CURRENTS
Environmental Policy From The Bottom Up
By Professor Wayne H. Bell
The Chesapeake Bay Program (CBP) is arguably the world’s
most comprehensive environmental policy endeavor. Initiated
with the signing of the Chesapeake Bay Agreement in 1983, Maryland,
Virginia, Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia pledged
to collaborate with the federal government to protect, conserve
and restore the Bay. The CBP has been touted as a policy model
for the restoration of degraded coastal systems around the world.
Two recent books have taken the CBP to task for a lack of demonstrated
success. One is Turning the Tide by environmental writer Tom
Horton. The second is Chesapeake Bay Blues by Howard Ernst,
a professor at the U.S. Naval Academy. Each concludes with recommendations
to strengthen federal and state environmental regulations. Yet
how will increased governmental regulation, a “top-down”
approach to environmental policy, succeed where it has apparently
failed in the past?
The Rural Communities Leadership (RCL) program at Washington
College is developing insights that can be applied to these
questions. In its pilot year, RCL (funded by the W.K. Kellogg
Foundation) developed a network of 200 individuals across Delmarva
united by a concern for uncontrolled growth, loss of farmland
and eroding profitability of agriculture, forestry and fisheries,
and general loss of community sense of place. RCL was also the
context for a new course, Sustainable Community Development,
that is now in its second iteration. It provided the grist of
research for three senior thesis projects. RCL’s findings
have been presented publicly at a Grassroots Forum and subjected
to peer review at conferences in Japan, Sweden and Thailand.
RCL’s findings can be summarized in four themes: working
landscapes, bioregionalism, visioning and leadership. A working
landscape is one that is used. In the case of agriculture, it
means that preservation of farmland must go hand-in-hand with
preservation of farming. Environmental regulations that take
farmland out of production or render farming even less profitable
will not sustain the rural communities on Delmarva. Bioregionalism
stresses the importance of community and its place as part of
a larger regional ecosystem that transcends the political boundaries
of town, county or state. A watershed may be regarded as a bioregion;
so might much of the Delmarva Peninsula itself. Combined with
a working landscape, bioregionalism treats people as an integral
part of the ecosystem rather than as unnatural intruders.
Visioning has to do with how we want our community
to look in 20 years. If agriculture, forestry and/or fisheries
are important to that vision, can the community plan to support
those economies through new opportunities? These considerations
go beyond traditional comprehensive planning and, optimally,
should precede it. We need to provide local leadership
with the knowledge that they can make a difference in their
community’s future.
RCL’s findings are important to the rural communities
of Delmarva independently of the Chesapeake Bay Program. Still,
they address important environmental policy issues. The latest
revision of the Chesapeake Bay Agreement provides for preservation
of 20% of the Bay watershed and reduction of urban sprawl. This
might be accomplished through stronger, top-down laws and enforcement.
But RCL has found that such an approach is not sustainable without
bottom-up participation. Communities that adopt a vision to
preserve their working landscape and see themselves as an integral
part of a Chesapeake Bay bioregion may adopt comprehensive plans
that help realize the goals of the Chesapeake Bay Program. Examples
include clustering well-planned development in revitalized towns,
upgrading waste treatment facilities that will serve the future
community, development that incorporates green infrastructure
and reduces the extent of impervious surfaces, and access to
markets that support diverse agricultural enterprises from grains
and chickens to vegetables and crops for niche markets. Is this
a pipe dream? RCL has identified many examples across the U.S.
where local communities have used a larger vision to guide planning
for a more sustainable future. The United Nations has now realized
that grassroots education is key to the long-term success of
programs to protect and restore threatened coastal ecosystems.
Sustainability of environmental policy needs top-down context
but bottom-up implementation.
The books authored by Horton and Ernst may define a sea change
in environmental policy. As Congressman Gilchrest said at the
Grassroots 2 Public Forum that concluded the RCL pilot year,
“You are alone.” Federal and state governments are
concerned with the broader perspective; communities are where
that perspective becomes reality. This bottom-up approach to
environmental policy is not exclusive, but it is new.
Through RCL, the Washington College community of undergraduate
and continuing education students can learn how they might very
well make a difference.
Dr. Wayne Bell, Director of the Center
for the Environment and Society, conducted the RCL
project with Dr. Philip Favero, who was on sabbatical leave
from the Institute for Governmental Service at the University
of Maryland.
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