The effects of interactions between nonlinear subprocesses on the stabilizability of plantwide systems via the concept of dissipative systems are studied. Conditions for which controlled variables of each interconnected subprocess can be driven to and maintained at their desired values are established through the application of interconnection decoupling techniques. The resulting decoupling feedback law encodes the interaction effects between subprocesses and determines the required information structure for achieving desired control performance using distributed control laws. The proposed constructive approach leads to new criteria for the selection of manipulated and controlled variables that guarantee plantwide stability. (c) 2013 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 59: 2795-2809, 2013