Many of the attempts to develop environmental accounts have adopted a regional
scale approach, using watersheds, river basins, islands, coastal zones and similar.
Bioregional units can offer discrete and stable biogeophysical units which also
include a good deal of human activity, and which make sense in other ways (Sale,
1985; Stolton and Dudley, 1999: 41–9). Such units also support an integrated
approach to study, planning and goal identification, monitoring, and management
and allow a focus on local issues. There are presently signs that regional
environmental management systems, integrated regional environmental
management, integrated river basin development and management and similar strategies which address territory and function are attracting renewed attention; for
example in the Lower Mekong Basin. A few years ago some developing countries
rejected these approaches because they seemed to be too authoritarian and dated –
hangovers from the USA Tennessee Valley Authority of the 1930s, which had given
mixed results.