Lake Superior Youth Symposium, May 16-19

Lake Superior Youth Symposium

The Lake Superior Youth Symposium is celebrating it's 10th Biennal this year, from May 16-19 at the Michigan Technological University in Houghton, Michigan. The Symposium aims to inform, inspire and motivate students and teachers to become stewards of Lake Superior and the Great Lakes. The goal of the symposium is to increase understanding of challenging environmental and scientific issues, enhance appreciation for Lake Superior’s beauty and history, promote personal involvement in creating solutions, and encourage participants to build upon their symposium experience in their schools and communities after the event.

At the symposium, students and teachers will attend presentations and field trips conducted by Michigan Technical University faculty and graduate students, natural resource professionals, artists, writers, historians, and educators. More than 50 different presentations and field trips are planned on a variety of topics, including fisheries and wildlife, water quality, forest ecology and management, geology, Great Lakes threats and uses, conservation, sustainability, writing, art, photography, and student initiatives.

If you are interested in learning more about the event or signing up to attend, please visit the Lake Superior Youth Symposium's website or find them on Facebook.

Protecting the Great Lakes

This article is cross-posted from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Online and is written by Maude Barlow. Maude Barlow is the national chairwoman of the Council of Canadians and chairs the board of Washington-based Food and Water Watch.

The Great Lakes are in serious trouble. Lake Huron and Lake Michigan are at their lowest levels since record keeping began in 1918, and the levels of Lakes Superior, Ontario and Erie are also well below average.

Lake levels in Milwaukee are creating uncertainty for residents who are unsure how lower levels will affect storm water runoff, the shipping and fishing industry and their livelihoods. The situation could be exacerbated by a proposal to transport water from Lake Michigan via pipeline to Waukesha residents, which requires approval under the Great Lakes compact.

Pollution, climate change, over-extraction and invasive species are all taking their toll on the watershed that provides life and livelihood to more than 40 million people and thousands of species that live around it. The Great Lakes are a source of increasing concern as residents watch their shorelines recede, their beaches close and their fisheries decline.

Adding to these concerns is a Wisconsin bill aimed at streamlining the mining permitting process, which was signed last month, reducing environmental standards for iron mining and threatening water sources.

The story of the global water crisis sets the stage all over the world: to feed the increasing demands of a consumer-based system. We have built our economic and development policies based on a human-centric model and assumed that nature would never fail to provide or that, where it does fail, technology will save the day.

What might happen if the citizens living around the Great Lakes, including in Milwaukee, decided to collectively protect them based on some of the very principles and practices that informed the first peoples of the region, namely that the Great Lakes must be shared equitably by all who live around them and protected for seven generations into the future? What if governments managed the lakes based on the human right to water, incorporated public input and prioritized public and indigenous rights over private interests?

These ideas form the basis of an emerging new vision for the Great Lakes, one that is based on the notion of the "Commons" and Public Trust Doctrine.

A group of legal experts from Canada and the United States have described a Commons approach as one which requires that "we envision water as a shared resource and so recognize our shared responsibility to carefully steward our water resources. The goal of a Commons approach to water is to ensure that there is sufficient water to meet human and ecological and community needs for many generations to come."

The Public Trust Doctrine holds that certain natural resources, including groundwater, belong to the community and cannot be privately owned or controlled. This means that governments, as trustees, are obliged to protect these resources for the common good and ensure that they are not appropriated for private gain.

Unless we shift the current "business as usual" model and create real sustainable jobs, the Great Lakes will remain in peril and we as a generation will have failed future generations in protecting the region's largest and most precious watershed. Protecting the future of the Great Lakes is in all of our hands. When communities come together with passion and purpose, they can change political priorities and shape a better future for these precious lakes.

Rochester Groups are Protecting the Great Lakes Forever

This article is cross-posted from the Council of Canadians' blog and is written by Emma Lui. The original post can be found here.

I just got home from an incredible event in Rochester, New York, the fourth Great Lakes tour stop. Maude Barlow, National Chairperson for the Council of Canadians, has been touring around the Great Lakes speaking out about threats to the Great Lakes and what we need to do to stop them once and for all. We began the Great Lakes tour last year where we visited eight cities and continued the tour this year with events already in Duluth, Milwaukee and Grand Rapids.

Wayne Howard, Linda Isaacson Fedele, Kate Kremer and Peter Debes of Rochester Sierra Club, Eric and Jim Olson from FLOW for water along with the support of Cool Rochester, Monroe Community College and Rochester Institute of Technology, did an incredible job organizing an thought-provoking and inspiring event.

On Thursday night Maude gave a riveting talk to a captivated audience of 300 about the serious threats plaguing the Great Lakes including fracking, pollution, low water levels and inequitable extraction. Recognizing the amazing work that groups have been doing to protect the lakes for decades, she outlined a needed shift in decision and policy making around the Great Lakes and outlined a framework on how to effectively address the threats to Great Lakes, so we’re not simply fighting one fight after another.

