “Déclaration universelle des droits de l’Arbre” is the subject of a French word-mark application filed with the INPI on July 16, 2026 under No. 5278804 by La Compagnie des Papillons Bleus for services in Class 41. That filing should not be described as a federal U.S. trademark registration.

Public availability of the documents does not authorize third parties to present themselves as official representatives, institutional partners, or authorized adoption intermediaries without the required written mandate. Nor does it authorize altered texts to be represented as official versions.

17. The significance of the Terrasse-Vaudreuil precedent

On June 9, 2026, Terrasse-Vaudreuil adopted Resolution No. 2026-06-111 concerning the Universal Declaration of Tree Rights. Within the institutional records maintained by La Compagnie des Papillons Bleus, this decision is treated as the first formal municipal adoption of this specific Declaration by a local authority.

Read the Terrasse-Vaudreuil resolution

The precedent must be understood carefully. It does not establish binding law in California, and it does not imply that Terrasse-Vaudreuil was the first jurisdiction in the world to recognize any form of rights of nature or enhanced Tree protection. Its significance is institutional: it demonstrates that a local authority can formally adopt this specific Declaration within its own legal system and use it to organize a continuing public-policy process.

For California, the value of the precedent is therefore methodological rather than precedential in the common-law sense. California authorities must build their own legal foundation under California law, identify the competent instrument, and adopt the Fifteen Commitments under the current procedure.

18. Focus on San Francisco: a charter city and county

San Francisco occupies a distinctive position in California local government. Article XI, section 6 of the California Constitution provides that a charter city and county is both a charter city and a charter county, and that its charter city powers supersede conflicting charter county powers. California Constitution, article XI, section 6

San Francisco’s Charter functions as its foundational local governmental instrument. The Board of Supervisors exercises the City and County’s legislative authority, subject to the Charter, state and federal law, voter-enacted measures, and the distribution of powers among city officers, commissions, departments, and agencies.

This dual city-and-county status does not give San Francisco unlimited legal autonomy. Statewide concerns, preemptive statutes, constitutional rules, housing mandates, environmental law, public employment law, election law, and other statewide regimes may constrain local action. But San Francisco possesses substantial institutional capacity to adopt a policy framework and integrate it through its existing urban-forestry governance.

19. San Francisco: existing urban forest law and policy

San Francisco already has a developed legal framework for its urban forest. Article 16 of the Public Works Code is the Urban Forestry Ordinance. It addresses Street Trees, Significant Trees, Landmark Trees, planting, removal, maintenance, protection during construction, enforcement, and an Urban Forest Management Plan. San Francisco Public Works Code — Article 16

Section 808 protects specified Street Trees, City Trees, Significant Trees, Landmark Trees, and landscape material and establishes construction-protection requirements, including measures directed at excavation, soil compaction, and work near protected Trees. Public Works Code section 808

Section 810A defines “Significant Trees” through specified location and size criteria and subjects removal to established procedures and decision factors. Public Works Code section 810A

San Francisco also has an Urban Forest Plan. The adopted first phase focuses on street Trees, while the City’s planning materials identify broader work concerning Trees in parks and open spaces and on private property. Public Works describes the urban forest as a living system involving Trees, plants, wildlife, soils, air, water, and the people who care for and benefit from it. San Francisco Public Works — Urban Forest Plan

These instruments matter because adoption of the Declaration should not be presented as if San Francisco had no Tree law or urban-forest policy. The correct exercise is a gap analysis: which Commitments are already substantially reflected in local law or practice, which are only partly addressed, and which would require new institutional, administrative, budgetary, or normative steps?

20. San Francisco: the Precautionary Principle as a point of articulation

San Francisco’s Environment Code contains a citywide Precautionary Principle. Section 101 directs city officers, boards, commissions, and departments to implement a policy requiring broad consideration of alternatives, reliance on the best available science, open and transparent decision-making, public participation, and preventive action where serious or irreversible harm is threatened even in the absence of full scientific certainty. San Francisco Environment Code section 101

This principle creates a particularly strong conceptual bridge with the Declaration. The Declaration emphasizes responsibility toward Trees and the living world; the Precautionary Principle already provides San Francisco with an operative municipal decision-making doctrine centered on science, alternatives, transparency, and prevention.

The connection should nevertheless be made with legal precision. The Declaration does not amend section 101, and section 101 does not automatically incorporate the Declaration. A Board resolution could expressly request that departments analyze how the Fifteen Commitments interact with the existing Precautionary Principle and identify implementation measures that can be adopted without duplicating established procedures.

