keith pezzoli cross-border regionalism

8/6/2019 Keith Pezzoli Cross-Border Regionalism

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Crossborder Regionalism and Sustainability:

Contributions of Critical Regional Ecology*

Keith Pezzoli, Ph.D.

University of California @ San DiegoUrban Studies and Planning Program, 0517

Superfund Basic Research Program/ Research Translation Core9500 Gilman Drive

La Jolla, CA 92093-0517e-mail: [email protected]

phone: (858) 534-3691

AbstractCritical Regional Ecology provides a conceptual framework for sustainable city-regionplanning and development; it cross-fertilizes four fields of integrative discourse: (1) newregionalism/institutionalism, (2) sustainability science, (3) information science, and (4)ethics and culture. This chapter outlines these four dimensions and their interrelations.The aim is to highlight promising developments in our collective capacity to create,integrate, share, translate and apply knowledge across boundaries. Research universitiesand activist scholars have an increasingly important role to play in advancing criticalregional ecology. This chapter illustrates dimensions of Critical Regional Ecologythrough the prism of crossborder regional planning, governance and watershed

management.

*Citation:Pezzoli, K. (2006). Cross-Border Regionalism and Sustainability: Contributions of Critical Regional Ecology. Pp.63-94 in Equity and Sustainable Development: Regional Reflections from the U.S.-Mexico Border. J. Clough-Riquelme and N. Bringas Rbago (eds.). La Jolla, CA, Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, University of California,San Diego, and Sage Publications.


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Introduction

Over the past two decades, thousands of academics, researchers and activists from around theworld have churned out a vast literature analyzing prospects for sustainable development. The grist forthis analytic mill continues to pile up. A wide range of actors--including governmental, corporate, non-profit, grassroots, religious, tribal, and all sorts of combinations of theseare engaged in project/policydevelopments ostensibly aimed at promoting sustainability. Much of the discourse calls for integrating theso-called three Es of sustainability: Equity, Economic efficiency and Environmental stewardship. And thetheatre for these efforts spans geographic scales (local, regional, national, city-region, transborder,global). The formal and informal institutional drivers are also variedincluding governmental agencies,social movements, public-private sector collaboratives, corporate associations, international and regionalinstitutions, networks, research-based consortia, among others. The U.S.-Mexico border region is aunique place where many of these types of actors and institutional drivers operate in the same field. Thispresents synergistic opportunities. But the border regions jurisdictional fragmentation and unevendevelopment also presents serious obstacles.

Transborder city-regions along the U.S.-Mexico border are dramatic examples where significantwealth is juxtaposed to poverty. In the San Diego-Tijuana city-region, the city of San Diego has apopulation approximately the same size as the city of Tijuana. Yet, Tijuana has a municipal budget one-fourteenth of San Diegosabout $100 million versus approximately $1.4 billion (San Diego Dialogue2000). This has made it difficult to develop region-serving infrastructure in the San Diego-Tijuana area.The situation is complicated further by lack of understanding or consensus on how integrate the so-calledthree Es of sustainability in crossborder settings. This partly explains why advocacy for sustainabledevelopment through Agenda 21, the Rio Declaration, the United Nations Millennium DevelopmentGoals (MDGs), and countless other declarations and policy prescriptions specific to the U.S.-Mexicoborder, hasnt had much impact. There are contradictory attitudes, beliefs, and expectations onfundamental issues including trade policy, capital mobility and the role of the state. The meeting of worldleaders at the Johannesburg Summit in 2002 was overshadowed by a disappointing lack of progress andfaltering commitment on the part of nations and global institutions.

The quest to balance equity, economy, and environment in sustainable development needs aprogressive approach to crossborder regionalism. This book of essaysbased on the two-day conferenceentitled, Regional Reflections on the World Summit in Johannesburg: Equity and SustainableDevelopment in the U.S.-Mexico Border Region,is evidence of the progressive imagination at work.John Friedmanns essay, for instance, speaks of Imagining an Alternative Development. Friedmannarticulates the progressive challenge as one of enabling an alternative endogenous development basedon empowerment and local investment in a city-regions productive assets (Friedmann 1992). StephenMummes institutional analysis underscores the need for both substantive and procedural forms of equityin binational policy and decision-making. Mumme, along with Jane Clough Riqueleme, Robert Bach,Basilio Chvez and others emphasize the need to build capacity for civic engagement through strong non-governmental advocacy/resource organizations. Tito Alegria, Kathy Kopinak and Nora Bringas, and

others offer insight into how poverty and environmental systems are interdependent in the U.S.-Mexicoborder region and beyond. Larry Herzog documents cultural barriers to sustainable development andargues the case for rethinking urban ecologies (Herzog 1990; Herzog 2000). The books editors, JaneClough-Riqueleme and Nora Bringas, set the overarching progressive tone of the volume by challengingscholars and activists to join forces in ways that can hold governments and corporations accountable tothe sustainability ethic as embodied, for instance, in the United Nations Millennium Development Goals.

My understanding of the term progressive is generally in sync with those who define newprogressivism as a left-of-center approach to revitalizing social democracy (Etzioni 2000; Giddens 2003;


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Schroder et al. 2002). Yet globalization continues to complicate political categories of left verses right,liberal verses conservative. Interlocking problems stemming from poverty, social injustice, growthmachine politics, mass consumerism and environmental degradation defy easy solutions. In the quest forsustainable development, we are compelled to search for new understandings that are more nuanced,networked, systems-oriented, globally-minded, holistic, ecological, interactive and relational. There is nosingular progressive champion (human agency) to save the day. Workers of the world unite is a nice

slogan, and it bears some merit, but it is an insufficient measure on its own. The same can be said ofhopes pinned solely on free market dynamics, the mobilization of civil society, regulatory innovation,technological magic, the entrepreneurial experimentation of globe-girdling corporations, or the ingenuityof the so-called creative class. These caveats complicate efforts to create a working definition ofprogressive, but it shouldnt stop us from trying.

I define "progressive" as a critical, open-minded and creatively constructive, characteristic ofhuman agency (be it a person, group, network, or some other form of organization) that is trying toimprove quality of life and habitat for the common good. Progressive is a critical standpointat onceecological, globally-minded, historically-informed and forward-lookingshared by people and

organizations dedicated to eradicating root causes of poverty, social injustice and/or environmental

degradation. Progressive can also be defined in more poetic terms as a characteristic of those whocreate/share stories and actionable vision in collective struggles to realize the illusive good society. In

this conception of progressive, the term ecological is not limited to its scientific meaning as the study ofecosystems, populations, ecotopes, landscapes and biomes, etc. Rather the term ecological also conveys:(1) an important epistemological dimension (i.e., barriers and bridges to producing, integrating andsharing multidisciplinary ecologies of knowledge ), and (2) a philosophical dimension (i.e., strengths andweaknesses of using ecological concepts such as community, stability, diversity, organism and nicheto understand/improve other systems characterized variously as social, cultural, political, urban and/orregional). Taking this full range of meanings into account, I suggest that we need a federated ecologicalapproach to inspire and enable progressive crossborder regionalism. I call this approach critical regionalecology.

