Problem/Responses

Problem

The territory of many land use, natural resource, and environmental issues—such as climate change, land use, water use and allocation, and landscape conservation—transcends the legal and geographic reach of existing jurisdictions and institutions.

The people affected by such issues have interdependent interests—none of them has sufficient power or authority to address the issues on their own.

Given that no single entity has the power or authority to address these types of trans-boundary issues, there is a gap in governance, and thus a need to create ways to work across boundaries.

Responses

Practical experience reveals that there is a continuum of responses to bridge the gap in governance created by trans-boundary issues.

The following chart illustrates that regional efforts take many forms—from informal networks, to more formal partnerships, to regional institutions.

These responses are presented as a continuum because the differences among the various approaches are often subtle, and the attributes of one approach often overlap with the next. This continuum also suggests that regional efforts follow a somewhat natural progression from informal to more formal responses as a constituency for regional thinking and action grows.