21. Urban Forestry Council and Assembly of the Tree: avoid duplication, build articulation

San Francisco’s Environment Code establishes an Urban Forestry Council. The current code describes it as an advisory and educational body, provides for fifteen voting members, and does not give it authority to legislate. Its responsibilities include promoting public participation, preserving and expanding the urban forest, coordinating policy, supporting standards and funding, applying the City’s Precautionary Principle to urban-forest management, and reporting to the Board of Supervisors and Mayor.

San Francisco Environment Code — Chapter 12, Urban Forestry Council

This existing institution is therefore highly relevant to Commitment 1, Establish an Assembly of the Tree. The correct approach is not to assume that San Francisco must automatically create a second committee. It is to compare the existing Council with the official requirements and purposes of an Assembly of the Tree: composition, appointment, independence, interdisciplinarity, public participation, access to departments, frequency of meetings, reporting, project review, scientific expertise, continuity, and capacity to follow all Fifteen Commitments as an integrated roadmap.

Three institutional options can then be examined with La Compagnie des Papillons Bleus and the City’s legal and administrative authorities:

• Functional equivalence: if the Urban Forestry Council substantially satisfies the purposes of an Assembly of the Tree, examine whether it can be formally recognized or designated to perform that function within the official framework;
• Expansion or restructuring: modify the existing Council, where legally appropriate, to incorporate missing representation, duties, reporting, or a structured interface with the Defender of the Tree;
• A distinct Assembly: create a separate body only if a demonstrated institutional gap justifies it and the relationship with the Urban Forestry Council is expressly defined.

The Council’s existing annual-reporting framework is especially relevant to Commitment 14, Evaluate Progress Achieved. Rather than duplicate reporting, San Francisco could examine whether indicators associated with the Fifteen Commitments can be integrated into or coordinated with that existing cycle.

Any option must comply with the Charter, applicable ordinances, the Brown Act, San Francisco’s own open-government requirements, appointment rules, ethics rules, and the allocation of powers among existing commissions and departments.

22. San Francisco: reading the Fifteen Commitments against existing law and institutions

The following matrix does not declare San Francisco “compliant” with the Fifteen Commitments. It identifies potential points of correspondence and questions that should be examined by City departments, the City Attorney, the Urban Forestry Council, and La Compagnie des Papillons Bleus before any formal implementation design.

This matrix is an institutional analytical tool, not a final finding of equivalence or legal compliance. Any formal position should be validated against current municipal law and practice and, as to the official meaning of the Declaration and its instruments, with La Compagnie des Papillons Bleus.

23. San Francisco Board of Supervisors: resolution or ordinance

Section 2.105 of the San Francisco Charter provides that the Board of Supervisors acts by ordinance or resolution and that legislative acts are enacted by ordinance. The two forms are therefore not interchangeable. San Francisco Charter section 2.105

For a first step limited to formal adoption of the Declaration and Fifteen Commitments, policy findings, institutional direction, and a request for staff analysis, a resolution is a form that should be examined. If the measure amends municipal law or creates new generally binding rules, an ordinance may be required. The City Attorney should determine the proper instrument based on the final text and intended legal effect.

This staged architecture prevents the first vote from being burdened with legal consequences that have not yet been analyzed and makes it possible to build a scientifically, administratively, and legally documented implementation process.

24. San Francisco: ballot measure, Declaration of Policy, and citizen initiative

A proposal to “put the Declaration on the San Francisco ballot” is legally conceivable, but the phrase is incomplete. The legal instrument must first be defined: are voters being asked to approve a Declaration of Policy, an initiative ordinance, a Charter amendment, or another measure within the lawful authority of the City and County?

Board, four Supervisors, or Mayor: submission to the voters

Charter section 2.113(a) authorizes the Board of Supervisors, or four or more of its members, to submit declarations of policy and matters the Board is empowered to pass to the voters. If the voters approve a Declaration of Policy, the Board must, within 90 days, take such actions within its powers as are necessary to carry the declaration into effect. San Francisco Charter section 2.113

The Mayor also has a Charter role. Section 3.100(16), subject to section 2.113, authorizes the Mayor to submit to the voters a Declaration of Policy or ordinance on a matter the Board of Supervisors is empowered to pass. San Francisco Charter — see section 3.100(16)

Section 2.113(b) adds a preliminary public process when a proposed initiative is submitted by the Mayor or by four or more Supervisors: the proposal must be submitted to the Board no later than 45 days before the Department of Elections submission deadline, and the Board must hold a public hearing no later than 15 days before that deadline. The final route and timing should be checked against the Charter, the Municipal Elections Code, and the Department of Elections calendar then in force.