Critical Regional Ecology

Critical regional ecology is an approach to integrating theory and practice for progressiveregionalism. More specifically, it provides a conceptual framework for sustainable city-region planningand development. Critical Regional Ecology cross-fertilizes four fields of integrative discourse: (1) newregionalism/institutionalism, (2) sustainability science, (3) informational science, and (4) ethics andculture. Clearly this chapter can only scratch the surface of these dimensions and their interrelations.1 Myintent here is not to provide some grand meta-narrative or blueprint. Rather I aim to sketch the contours(frontiers) of critical regional ecology where promising developments are taking place in our collectivecapacity to create, integrate, share, translate and apply knowledge across boundaries. Researchuniversities and activist scholars have an increasingly important role to play in advancing critical regionalecology. The following discussion illustrates dimensions of critical regional ecology through the prism ofcrossborder regional planning, governance and watershed management.

Crossborder City-Regions and Planning

Planning programs at universities can-and must-raise questions and generate answers about thestructure of our society and about how the great transformations underway are to be influenced;otherwise, how do we know towards what are we planning? What are the appropriate questions inthese realms for our day and for the future, and how are they best raised and answered? (Perloff1981)

The invocation quoted above was directed to urban and regional planning theorists, educators,students and practioners. Harvey Perloff posed the challenge in the inaugural issue of theJournal of


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Planning Education and Research. I include the quote here to emphasize that planning (as both anacademic and professional field) has a crucial role to play in promoting sustainable development. City-regions are diverse, often conflicting, aggregations of cities, suburbs, and their environs that need to beorganized as integrated systems of networks and infrastructures. Yet globalization, uneven developmentand low-density urban sprawl have combined in ways that make traditional planning and policyapproaches problematic. The U.S.-Mexico Border region is especially challenging in this regard. The

border region covers more than 2,000 miles long from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean; it isformally defined as the area extending 100 kilometers (62.5 miles) from either side of the internationalborder (i.e., a 200 kilometer swath of land bisected by the international border). The border regionspopulation has grown rapidly over the past 20 years. Demographers estimate that the current populationof 11.8 million people will swell to 19.4 million by 2020 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency 2005).

The U.S.-Mexico border has fourteen sister cities. Each of these sister-city pairs, as Herzog(1998) points out, form a transfrontier metropolis, a single cross-border functional living space withU.S. and Mexican dwellers. San Diego-Tijuana is the largest and wealthiest city-region on the U.S.-Mexico borderit has a total population of 4.1 million people (2.8 million in the San Diego metropolitanarea and 1.3 million in Tijuana). Tijuanas annual growth rate is 4.9%, nearly double that of San Diegos.Together the two cities have a total gross regional product of $125 billion ($120B San Diego; $5BTijuana). The city-region's population is expected to swell to 8 million by 2030 (Kiy and Kada 2004).

The International Community Foundations (ICF) report titled,Blurred Borders: TransboundaryIssues and Solutions in the San Diego/Tijuana Border Region, documents how the San Diego-Tijuanaregions rapid growth is causing serious negative impacts: housing costs are skyrocketing; urban sprawland a proposed triple border fence threaten rural communities and sensitive habitats of binationalecological importance; transportation infrastructure is insufficient to service the growing traffic; andwater and energy supply is becoming an increasingly urgent and hotly contested issue (Kiy and Kada2004). What are the prospects for sustainable development under such circumstances? Newregionalism/institutionalismthe first of critical regional ecologys integrative discoursesprovidessome insight along these lines.

New Regionalism/New Institutionalism and Governance

Over the past decade, interest in metropolitan/regional planning and the so-called newregionalism/institutionalism has been steadily rising. Some go so far as to characterize the emphasis onnew regionalism as an emerging movement (Wheeler 2002). Stefan Kipher and Karen Wirsig examine thenew regionalism from a critical perspective; they recently organized and published a review symposiumtitled, Progressive Regionalisms in North America. All five review essays published in the symposiumconcurred that "the latest version of the new regionalism is a useful entry point to discuss the politicalprospects for a progressive regionalism" (Kipfer and Wirsig 2004). But what does progressive mean inthis context? How does progressive regionalism with its emphasis on politics, new institutionalism andgovernance factor into the sustainable development challenge facing city-regions in the context ofglobalization?

The discourse on new regionalism/institutionalism sheds light on two aspects crucial tosustainable city-region development. First, there is the recognition of the metropolitan scale as a vitalgeographic unit of analysis for purposes of integrated regional planning. Emphasis is placed on

engendering a more whole-systems view of classic planning problems (e.g., job creation, housing,transportation, urban sprawl, economic development, etc.). This discourse has shed light on how the fateof inner city development is interdependent with the dynamics of suburban growth, or decline as the casemay be, in outlying suburbs (Calthorpe and Fulton 2001; Wheeler 2002).

Second, the new regionalism/institutionalism discourse sheds light on the need for newapproaches to governance. Municipal, district and other organizational entities have difficulty dealingwith various challenges that manifest at the regional scale (e.g., the need for jobs-housing balancethroughout the metropolis, creation of district-spanning wildlife corridors in the context of species and


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habitat conservation, and transit-oriented development). In his writing on Regional Solutions for 21stCentury challenges, Nick Bollman puts it this way: Only a fundamentally different mode of governance,what we call regional stewardship, will be adequate to the challenge. Stewardship, that is collaborationamong local and state government and the private and civic sectors, is the fundamental building block of21st century regionalism (Bollman 2002).

In his study of the institutional dimensions of environmental change, Oran R. Young (2002) finds

that most contributors to the new institutionalist discourse view institutions as sets of rules, decision-making procedures, and programs that define social practices, assign roles to the participants in thesepractices, and guide interactions among the occupants of individual roles. The emphasis is placed onunderstanding institutions as embedded in organizational cultures including social conventions andsystems of rules in use (not just on official documents). A key tenet of the new institutionalism is thatthe economy is shaped by enduring collective forces in the form of both formal and informal socialinstitutions (Amin 1999; Amin et al. 1994). Joachim Blatter argues that an institutional criterion forsustainable development can be seen in new approaches to urban and regional planning: It is notcomprehensive plans with detailed indicators but the planning process embedded in institutional settingsthat are the most important element of successful planning. Intersectoral communication and cooperation,round tables and forums are seen as crucial elements towards innovative and sustainabledevelopment(Blatter 2002).