Maude put forward a vision of the Great Lakes that protects a community’s right to say ‘no’ to projects harmful to water sources, incorporates community input into decision making and prioritize communities’ rights to water over private interests. These ideas form the basis of the notion that the Great Lakes are a commons and public trust. The notion of the commons, a very old concept, states that certain resources - such and air and water - are shared resources which people within a community have the collective obligation to protect. The public trust doctrine outlines governments’ obligations to protect these shared resources for community use from private exploitation.

After Maude’s talk, she was joined by Jim Olson from FLOW, Roger Downs from Sierra Club Atlantic Chapter and David Klein from the Nature Conservancy for an engaging panel discussion and to answer the audience’s questions. Jim Olson, an expert in the public trust doctrine, stressed that private rights cannot subordinate public rights.

Rochester was an important community to host a tour stop because of the water issues they’re facing. There are plans to ship fresh water by train from the region for fracking projects in Pennsylvania. Mountain Glacier, a subsidary of Nestle, is bottling water from Lake Hemlock as well as the municipality’s water. Similar to what happened in Niagara Falls, there is talk about the possibility of Monroe County, which Rochester is a part of, treating fracking wastewater.

Communities in New York state are incredibly active in the fight to protect water sources, public health and the environment against fracking. With approximately 200 municipal resolutions, New York state has by far the most resolutions on fracking in the US. Community groups and fracking coalitions have been successful in keeping a moratorium on fracking in New York state where delays in a health study are stalling Governor Cuomo’s already delayed decision on whether to lift or continue the moratorium. There have been recent calls for the environmental impact assessment to be scrapped because of Ecology and Environment and other consultations links to the Independent Oil and Gas Association of New York.

Yesterday morning Maude and Jim outlined the principles of the commons and public trust respectively and set the context for the day-long workshop where 50 engaged participants applied them to local issues. I gave short presentation of examples of our work on the commons and public trust. An ongoing case with Nestle, of which we’re parties to, is an exciting opportunity for the public trust doctrine to be recognized by the Ontario Environmental Review Tribunal. I also talked about two municipal resolutions in Burnaby and Niagara-on-the-Lake that respectively recognize water as a commons and the Great Lakes are a shared commons and public trust.

I am heartened and inspired by the enthusiasm and openness of the people we met in Rochester to embrace the needed shift in the framework governing the Great Lakes, one that will rightfully prioritize the protection of the lakes above all else. With many governments failing to protect community watersheds, the commons and public trust principles are crucial to changing people’s relationships to water to one of responsibility and stewardship and holding our governments to account so they protect water sources for today’s and future generations. People within communities like Rochester are the catalysts for this change and it is them that I place my faith and hope that we will save the Great Lakes.

Maude Barlow Speaks in Milwaukee

This post is written by Alexa Bradley, Program Director at On The Commons.

Maude Barlow

At her recent talk [on April 16th] on the Great Lakes at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee Maude Barlow urged the several hundred people gathered not to wait for the politicians to protect our waters, but to get involved ourselves "armed with the belief that we have the right to care." The facts she shared about declining water quality and quantity in the Lakes and beyond were alarming. "We have lost connection to water, divorced ourselves from the ecological, spiritual and place based nature of water. We see it as something to be conquered, as a means to produce a certain type of lifestyle." She suggested we need to wake up to the "myth of abundance" that allows us to treat "water as a resource to promote profit rather than a precious gift of nature."

She asked us to consider, "what would happen if we governed the Great Lakes on the First Nations principles of the Seventh Generation" considering the impact of our decisions many generations forward. We would "protect the bio-region as a commons," she offered, "something that belongs to all of us, equitably shared and governed for the public good." She described a vision of the Great Lakes Commons governed as one body, with "strict accountability, basin wide consistent planning and laws, collectively managed." She included in her hopeful vision for the Great Lakes Commons, a recognition not only of the much greater role of local communities in water decisions but also the rights of other species and even the water itself to well being.

The most remarkable aspect of the evening was the energy at the end of her talk. Despite all the painful news she shared on the state of the Lakes, she had galvanized a sense of urgency and willingness to act. She reminded us that the future is not written but depends on what we do next.

Mississippi Water Walkers

Sharon Day has been walking every day since March 1st, through cold and snow, sometimes more than 30 miles each day. Day is an Ojibwe woman from Minnesota and one of five indigenous women currently walking the entire length of the Mississippi River--from the headwaters at Lake Itasca to the Gulf of Mexico. The Mississippi Water Walkers are carrying a copper pail of the river’s water all along their journey, planning to pour the clean water into the “dead zone” at the end of the river.

The Water Walkers hope to draw attention to the pollution in the river and educate people along the way about ways they can take action. They set off on March 1st and intend to be at the river’s delta by April 29th (and they’re on track to do so!). You can track their progress (via a GPS device attached to the pail of water) here. Join their Facebook group to get the latest updates, find ways to get involved, or join them on part of their journey!

I called Sharon back in March to get an update on the walk:

Erin Garnaas-Holmes: You are really booking it! Are you moving along faster than planned?

Sharon Day: We were three days ahead about a week ago, but now we’re about even. We still plan to arrive at the gulf around April 28th.

EG: How are your bodies holding up?

