This summer I participated in a symposium "on recent pasts and possible futures for environmental activism" in Canada. One of the speakers outlined efforts by the David Suzuki Foundation's Blue Dot movement to enshrine the right to a healthy environment in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This is not a new idea. Environmental lawyer David R. Boyd has been pushing the case for years (see his two books with UBC Press, The Right To A Healthy Environment: Revitalizing Canada's Constitution, and The Environmental Rights Revolution: A Global Study of Constitutions, Human Rights, and the Environment). But the Blue Dot campaign, which began in 2014, takes the idea that all Canadians should have the right to drink clean water, breathe fresh air, and eat healthy food - a right recognized in well over 100 countries but not my own - to the streets in an effort to scale the Everest of constitutional change.

In essence, the Blue Dot campaign encourages individuals to join with others to press their communities to pass municipal declarations in support of claims for healthy environments. With growing numbers of communities calling for action, the reasoning goes, provincial and federal politicians will be moved to pass environmental bills of rights that will prepare the ground for a charter amendment. By mid-2017, 25000 campaign volunteers had enlisted over 100,000 supporters and almost 160 municipalities had declared their support. The campaign is building a web from the bottom up: concerned individuals enlist neighbors who come together to change a city, and cities will come together to change a nation.  

This strategy caught my attention - and got me thinking about ASEH. Our challenge is not to scale the heights of constitutional change but to buttress our foundations, by reaching out to those who cannot reach the high peak of our annual conference. As the costs of attending these meetings increases, reluctance to contribute to GHG emissions by flying long distances grows, and shrinking university budgets and research funds make it more difficult to defray the costs of participation, we might well hear more calls for alternate activities and fora. Perhaps we can anticipate that need, and build out our base of engagement with the field, by fostering local and regional environmental history webs in our communities. 

These might - probably should - take quite different forms: here informal gatherings of interested people (ASEH members and others) coming together occasionally for discussion; there a formal speaker series; elsewhere a weekend retreat or field trip. The possibilities are many. We already have several prototypes to emulate or adapt: the quite diverse NiCHE regional networks, and the  "summer schools" held immediately prior to the annual meeting of the Canadian Historical Association each year (http://niche-canada.org); the Boston Environmental History Seminar under the auspices of the Massachusetts Historical Society (https://www.masshist.org/calendar/seminars/environmental-history );  the activities of the Yale Environmental History Working Group, and its recurring regional conference (http://environmentalhistory.yale.edu/programs/conferences); and the annual retreat of the Cascadia Environmental History Collaborative (for more on which see Hayley Brazier, "Practicing in Place: The Environmental History Retreat," Environmental History Field Notes 1, 2016. The list goes on. I cannot offer an inventory. But I can see lots of room for exciting new endeavors likely to yield enormous personal, institutional, and disciplinary rewards. 

Yes, there is work involved, and money (in various amounts) too. But be not daunted. Working with colleagues, enriching the experiences of students, raising the profile of environmental history, and fostering excitement about (and a sense of the intellectual, environmental, and social value of) our scholarly exertions are precious rewards in their own right. Collaborations across departments, institutes, and institutions - to which our field lends itself - can help to loosen purse strings. I will work to establish a modest fund, beginning in 2018, to provide seed money for promising efforts along the lines hinted at here; I encourage you to share your ideas, and details of your plans, by submitting a 250-300- word piece to this newsletter and/or by joining a planned discussion of the topic during our meeting in Riverside.

In sum, I encourage all ASEH members to open discussions (with colleagues and others in their cities and localities) about the kinds of regional initiatives that could benefit their communities, defined as broadly as is appropriate. Bringing such proposals to fruition would do much to strengthen our field, and ultimately ASEH, by increasing awareness of what we are about and encouraging those who do not necessarily think of themselves as environmental historians to join us. As David Suzuki, the doyen of Canadian environmental campaigners and leading figure in the Blue Dot movement is fond of saying: "History shows that informed individuals who come together to build a groundswell of opinion and pressure are a powerful force for positive change."

Nancy Langston's fourth book, Sustaining Lake Superior: An Extraordinary Lake in a Changing World, has recently been published by Yale University Press. Lake Superior - the largest lake in the world - has had a remarkable history, including resource extraction and industrial exploitation that nearly caused collapse. But in the past 50 years, thanks to grassroots efforts, the lake experienced surprising recovery and rebirth. Nancy offers a rich portrait of the lake's environmental history, asking what lessons we can learn from its conservation history as we face new threats from climate change.

Michael Smith received a Fulbright Core Scholar research grant to Nicaragua for the fall 2017 semester for his project "Paths to Resilience: A Collaborative Environmental History of Sustainable Development in Totogalpa." See: https://visionesolares.wordpress.com/