Along these lines, a recent Social Equity Forum hosted by the Inter-American DevelopmentBank (IDB) concluded with a declaration outlining Institutional Challenges for Sustainable and equitablesocial policy in Latin America and the Caribbean. The members of the Social Equity Forum urgedgovernments, civil society and citizens in the region to increase their efforts to build solid institutionsthat guarantee sustainable and equitable social policy (Inter-American Development Bank 2004).2

The merging of new regionalist and new institutionalist perspectives can be seen in the emergentdiscourse on governance. UN-Habitat outlines four dynamic trends in city-region governance over thepast decade: (1) devolution of power and resources away from centralized governments toward local andregional governments, (2) rising level of citizen participation in policy-making, (3) emergence of newforms of multi-level governance (collaborative arrangements joining public, private, and civil societyinstitutions in urban problem solving), and (4) policy and decision-making structures that are moreprocess-driven and territorially based (attuned to regional blocs and area-based interests) (UN-Habitat

2001). Evidence of these trends and the quest for effective regional stewardship can be seen in the SanDiego-Tijuana crossborder region.

SANDAG and the Borders Committee

On January 17, 2003, the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) RegionalPlanning Committee held a joint meeting with SANDAGs Borders Committee. The Borders Committeeprovides oversight for planning and implementing SANDAGs crossborder initiatives and programs. Thisincludes a binational perspective (dealing with San Diegos relation to the international border with theRepublic of Mexico); an interregional perspective (dealing with issues involving Orange, Riverside, andImperial County neighbors); and collaboration with tribal governments within San Diego County. TheBorders Committee works closely with two other SANDAG entities: the I-15 Interregional Partnership,and the Committee on Binational Regional Opportunities (COBRO). Intended as input for SANDAGs

Regional Comprehensive Plan (RCP), the Borders Committee identified a set of key crossborder prioritiesincluding jobs/housing balance, transportation and trade infrastructure, ports of entry, water supply,energy, and environmental protection and coordination. The Borders Committee now has a set of guidingprinciples intended to serve as a framework for policy objectives and actions with regard to crossborderregionalism:


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Our region will pursue fair and equitable planning with consideration of interregional impacts andwill maintain active and honest communication with our neighboring counties, tribal governmentsand the Republic of Mexico.

Our region will promote shared infrastructure, efficient transportation systems, integratedenvironmental planning and economic development with our neighboring counties, tribalgovernments and the Republic of Mexico.

Our region recognizes that it is a unique and dynamic place to liveone that embraces culturaldiversity, promotes interregional understanding, and benefits from our varied history andexperience. (SANDAG 2005)

The final draft of the RCP includes a chapter dedicated to borders; and it embraces the guidingprinciples of the Borders Committee. A vision statement at the outset of the RCPs border chapterprojecting to the year 2030offers this forward-looking scenario: The greater Southern California-BajaCalifornia region boasts a seamless network that connects our economies, infrastructure, transportation,environment and tourism industries; [and] We work closely with Mexico and our surroundingneighbors to maintain a healthy environment, and both sides of the international border are recognizedthroughout the world for clean air and water and thriving ecosystems. We have established linkages andcommon land management practices along our borders (San Diego Association of Governments 2004).

This is a lofty and optimist vision, one that is matched by IMPLAN across the border.

IMPLAN: The Municipal Institute of Planning in Tijuana

The public agency responsible for binational planning on the Mexican side of the San Diego-Tijuana city-region is theInstituto Municipal de Planeacin (Municipal Institute of Planning). Thisagency, popularly referred to as IMPLAN, recently had its staff slashed from 70 full time employees toless than 20. It is the only agency in the Tijuana metropolitan area that is responsible for urban andregional planning. Most of the agencies budget goes to salary. It has very little available for actualprojects. IMPlan has made transborder planning a high priority. In a document that spells out IMPLANstransborder planning mission, the agency spells out these goals:

Promote comprehensive transborder planning with organizations from the public and privatesectors on both sides of the border.

Promote the institutionalization of transborder planning, by creating organizations, procedures,laws and other tools (including financing mechanisms), and by fostering a "transborder planning"culture in society.

Support organizations with studies, plans and projects related to transborder planning. Developjoint projects.

Generate funding for studies, plans and projects.Source: Instituto Municipal de Planeacion, IMPlan, June 2001.

Of course, IMPLANs efforts to build capacity for transborder planning will not necessarily resultin a progressive regionalist approach to problems of poverty, social injustice and environmentaldegradation. The same can be said of SANDAGs efforts. The prospects for progressive regionalism

hinges on more than political will and good governance. Inputs from sustainability science, informationscience, ethics and culture are also important. In the following sections, I review each of these threedomains using watershed management as a frame of reference. Watersheds are an increasingly significantorganizing concept in transborder affairs.

Sustainability Science and Watersheds

In a world put at risk by the unintended consequences of scientific progress, social trust inscientific knowledge claims and institutions cannot be taken for granted. Participatory procedures


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involving scientists, stakeholders, advocates, active citizens and users of knowledge are needed totransform knowledge claims into trustworthy, socially-robust, usable knowledge about therealities which matter in social and environmental change and in the transition to sustainability. Inaddition, scientists will need to be increasingly sensitive to shifts in patterns of governance thatcould assist their endeavors. (Kates et al. 2001)

The quote cited above is from a benchmark declaration of sustainability science that outlines corequestions, research priorities, networking and institutional strategies for linking science to society.Sustainability science aims to understand society-nature interactions and interdependencies from anintegrated whole-systems perspective. Kates, et al. (2001) argue that Such an understanding mustencompass the interaction of global processes with the ecological and social characteristics of particularplaces and sectors (Kates et al. 2001:4). The severity of environmental problems in the U.S.-Mexicoborderlands makes it painfully clear that much more needs to be done to get a handle on the forces drivingenvironmental degradation.

Current environmental laws in the U.S. and Mexico focus almost entirely on manufacturingfacilities, especially the larger industries that have historically been the most heavily polluting (e.g.,refineries, chemical and power plants, automobile industry). But new types of environmental problemshave emerged. In Southern California and Baja Califorina non-point source pollution (including, among

other things, nutrients, bacteria, sediment, pesticides, and chemicals) runs off millions of backyards,farms and streets into storm drains. This constitutes one of the biggest environmental threats to theregions coastline. Diffuse sources of pollution also include such things as emissions from gas stations andmillions of motor vehicles. Emergent problems that have eluded traditional environmental policyapproaches include the atmospheric build-up of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, the potentialenvironmental impacts of genetically modified organisms, urban sprawl resulting in loss of habitat andbiodiversity, pesticides that might disrupt human endocrine cycles, and the erosion of earth's protectiveozone layer in the upper atmosphere.

The National Research Council's (NRC) Board on Sustainable Development has identified threehigh priority tasks for advancing the research agenda of sustainability science: (1) Develop a researchframework for the science of sustainable development that integrates global and local perspectives toshape a place-based understanding of the interactions between environment and society; (2) Initiate

focused research programs on a small set of understudied questions that are central to a deeperunderstanding of those interactions; (and) (3). Promote better utilization of existing tools and processesfor linking knowledge to action in pursuit of a sustainability transition (National Research Council 1999).

