The environment, broadly construed, is increasingly a salient topic in regional science research. Theoretical and empirical inquiries by regional scientists have progressively begun to address the manifold environmental ramifications of regional science questions. As such, there now exists a sizeable literature on what we may call the environment in regional science. Given this state of affairs, the purpose of this article is to survey this extensive literature. To provide sufficient focus, we do this by discussing five key issues in the extant literature on the environment in regional science. These issues are: (i) regional economic development, (ii) environmental regulation, (iii) natural resources, (iv) international affairs, and (v) geographic information systems. Our survey is both retrospective and prospective in nature. We are interested not only in what has been accomplished thus far but also in where research on the environment in regional science is headed in the future. © Springer-Verlag Berlin/Heidelberg 2003.