Citizen initiative

Charter section 14.101 provides that an initiative may be proposed by a petition signed by voters equal to at least 2% of the number of registered voters in the City and County, subject to the qualification, form, timing, subject-matter, and election requirements imposed by the Charter and Municipal Elections Code. San Francisco Charter section 14.101

The 2% figure is a percentage, not a permanently fixed signature count. The actual requirement must be calculated from the official registration data applicable under the election rules at the relevant time, and the Department of Elections’ current initiative guide and calendar should be consulted before circulation begins.

San Francisco Department of Elections — November 3, 2026 consolidated general election calendar

This does not block the project. It removes the pressure to draft a ballot initiative prematurely. The Declaration, the Fifteen Commitments, the legal gap analysis, the local coalition, and dialogue with the Board, Mayor, relevant departments, and existing advisory bodies can be built first; the appropriate electoral route and date can then be chosen under the official rules in force at that time.

A citywide vote can carry substantial democratic value, but it is not legally necessary for San Francisco to begin institutional consideration. A Board-led adoption followed by a structured implementation report may be the more disciplined first step, while preserving the option of a later voter measure if a genuinely voter-level legal decision becomes useful.

25. A legally accessible path, built in stages

26. Primary and Authoritative Legal Sources and Reference Materials

Sources and reference materials reviewed in versions accessible on August 7, 2026.

Universal Declaration of Tree Rights — primary institutional sources

• Understanding the Universal Declaration of Tree Rights
• Official Framework of the Universal Declaration of Tree Rights
• Local Authorities and the Universal Declaration of Tree Rights: Principles, Procedure and Legal Scope
• The Three Founding Articles — official English PDF
• The Fifteen Commitments of Local and Regional Authorities — official English PDF
• The Assembly of the Tree
• Terrasse-Vaudreuil — Resolution No. 2026-06-111

California Constitution and statutes — primary legal sources

• California Constitution — Article XI, section 5: charter cities and municipal affairs
• California Constitution — Article XI, section 6: charter city and county
• California Constitution — Article XI, section 7: local police power
• California Government Code section 37100 — general powers of city legislative bodies
• Government Code section 54952 — Brown Act definition of legislative bodies
• Government Code section 54953 — open and public meetings
• CEQA — Public Resources Code section 21000
• CEQA — Public Resources Code section 21065: definition of “project”

California case law — authoritative decisions; linked through accessible repositories

• California Federal Savings & Loan Assn. v. City of Los Angeles (1991) 54 Cal.3d 1 — accessible opinion repository
• State Building & Construction Trades Council v. City of Vista (2012) 54 Cal.4th 547 — accessible opinion repository

San Francisco Charter, elections, and municipal code

• San Francisco Charter — current online codification
• Charter section 2.105 — Ordinances and Resolutions
• Charter section 2.113 — Legislative Initiative and Declarations of Policy
• Charter section 3.100(16) — Mayor’s submission authority, subject to section 2.113
• Charter section 14.101 — Initiatives
• San Francisco Department of Elections — November 3, 2026 consolidated general election calendar
• Public Works Code — Article 16, Urban Forestry Ordinance
• Public Works Code section 808 — Protection of Trees and Landscape Material
• Public Works Code section 810A — Significant Trees
• Environment Code section 101 — Precautionary Principle
• Environment Code — Chapter 12, Urban Forestry Council

San Francisco urban-forest policy — City sources

• San Francisco Public Works — Urban Forest Plan
• CAL FIRE — Urban and Community Forestry

Official institutional text

Publication of La Compagnie des Papillons Bleus

This article is an institutional text of La Compagnie des Papillons Bleus, the French nonprofit organization that stewards the Universal Declaration of Tree Rights and is responsible for its coherence, preservation, development, institutional guidance, and follow-up.

It is published under the authority of its President and of the author and initiator of the Universal Declaration of Tree Rights.

Publication: August 7, 2026 — California Version 1.0 — with a legal and institutional focus on San Francisco.

This article presents general principles of California law and San Francisco municipal law as reviewed on the date stated above. It is not individualized legal advice and does not replace review by the City Attorney, County Counsel, or an attorney authorized to practice in the relevant U.S. jurisdiction.