The NRCs priorities underscore the importance of two very important challenges for crossborderregionalism. First, we need to identify appropriate biogeophysical terms of reference (i.e., watersheds orwaterscapes) useful for place-based views of environment-society interdependencies. Significantprogress is being made on this front. Second, while encouraging a diversity of stand alone researchprograms, we also need to do much more in the way of building incentives and capacity for knowledgenetworking and resource sharing across such programs. Progress on this front is much more difficult.

When it comes to defining a particular regionsay, as an organizing framework forcomprehensive regional planningit soon becomes apparent that there is no one-size-fits-all definition.Depending on the problem or challenge in view, a region may be defined as the contiguously urbanized

metropolitan area and its immediate hinterlands, or it might be thought of on a much larger multi-county,multi-state, or even multi-national scale. In her classic work on The Death and Life of Great AmericanCities, Jane Jacobs shared this perspective: A Region, someone has wryly observed, is an area safelylarger than the last one to whose problems we found no solution (cited in Katz 2000).

If conventional definitions of metropolitan areas were applied across the international boundary,San Diego and Tijuana would constitute a "consolidated metropolitan area" composed of two primarymetropolitan areas. The San Diego Primary Metropolitan Area would be San Diego County. The TijuanaPrimary Metropolitan Area would be the Tijuana, Playas de Rosariito and Tecate Municipios (Cox 1999).The combined population of this area is 4.5 million people, roughly 1 million of who live in Tijuana. It is


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the largest twin-city out of the fourteen that span the U.S.-Mexico border, and it has the busiest bordercrossing point (San Ysidro) in the world. This conception of the San Diego-Tijuana city-region ispolitically configuredthat is, it is based on the legal-institutional parameters of a political geography,not a bioregional or ecological geography. The newly placed emphasis on watersheds helps bring a moreecological perspective into view.

The EPA defines a watershed as those land areas that catch rain or snow and drain to specific

marshes, streams, rivers, lakes, or to ground water (EPA 2005). Watersheds constitute a bowl or basin-shaped area in which all water within the area (rain, snow, etc.) flows to the same outlet point. In the caseof the 1,750 square mile Tijuana River Watershed (2/3rds of which lies in Mexico, 1/3 of which lies in theU.S.), the common outlet point is on the U.S.-side of the border at the Tijuana River Estuary. The U.S.Geological Survey provides a standardized definition of regions that subdivides the nation into hydrologicunits (watersheds) averaging about 700 square miles.

Watersheds provide a useful organizing framework to advance the regional approach tosustainability science as outlined by the NRC: The major threats and opportunities of the sustainabilitytransition are not only multiple, cumulative, and interactive, but also place-based. In other words, it is inspecific regions with distinctive social and ecological attributes that the critical threats to sustainabilityemerge, and where a successful transition will need to be based (National Research Council 1999) . Theincreasingly complex nature of crossborder environmental problems provides a strong catalyst for new

integrated approaches centered on crossborder watersheds. Thayer puts it in these terms: As globalizingeconomic, technological, and political relationships render arbitrary national boundaries less relevant, wewill increasingly deal with the physical realities of environmental, resource, and biodiversity issues byfocusing upon natural divisions within physiographic regions (Thayer 2003).

A significant and rising amount of work along the U.S.-Mexico border highlights watersheds asan essential organizing framework for tasks involving crossborder environmental research, education,policy and planning. A good example is the work being done by San Diego State University (SDSU) inpartnership with the Colegio de la Frontera Norte (COLEF), among others. This team recently publishedthe Tijuana River Watershed Atlas as part of an ambitious Transborder Watershed Research Programaimed at harmonizing data across the international boundary. The atlasincluding 80 photographs,maps, and text in both English and Spanishwas published by San Diego State University Press and theInstitute for Regional Studies of the Californias with assistance from SDSU's Department of Geography

and the Southwest Consortium for Environmental Research and Policy (SCERP). Richard Wright, one ofthe co-editors of the Atlas, points out why this work is significant: "developing information for the entirebinational watershed is absolutely essential to plan for the future, to avoid environmental problems thatwill negatively affect the quality of life of the watershed's 1.4 million residents, and to take advantage ofbinational synergies for sustainable regional development" (Wright 2005).

Another binational watershed project spanning the U.S.-Mexico border focuses on the Upper SanPedro Basin. The San Pedro River (the basin's major surface-water drainage) enters the basin at the U.S.-Mexico border near Palominas, Arizona. Browning-Aiken, et al., did an analysis of this case focused oncollaborative binational watershed management. They came to this conclusion: Within the internationalSan Pedro River Basin, disparities between Mexico and the United States regarding economicdevelopment and political orientation, combined with a highly variable and complex physical setting,suggest that the successful engagement of scientists with communities and stakeholders will be essential

for addressing water management challenges (Browning-Aiken et al. 2004)Stephen Mumme (2002) argues that Whether speaking of the Colorado River or the Rio Grande,

much of the debate on use of the border's scarce water resources now endorses a watershed managementapproach. Watershed advocacy assumes sustainable development is more likely to be achieved whenpolicy decisions are based on a full accounting of the complex ecological and socio-economicinterrelationships within a particular hydrographic unit. The U.S.- EPA now advocates a watershedmanagement along the U.S.-Mexico border. Likewise, Mexico has endorsed watershed managementthrough its river basin councils (consejos de cuencas) as mandated by Mexico's 1990 National WaterLaw. In his review of this subject, Mumme finds that:


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Such national initiatives are generating new opportunities on the border. These are seen ininnovative efforts to coordinate inter-governmental planning within major river basins andtributary watersheds, to forge new partnerships with governmental and non-governmentalstakeholders, to establish new advisory and attention groups, sometimes formalized as watershedcouncils, and to initiate studies within an ambit of public participation and stakeholderinvolvement. With the support of foundations, universities, and NGOs, a number of important

citizen based watershed initiatives have taken root (Mumme 2002).

What does all of this have to do with sustainability science? It falls within the rubric of whatthose advocating sustainability science call knowledge-action collaboratives. The NRC definesknowledge-action collaboratives as regional-scale alliances of diverse and sector-specific groups jointlymobilized to design strategies and institutions that enable adaptive management and social learning forsustainable development (NRC 1999: 7). The creation of such collaboratives creates opportunities forthose advocating new regionalism/institutionalism to join efforts of scientists committed to linkingscience to society. The barriers and bridges to making this happen include technical as well as socialdimensions. Advances in the informational sciences have much to contribute along these lines.

