“There is a body of interdependent and unified interests and values… segregated by well-defined boundary lines from the rest of the world. The people in such a district have common interests, common rights, and common duties, and must necessarily work together for common purposes.”    -John Wesley Powell, Institutions for the Arid Lands, 1890

John Wesley Powell is one of the forgotten American heroes—a 19th century Indiana Jones. After losing his right arm while fighting in the Civil War, he became a professor of geology at Illinois Wesleyan University. He declined full professorship so that he could pursue his true passion— exploration. He mounted expedition after expedition to the then-unexplored American West and mapped most of the Colorado River, including the Grand Canyon.

Powell found the underlying order of the land fascinating. Each river had its own history and characteristics. Every watershed, or region draining into a particular river, had different biological and geological factors that gave it a unique feel. Overall, Powell found the interconnectedness of watersheds so important that he advocated for the creation of territories and states according to watersheds and river basins, rather than mere arbitrary lines. He envisioned a West where engaged citizens would care for rivers and streams and the land that surrounded them. He even saw the structure of governance changing according to the watershed size, having river and stream regions take the place of county and city bounds.

Ultimately Powell’s radical ideas were ignored and the development of Western lands proceeded to the point where we are today. But his idea of thinking like a region is as strong today as it ever was. People worldwide are realizing that important issues, especially environmental issues, transcend arbitrary political boundaries. Air pollution doesn’t understand the U.S.-Canada border, bison don’t recognize where Yellowstone National Park ends and the Gallatin National Forest begins, and the Connecticut River doesn’t know the difference between New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts or Connecticut.

“Environmental Regionalism” is a hot phrase nowadays—and for good reasons. It acknowledges that environmental issues know no boundaries, and therefore addresses these issues as a continuous whole. Countless groups are embracing this regional type of thinking and are making solid gains in environmental protection. The basic concept of environmental regionalism is that many environmental matters are better dealt with by thinking like a region instead of thinking like a city or state. The region itself does not have to be characterized by any one thing. It could be a mountain range, plateau, river basin, jet stream, forest—just about anything. The only requirement is that it must have some connection to the land. The good thing about regionalism is that multiple regions may exist within one area, with each region serving a different purpose. For example, one town could be a partner in a multi-county irrigation district to deal with water issues, a member of an interstate regional economic development partnership, and part of a multi-national wildlife corridor initiative to protect migrating mammals.

The over-arching theme of environmental regionalism is that ecological or geological issues should be dealt with in terms of affected land, not man-made political boundaries. Hundreds of these types of issues exist. Resource extraction and use, tourism, air pollution, flood control, timber harvest, biodiversity, and economic development are just a few. These issues obviously transcend traditional borders and are as common in the East as they are in the West. Just look acid rain to illustrate that point.

One regionally-based environmental organization that directly affects us at Dartmouth is the Connecticut River Watershed Council. This council, established in 1952, is an advocate and watchdog for the entire Connecticut River. Its mission transcends political boundaries, as the river itself meanders through four different states. The organization has helped focus policy to address the Connecticut River as an entire watershed, and not just as discrete sections of a river. It has protected thousands of acres of wetlands and forests, as well as supported efforts to restore Atlantic salmon fisheries. By addressing these issues on a regional level and working in broad coalitions, the Connecticut River Watershed Council has been able to solve many problems that states or cities could not solve on their own.

While the majority of environmental regionalism projects occur through organizations like the Connecticut River Watershed Council, a new type of regionalist environmental protection is emerging—a holistically-encompassing type of environmental protection. Instead of just looking at individual forests or watersheds, whole ecosystems are the target in this new type of environmental regionalism. Scientists are realizing that it is not enough to just protecting individual plots of habitat here and there. Rather, it is the connections between these fragmented habitats that are all-important. Wildlife corridors—broad, undeveloped passageways between major habitat areas—are being increasingly protected across the Americas.

The international Yellowstone to Yukon (Y2Y) Conservation Initiative is another popular example of this broad-based ecoregion thinking. The initiative seeks to protect a broad swath of land to ensure a continuity of healthy wildlife habitat between Wyoming and Alaska, encompassing the northern half of the Rocky Mountains in the United States, including Yellowstone National Park, the Waterton Glacier International Peace Park, and many forests and mountains in Alberta, British Columbia, and the Yukon and Northwest Territories. The Y2Y initiative by no means seeks to do all of the work in protecting this ecoregion itself; rather, it works with and enlists the help of countless other non-profit organizations, governmental agencies, and local citizen groups. By forming a broad coalition of interested parties and providing a framework within which these parties can work towards the common goal of ecoregion protection, the Y2Y initiative has created a type of regional cooperation and advocacy which individual state or government entities could not do on their own. The initiative is a multifaceted attempt at protecting the Yellowstone to Yukon region not possible through traditional political avenues.

While no doubt a great deal of momentum exists within the environmental regionalist movement, it does face many challenges in the upcoming years. The first and foremost is creating a sense of regional identity. This country was founded on the idea of strong states and a strong federal government—the framers mentioned nothing about regions. Because of this, we identify ourselves either as an inhabitant of this state or that country. Rarely do we think of geographical regions as a part of our personal identity or sense of community. When we do associate our identity with a region, such as New England or the South, it is usually for cultural or historical reasons rather than geological or ecological factors. Overcoming this hurdle is one of the greatest challenges regionalists face.

Yet imagining the greater region is not all that hard. Next time you fill up your water bottle, think about where the water comes from. Similarly, where does the waste go when you flush the toilet, and what implications does this action have for others? Everything we do is connected with something else, and most of it has regional implications. Just as John Wesley Powell came to realize 125 years ago, we must come to realize today that environmental regions already exist and have existed in multiple capacities for millions of years. It makes little sense to deal with the environment through arbitrary man-made borders when the environment we are trying to protect knows nothing of these boundaries and often ignores them. We should instead recognize the environmental regions that already exist and work with others to protect them, because only in looking at the greater whole can we protect the environment in all its forms.