Thoughts on Regional Federalism

As organizations like the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank increase their power through trade agreements and other multinational accords, communities and states are beginning to understand that the federal government is not going to protect them from those agreements. For instance, as Jeffrey Kaplan wrote in 2003,

In the case of GATT (the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs), a WTO member country can sue another member country on behalf of one of its corporations, on the grounds that a country's law has violated GATT trade rules. The case is heard by a secret tribunal appointed by the WTO. State and local officials are denied legal representation. If the tribunal finds that a law or regulation of a country -- or state or township -- is a "barrier to trade," the offending country must either rescind that law or pay the accusing country whatever amount the WTO decides the company had to forgo because of the barrier, a sum that can amount to billions of dollars. In short, practitioners of democracy at any level can be penalized for interfering with international profit-making.

This is fundamentally anti-democratic, anti-American, and facistic. If large corporations are ceded this kind of power, the local implications in Grand County could be drastic: could Yamaha or Suzuki force the U.S. government to relax BLM restrictions on the use of ATV's because it impedes their ability to maximize sales? Or could Exxon-Mobil sue to overturn environmental regulations on oil and gas drilling because those regulations were an "unfair" barrier to free trade?

Yet, as argued over at westerndemocrat, recent efforts to "localize" decisionmaking through a collaborative stakeholders-oriented approach can be another smokescreen for commercial interests, not local interests, which is why national environmental groups have been very leery of such a process:

...to what point and for what reasons [do] Western GOPers support cooperative efforts[?] I would argue that their support only goes so far as to use collaborative efforts as a battering ram against federal control of lands, not to supplement that control with local and regional control.

By removing the federal government from the scene, and not allowing any real control by local communities, governments and watershed groups to fill in the vacuum, the space would eventually be filled by commercial interests. Westerners still would not control their landscape, the control would have moved from Washington DC to New York City.

Regional federalism - the notion that the balance between local, regional, federal, and international governance is seriously out of balance - seeks to return power to as local of a level as is appropriate.