Informational sciences, cybertools and cyberinfrastructure

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has a Directorate for Computer and Information Scienceand Engineering which includes a Division of Information and Intelligent Systems.3 This Division of theNSF has a grants program aimed at Advancing Collaborative and Intelligent Systems and their SocietalImplications (NSF 2005). The NSFs Request for Applications (RFA) in this grant category states:Problems addressed by the Collaborative Systems area include storing, accessing and organizing,interpreting, protecting, summarizing, managing and using vast and growing quantities of IT-based data,information and knowledge that may be uncertain and incomplete. The NSFs emphasis on collaborativesystems research is one of many new research frontiers opening up in the realm of informational science.The NSFs emphasis on building the Next Generation Cybertools is indicative of a dramatic revolutiontaking place in applications of advanced information, communication and visualization technologies.Cybertools enhance the analysis and visualization of scientific data. Such tools are being used in many

ways (e.g., to improve computer processing power and to enhance data mining, data integration,information indexing, data confidentiality protection, and the interoperability of data from differentsources). Cybertools are part of the NSFs broader thrust to develop cyberinfrastructure nationwide aswell as internationally and globally.

A recent report (January 2003) published by the NSF Blue-Ribbon Advisory Panel onCyberinfrastructure emphasizes how continuing progress in computing, information, and communicationtechnologies has crossed a critical threshold. We are now in a position to create a comprehensivecyberinfrastructure to address national and global priorities, such as understanding global climatechange, protecting our natural environment, applying genomics-proteomics to human health, maintainingnational security, mastering the world of nanotechnology, and predicting and protecting against naturaland human disasters (NSF Blue Ribbon Advisory Panel on Cyberinfrastructure 2003).Cyberinfrastructure (including integrated information, computing, and communications systems) is to the

knowledge economy what highways, water systems, and power grids are to the industrial economy.

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Every directorate within the NSF has funded or is exploring cyberinfrastructure-related projects.5A U.S.-based Internet2 consortium led by 207 universities in partnership with industry and

government is developing and deploying advanced cyberinfrastructure nationally and globally. TheInternet2s international thrust aims to facilitate global interoperability of advanced networking, andcollaboration among U.S. researchers, faculty, students and their overseas counterparts. 6 ThroughoutLatin America, Internet2 partner organizations can be found in Brazil (Rede Nacional de Ensino ePesquisa, RNP), Chile (Red Universitaria Nacional, REUNA), Venezuela (Red Acadmica de Centros deInvestigacin y Universidades Nacionales de Alta Velocidad, REACCIUN2), and Mexico (Corporacin


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Universitaria para el Desarollo de Internet, CUDI). CUDI is made up of 78 Mexican universities andresearch centers interconnected by Mexico's backbone network, and linked to Internet2.7

The California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) ispartnering with CUDI, the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC), and theCenter for Scientific Investigation and Higher Education (El Centro de Investigacin Cientfica y deEducacin Superior de Ensenada, CICESE) to define a set of cross-border projects.8 Given the so-called

digital divide in Mexico, Latin America and throughout the world, collaborative efforts of this sort arecrucial. Unfortunately, as the pace of network advances continues to accelerate, the gap between thetechnologically favored regions and the rest of the world is, if anything, in danger of widening (Alvarezand Ibarra 2003) . Moreover, while profoundopportunities exists for creating new research environmentsbased upon cyberinfrastructure, the Blue Ribbon Panel noted above found that there are also real dangersof disappointing results and wasted investment for a variety of reasons including under funding in amountand duration, lack of understanding of technological futures, excessively redundant activities betweenscience fields or between science fields and industry, lack of appreciation of social/cultural barriers, lackof appropriate organizational structures, inadequate related educational activities, and increasedtechnological (not invented here) balkanizations rather than interoperability among multipledisciplines (NSF Blue Ribbon Advisory Panel on Cyberinfrastructure 2003). Evidence for every singleone of these points can be found limiting the prospects for building an integrated regional information

system in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, including in the San Diego-Tijuana city-region. This is apparentin efforts to promote watershed management.

In a recent report, titled:New Strategies for Americas Watersheds, the National ResearchCouncil identified a series of critical information gaps that hamper effective implementation ofwatershed management (National Research Council et al. 1999). These gaps are evident in the watershedmanagement initiatives along the U.S.-Mexico border; they include:

linkages among watershed components (rivers, wetlands, ground water, atmosphere, floodplains,upland areas);

integration across disciplines (especially biophysical and social sciences); feedback among processes operating at different spatial and temporal scales; inexpensive, useful indicators of watershed conditions and quantitative methods to evaluate land

use and watershed management practices;

advanced watershed simulation models (especially models that link natural and social attributes)that are useful to and can be operated by managers who are not scientific experts; andunderstanding of risk and uncertainty in the decision-making process.(National Research Councilet al. 1999)

In view of these gaps, the authors ofNew Strategies for Americas Watersheds make the case thatgood science is not enough. The accessibility and usefulness of watershed science is essential tosuccessful watershed management; but as is the case with much basic science dealing with environmentalproblemsresearch translation is difficult. Authors of the report emphasize how the institutional andscientific complexity of watershed management makes it very difficult to implement successfully:Watershed management without significant input of new scientific understanding, especiallyunderstanding of watershed processes and of the human dimensions, is doomed to inefficiency and

eventual loss of credibility; research without input from involved stakeholders and those with realmanagement acumen will always prove less than useful (National Research Council et al. 1999). Thisemphasis on involving stakeholders ties into the challenges of promoting environmental justice and socialequity in the borderlands.

Ethics, social equity and culture

The term ethics is generally defined as a set of moral principles or values (i.e., moralphilosophy that raises questions about how we define what is good and bad, and how we assign moral


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duty and obligation). Equity is generally understood in terms of fairness, impartiality, and justice. Ethicsis a discipline that can help us shape normative theories about equity in development. This is importantgiven how equity is one of the three Es of the sustainability challenge (equity, economy, andenvironment). In the U.S., federal and state laws now require that social equity considerations (includingenvironmental justice) be included in all regional planning programs. San DiegosRegionalComprehensive Plan, written by SANDAG, has a chapter dedicated to the issue of social equity.

SANDAG defines social equity, along with environmental justice, in terms defined by the State ofCalifornia:

Environmental Justice and Social Equity is defined as the fair treatment of people of all races,cultures, and incomes with respect to the development, adoption, implementation, andenforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies (SB 119 Statute of 1999).9

In Mexico the issue of social equity has made its way into how national security isconceptualized, and into concerns about the relationship of society and nature. In 2001, for instance,Adolfo Aguilar Zinser (Mexicos National Security Advisor, Office of the President of Mexico) expressedconcern that the lack of social equity in Mexico is leading to problems of national insecurity andvulnerability; and that prospects for improving social equity are undermined in so far as deterioration of

the environment creates tension between nature and the needs of the population (Aguilar Zinser 2001).The United Nations Human Settlement Program (UN-Habitat), and many other international,

national and regional programs have begun to explicitly consider the prospects of sustainability in urbancontexts. Cultural dimensions of urbanization and urban planning are often highlighted as essential tosuch efforts. This was certainly the case at the Second Session of the World Urban Forum on the themeCities: Crossroads of Cultures, Inclusiveness and Integration? convened UN-Habitat in Barcelona,Spain, September 13-17, 2004. I was fortunate to be able to attend this Forum. It was held during theUniversal Forum of Cultures, an international event to celebrate cultural diversity, sustainabledevelopment and a culture of peace.10 The UN-Habitat Programme released its annual report, The Stateof the Worlds Cities 2004/2005: Globalization and Urban Culture, at the World Urban Forum. JohnFriedmann helped prepare a section of the report that examines Globalization and the changing cultureof planning. Friedmanns contribution lays out principles of an emerging planning culture that fits well

with the integrative tasks of critical regional ecology. The case of Los Laureles Canyon, Tijuana,provides a useful point of reference for the ethical and cultural challenges of critical regional ecology incrossborder settings.

Los Laureles Canyon , Tijuana

The case of Los Laureles Canyon, Tijuana, illustrates how problems of poverty andenvironmental systems intersect. Los Laureles Canyon is a small 4.6 square mile sub-watershed of theTijuana River Watershed, located along the U.S.-Mexico border. Oscar Romo and Ken Ghalambor of theTijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve (TRNERR) are leading an environmental restorationinitiative in Los Laureles Canyon on the Mexican side of the US-Mexico border. The TRNERR wasestablished in 1982; it is a multi-agency management authority in the US consisting of federal, state,county, city, and local agencies and organizations with a common interest in protecting the Tijuana River

Estuary a small 1,017 ha wetland of international significance. The Tijuana River Estuary is an intertidalcoastal estuary in southernmost part of the San Diego metropolitan area (in Imperial Beach) on theinternational border. Two-thirds of the Tijuana Rivers 1,735 square mile watershed lies in Mexico. TheTijuana River flows through the Tijuana River Estuary to the ocean.

Los Laureles Canyon is one of five canyons that drain directly into the Tijuana River Estuaryaninternationally-recognized wetlands (recently designated as a Ramsar site)11 which provides habitat forendangered and threatened bird, fish, and plant species. The Tijuana River Estuary is a sensitiveecosystem that is being degraded by sediment, trash, and pollution flows that cross the border from Los


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Laureles Canyon into the US during the rainy season. The rapidly growing urban population in the LosLaureles Canyon (estimated to be about 54,000 people) is also causing impacts south of the border inTijuana. Irregular human settlement (low-income informal housing known as colonias or squattersettlements) is taking place on the canyons steep and unstable hillsides. Deforestation is a problem. Withless and less groundcover, mudslides and flash floods are increasingly devastating thereby promptingTijuanas local government to begin canalizing the canyons wash. Roadways in the canyon are being

extended to increase access for emergency vehicles. All of this has exacerbated the negative impacts onthe Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve (TRNERR), especially Border Field State Parkwhere the roads are periodically covered with sediment and trash. Clearly the solution to this crossborderproblem is going to require close collaboration between Mexico and US counterparts.

In the past, a lot of money has been spent on downstream solutions on the US side (i.e.,sediment capture technologies). This reactive approach has proven expensive (it is costly to remove thecaptured sediment). U.S. and Mexican agencies and non-profit organizations have begun to collaborateon finding more proactive solutions. Oscar Romo has been spearheading this effort through the NationalOceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Coastal Training Program, based at the TRNERR.

The Coastal Training Program (CTP) provides scientific information and skill-buildingopportunities to coastal-decision makers who are responsible for coastal management. Programs areoffered in a variety of formats including seminars, hands-on skill training, participatory workshops,

lectures, and technology demonstrations. The CTP has mobilized a crossborder campaign to address theproblems facing Los Laureles Canyon and the Tijuana River Estuary. Through partnerships with theUniversity of California, San Diegos (UCSDs) Regional Workbench Consortium (RWBC), theCalifornia State Coastal Conservancy (CSCC), the International Community Foundation (ICF), theMunicipal Planning Agency of Tijuana (IMPLAN), and other agencies in Mexico, the CTP has puttogether a community based slope stabilization and erosion control project located within Los LaurelesCanyon. Aims of this project include:

Stabilizing the slopes in Los Laureles Canyon with vegetative and structural means to preventerosion within the canyon and the flow of sedimentation into the estuary. Building the capacity of the residents of Los Laureles Canyon to create a safer and healthierenvironment, through means such as monitoring erosion, stabilizing slopes, and improving

housing conditions while using existing and affordable resources. Managing solid waste and wastewater. Create a system to water the vegetative slopestabilization by using wastewater. Developing strategies to improve the existing conditions of settlements in vulnerable areas thrualternative, innovative, and comprehensive solutions. Pursuing financial and other support from public agencies (including agencies of the state andfederal government), community service groups, educational institutions, businesses andindividuals for the support of the projects (Regional Workbench Consortium 2005: Los LaurelesCanyon Project)

The CTP is a good example of a program that uses environmental education and innovativeprojects to promote community-based ecological ethics (i.e., an understanding and appreciation of how

ecosystem integrity is essential to the well being of all living creatures, neighborhoods, cities and theshared crossborder region). Culture change is as significant a part of this process as is politics, economics,engineering, science and technology. The San Diego-based International Community Foundation hasprovided significant funding support for this effort. Crossborder partnerships are considered essential.Oscar Romo and staff at the TRNERR and CTP work with Mexican NGOs (e.g., Gaviotas and ProyectoFronterizo de Educacin Ambiental) to improve water quality monitoring and educational programs. In2003, the TRNERR management authority expanded its membership to include the municipalities ofTijuana and Tecate. It is still early in the process to suggest whether or not the Los Laureles Canyonproject will succeed as an innovative new approach to watershed management. But the case does


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highlight new strategies that go beyond techno-fixes devised as stand alone solutions divorced from thedynamics driving urban and regional development.

Conclusion

The Los Laureles Canyon case offers a prism through which to briefly recap critical regional

ecologys contributions to crossborder regionalism and sustainability. In terms of the newregionalism/institutionalism, the Los Laureles case clearly demonstrates the problems presented by scaleand the fact that local development is always embedded in larger regional and global dynamics. Untilthere is more affordable housing available in Tijuana for low-income workers, it will be very difficult tostop the rapid, unsustainable development of irregular settlements (informal and precarious housingproduction) taking place in the canyon and throughout many other parts of Tijuana. Indeed this is a majorproblem worldwide (Davis 2004).12 Ultimately, there needs to be new regional and national approaches tourban-economic development and housing problems. This is a statement of the obvious. What the newregionalist/institutionalist discourse suggests are ways to go about making this happen.

Binational institutional coordination on a watershed scale, living wages, corporate accountability,and regional governance are essential to improving both social equity and environmental stewardship inthe border region. This is easier said than done. One major problem/constraint with the new regionalistdiscourse stems from its neoliberal bias in favor of export led industrialization and strategies that seek tomake city-regions more competitive in the global economy. The neoliberal development paradigm leavesvery little room for endogenous (including bioregional) approaches to development, as noted byFriedmann in this book. This limits the options on the table. Social experiments in places like LosLaureles canyon are thus all the more important. The Los Laureles initiative led by Oscar Romo andothers, with its emphasis on creating greener, more sustainable approaches to community-baseddevelopment (emphasizing fundamentals like recycling, landscape ecology, and appropriate technology)offer platforms to try more endogenous approaches to improving quality of life and place.

Now, for the sake of argument, lets assume the political will is in place to implement a newregionalist agenda with a serious commitment to social equity and environmental sustainability. This stillleaves the challenge of producing the knowledge that can guide the process. This is where sustainabilityscience comes into play. In the case of the Los Laureles Canyon, the importance of the watershed as ahydrological unit of analysis has been made very clear. As noted above, the Coastal Training Programbased out of the Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve (TRNERR)has mobilized acrossborder campaign to address the problems facing Los Laureles Canyon and the Tijuana RiverEstuary. As one of the projects within the Regional Workbench Consortium (RWBC), Los LaurelesCanyon ties into a sustainability science network. One of the concrete benefits of this sustainabilityscience network has been in the form of planning and decision-support tools including solid terrainmodels of the Southern California and Northern Baja California border region. Moreover, plans areunderwayin partnership with the San Diego Baykeeperto apply toxicogenomics and biomoleculartechnologies to environmental monitoring, risk assessment and bioremediation in those areas that arecontaminated by toxicants. The aim, through university-based research translation and communityoutreach, is to apply the New Biology to environmental policy and planning. This work is funded bythe National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) through a Superfund Basic ResearchProgram at UC San Diego. This linkage of science to society is increasingly crucial as fiscal crisis straps

the state and universities are being held more accountable for their federal research dollars. Heightenedpressure for accountability can be problematic in some respects, but it does create a fertile field forgrowing what some scientists call Ivory Bridges (Sonnert and Holton 2002).

To take the argument a little further, assume that the political will is in place, and that usefulknowledge is being produced. This brings us to the challenge of knowledge integration and knowledgenetworking including the need for cybertools and cyberinfrastructure addressed above. Unfortunately,while there is plenty of innovation taking place in informational systems geared to marketing and trackingsuch things as credit card usage, global control capability among distributed corporate enterprises, and a


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multitude of other profit-driven applications, the status of cybertools and cyberinfrastructure forintegrated regionalism is in a primitive state. Part of the problem lies in the fact that it is very difficult toraise funds or create a line item in budgets for knowledge management that involves multiple sectors,jurisdictions and academic disciplines especially when the problems involve environmental externalitiesand what can be characterized as the tragedy of the commons. Other impediments to developing robustregional information systems include the balkanization of research efforts, the wide ranging diversity of

knowledge ecologies, lack of data collection/sharing protocols, among other obstacles. A number ofcrucial efforts are underway to deal with this situation for instance the San Diego-Tijuana Atlas projectreferred to above. The establishment of the Regional Workbench Consortium in 1999with labs led byRichard Marciano and Ilya Zaslavsky at the San Diego Supercomputer Center in the leadis anotherimportant development.13 These initiatives should prove useful for situating the Los Laurales Canyonproject in its larger context while disseminating information about the case in ways that empowercommunity-based participation and the co-production of scientific and technical solutions.

Finally, critical regional ecology would be incomplete if it only drew attention to newregionalism/institutionalism, sustainability science and the informational sciences. Ethics and culture areequally important factors perhaps the most important in some respects. The Los Lauales Canyon casebrings the unsustainability of uneven development into clear viewnot just locally, but also in a largerUS-Mexico borderlands and global context. There is nothing terribly new about this situation, except

perhaps its magnitude. Lewis Mumford (1972), a well noted social critic, philosopher of culture andtechnics, and historian of cities, has drawn attention to this pattern of creative destruction going back tothe earliest urban civilizations (Mumford 1961; Mumford 1972; Mumford 1997a; Mumford 1997b;Mumford 2000). Mumford (1972) blames what he characterized as the urban displacement of nature:

(T)he displacement of nature in the city rested, in part, upon an illusion--or, indeed, a series ofillusions--as to the nature of man and his institutions: the illusions of self-sufficiency andindependence and the possibility of physical continuity without conscious renewal. Under theprotective mantle of the city, seemingly so permanent, these illusions encouraged habits ofpredation or parasitism that eventually undermined the whole social and economic structure, afterhaving worked ruin in the surrounding landscape and even in far-distant regions (p. 144).14

Efforts to promote sustainable urban development through (1) local initiatives like the Los

Laurales Canyon project, (2) binational policy initiatives like the US-Mexico Border 2012 Program, and(3) global convocations like that led by the UN-Habitat Programme through its World Urban Forums, areattempts to rectify the kind of gross ecological ignorance that Mumford laments.15 In this context, ethicsdraws attention to social equity while cultural theory can helps us think through barriers and bridges tofostering progressive vision. Aldo Leopolds land ethic, for instance, offers a meaningful view of human-nature relations. According to Leopold we are biotic citizens sharing habitat with a larger bioticcommunity and our land use planning should take that into account: "A thing is right when it tends topreserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise"(Leopold 1987). This sentiment on its own may be meaningless to people if they are malnourished, poorlyhoused and lacking access to even the most rudimentary urban services and amenities. But if the landethic, or ecological ethic, was to take root in the culture of organizations, markets and institutions then thebasis of how we measure value may shift (Light and Rolston 2003). What doesnt get measured often

does not get valued in a market system, and this is typically the case with many of the ecosystem servicesprovided to us by stocks of natural capital (e.g., soil formation, waste assimilation by wetlands,pollination, renewable raw materials).

In the consumer culture of global capitalism, it is generally not known how much environmentalquality is being given up in the name of development, nor how much development is being given up inthe name of environmental protection (World Bank 1992) . In an attempt to clarify such trade offs at thenational level, the World Bank did a pilot study in Mexico in the early-1990s to illustrate the potentialmagnitude of the adjustments required. The findings suggested that: "When an adjustment was made forthe depletion of oil, forests, and groundwater, Mexico's net national product was almost 7 percent lower.


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A further adjustment for the costs of avoiding environmental degradation, particularly air and waterpollution and soil erosion, brought the national product down another 7 percent" (World Bank 1992).16The figures cited by the World Bank draw attention to the real and potential problems stemming fromcounting the depletion of geological capital and ecological life-support systems as net current income.This begs the question: is sustainable capitalism possible? Maybe, maybe not. Meanwhile, the least wecan do is encourage social experimentation. Critical regional ecology draws attention to some promising

frontiers for exploration along these lines.

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http://www.epa.gov/region09/border/feature.html (accessed March 31, 2005).UN-Habitat. 2001. Cities in a globalizing world: global report on human settlements 2001. London:

Earthscan Publications Ltd.Wheeler, Stephen. 2002. " The new regionalism: Key characteristics of an emerging movement."Journal

of the American Planning Association 68(3):267-278.World Bank. 1992. World Development Report 1992: Development and the Environment. New York:

Oxford University Press.Wright, Richard. 2005. "Tijuana River Watershed Atlas http://www-

rohan.sdsu.edu/dept/press/institute.html (accessed March 10, 2005)."Young, Oran R. 2002. The institutional dimensions of environmental change: fit, interplay, and scale.

Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

1 These themes are developed more fully in a book I am writing titled, Progressive Imagination: Grandchallenges in globalism and planning for sustainable city-regions2 The Social Equity Forum is an initiative led by the Inter-American Development Bank. The Forum wasestablished to enable government leaders, policy-makers, academics, and social, labor, and businessleaders to increase social equity through economic and social reforms. Members of the Social EquityForum outlined six priority areas of institutional development: handling social rights with fiscal

responsibility; creating institutional spaces for coordinating comprehensive policies for reducing povertyamong the various sectoral agents responsible for implementing social policy; guaranteeing institutionalcontinuity of resources, actors and programs; fomenting access to reliable statistical information including objective systems for evaluating and monitoring social action and its impact; encouragingleadership aimed at strengthening institutions; and promoting participation by social actors to favor thesustainability of effective social policies.3 The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent federal agency with the mandate "to promotethe progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; to secure the nationaldefense" http://www.nsf.gov/about/. The NSF funds approximately 20 percent of all federallysupported basic research conducted by colleges and universities in the U.S. It is the major federal sourceof funding for many fields including computer science and the social sciences. Hence trends within thisagency set the tone for broader shifts taking place in relationships of science to society.4

http://web.si.umich.edu/news/news-detail.cfm?NewsItemID=2955 A whole new set of concepts, as well as sub-disciplines, are emerging out of this thrust (e.g., knowledgenetworking, digital government, federation of distributed intelligence, cybertrust, cybersecurity,networked infomechanical systems, e-science communities, grid communities, infocartography,biological and environmental informatics).6http://international.internet2.edu/index.cfm7 http://www.cudi.edu.mx/index.html


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8 Topics currently getting attention include intelligent buildings, applied physics, geophysics andinformation technology, oceanography and remote sensing, computer science, Internet2 development inMexico, MEMS development, telecom research and development, and sensor networks.9 California Senate Bill 115 (Solis, Chapter 690, Statutes of 1999) is also known as the CaliforniaEnvironmental Justice Act. As noted by authors of a legislative history of SB 115, the California

Environmental Justice Act requires the Office of Planning and Research, in consultation with Stateagencies, local agencies, and affected communities, to develop a State interagency environmental justicestrategy that addresses any disproportionately high and adverse human and health or environmentaleffects of programs, policies, and activities on minority populations and low-income populations. Inaddition, the act requires each State agency to make the achievement of environmental justice part of itsmission by identifying and addressing disproportionately high and adverse human health orenvironmental effects of its programs, policies, and activities on minority populations and low-incomepopulations in California. http://www.ciwmb.ca.gov/Tires/FiveYearPlan/LegHistory.htm(accessedMarch 31, 2005)10 A total of 4,400 delegates, representing national governments, local authorities, nongovernmentalorganizations and a range of Habitat Agenda partners, participated in the plenary sessions, 9 dialoguesessions, and over 100 networking events. At the opening ceremony, world leaders and mayors warned

that rapid urbanization was one of the greatest challenges facing humanity in the new millennium. Manyspeakers at the opening plenary called for more backing for local authorities from the United Nationssystem and governments. http://www.unhabitat.org/wuf/2004/documents/wuf_exec_summary.pdf11 Ramsar is city in Iran along the Caspian Sea where a global Convention on Wetlands was signed in1971. The Rasmar Convention (an intergovernmental treaty which provides the framework for nationalaction and international cooperation for the conservation and wise use of wetlands and their resources)calls for the conservation and wise use of all wetlands through local, regional and national actions andinternational cooperation, as a contribution towards achieving sustainable development throughout theworld" (Ramsar COP8, 2002). There are presently 144 Contracting Parties to the Convention, with 1422wetland sites, totaling 123.9 million hectares designated as wetlands of international significance.12 See Planet of Slums by Mike Davis13 The RWBC is a collaborative network of university and community partners dedicated to enabling

sustainable city-region development. The RWBC promotes multidisciplinary research and servicelearning aimed at understanding how problems of environment and development interrelate across local,regional and global scales. Taking a forward-looking perspective, the RWBC focuses on the SouthernCalifornia-Northern Baja California transborder region - especially the San Diego-Tijuana city-region andcoastal zone. http://regionalworkbench.org/index.php14 Mumford's sweeping indictment is an elegant oversimplification that continues to find support in theliterature. For instance, Ponting (1993: 434) argues that "the story is repeated throughout human historyand all over the globe, from Sumeria to ancient Egypt to pre-Columbian North America to tiny EasterIsland: Human beings prosper by exploiting the earth's resources until those resources can no longersustain the society's population, which leads to the decline and eventual collapse of that society." Despitethe appeal of this line of argument, it is not at all certain that endogenous environmental changes due tohuman impact (such as aquifer depletion, soil salination and erosion) are the main causal factor or driving

force in the collapse of past societies. In addition to the factor just mentioned, Richerson (1993) offersthree other plausible hypotheses: "(1) exogenous environmental shocks or changes such as a series of dryyears, long term climate deterioration, or the introduction of new diseases; (2) exogenous political oreconomic changes, such as the rise of pastoral nomad confederations or the shifting of critical tradesystems; and (3) endogenous political or economic changes, such as a stress on ideological and politicallegitimacy when elite manipulation of the economy fails to keep up with population growth, or when thelimits to imperial conquest lead to an inability to reward the military establishment" (p. 127). JaredDiamond (2005) recent book titled, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeedoffers a morecurrent overview of this issue.


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15 The U.S.-Mexico Border 2012 Program is a binational collaborative effort whose mission is to protectthe environment and public health in the U.S.-Mexico border region (100 kilometers either side of theU.S.-Mexico border) consistent with the principles of sustainable development. (For more information onthe Border 2012 Program please visit our Web site at: http://www.epa.gov/usmexicoborder).16 The report failed to mention the specific time period covered by the pilot study.

keith pezzoli cross-border regionalism

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