SD: Our bodies are doing okay, although we’re a little tired tonight. We have been staying at one of the Walker’s parents’ house and have been entertained by other hosts, which is very nice. The Dakota Memorial Society and the United Warrior Society out of Illinois have been very hospitable.

EG: So you’re keeping up through the cold and snow?

SD: We had anticipated 45 degree weather in Winona, MN, but it snowed there instead. And in Wabasha, and McGregor, and yesterday! There have been some pretty cool temperatures. So far so good, though, and no injuries. We’re just tired of boots. Even when it snows, it is still beautiful walking, looking at the big huge flakes. We feel very privileged.

EG: How are your spirits holding up in the cold?

SD: Good. Most of us didn’t know each other before this, so we’ve been talking about trust and support amongst each other. Lots of laughter, lots of teasing.

EG: Who has walked with you so far?

SD: All along the way people have joined in. On Saturday, three people who were with us for a week went home. On Sunday two more who were with us for four days went back to Duluth. It’s just been the five of us for the past two days. Our hosts from tonight will join us tomorrow. People who have walked with us before will walk with us again, through St. Louis, Oklahoma, Hannibal, Memphis... a woman from Minneapolis and another from the East Coast are flying into Memphis for last two weeks. Lots of people who were with us at the beginning want to fly down to New Orleans at the end. We’re hoping to have 100 walkers at the end.

EG: I know you are walking the Mississippi, but Water Walkers have walked the Great Lakes in the past. How are the journeys different? The same?

SD: I think some is the same. When we walked, last time, from Gulfport, MI, with water from Mississippi, to the Great Lakes, we walked a direct path north, which was very efficient and worked fine. This time, though, we’re hugging the river. It does feel different than bringing water to Lake Superior, where you can always hear the water. You don’t hear the Mississippi so much. Even today, we were far away from the river, and just saw lots of trash in the streams, and dead animals, farther away from the river. Maybe that’s why we’re all so tired. When we are walking right up near the river, though, it feels like we are moving with the river. Or the river is moving with us.

EG: What are you greatest hopes for the Walk?

SD: Our hope is that we will help people to reconnect with the river. Not the river as a mechanism for commerce or a mechanism for just travel or something that you use, but to reconnect with the river as this loving source of life. We want to get people to become aware that the river needs our help. We know that further south where the water is so full of chemicals and “dead zones,” that will be really hard to see. We want people to become aware that the river at the source is pure and clean--only through human intervention does she become what she is before she empties into the gulf. We hope people will pray for the water, tell the water that we love the water, be respectful, and ask her to please forgive us. We want to motivate people to be part of the solution.

The Great Lakes Commons Map

Great Lakes Commons Map

The Great Lakes Commons Map is an online, collaborative tool that tracks and maps stories relating to the Great Lakes and the growing efforts of many communities to take a commons approach in the way we relate to the Lakes. The map is a living tool that aims to build capacity for both individuals and organizations who are curious and committed to a Great Lakes Commons. As the map grows, it can become an important tool for public engagement, connecting more and more individuals and groups from across states, countries, First Nations and Native American nations.

The map was conceptualized by Paul Baines and during his bicycle tour of Lake Ontario in 2012. Many of the first “Reports” were from that trip, but now the map is expanding and has always belonged to a broader public. Text, photos, videos, and links are organized by category and location, so users are reading, seeing and hearing each other’s stories and tracking each other’s progress around the Lakes.

The ultimate goal of this map is to use the energy of the crowd (crowdsourcing) with the power of networked media to arouse our biosphere consciousness: a mind-shift that understands our interdependence with all of the earth's elements.

In the true spirit of the commons, reports and comments can be contributed by anyone and the map runs on an open-source software platform. “We are all connected to these lakes and regularly have something to offer this commons work: a story, an example, a website or video, a curiosity, a campaign, an observation, some data, a photo, or a request,” says Baines. Head over to the map now and tell your stories!

Maude Barlow Tours the Great Lakes

Council of Canadians chairperson Maude Barlow is currently taking part in a tour of seven cities to address the many challenges facing the Great Lakes. She is partnering with academics, community activists and water experts along the tour, many of whom are hosting workshops and other hands-on opportunities to learn and do more in defense of the Lakes. The tour provides an opportunity to highlight pressing issues in each of these communities.

Barlow is a renowned activist and author. She co-founded the Blue Planet Project and the International Forum on Globalization, and she is a leading member of Food & Water Watch and the World Future Council. She has been a champion of taking a commons approach to water resources throughout the world.

Learn more about Barlow’s tour here, and help us spread the word about this exciting opportunity to hear first hand from an internationally known leader on water issues!

Welcome to the Great Lakes Commons Blog

Welcome to the Great Lakes Commons Blog. This blog will track the progress of the Great Lakes Commons Initiative, which seeks to reorient water governance and ensure a healthy future for the water, the ecosystem, and communities surrounding the Great Lakes.

Ask almost anyone who lives in the Great Lakes region and they will tell you how connected they feel to these vast iconic bodies of water. And yet our Lakes are endangered – put at risk by human choices and narrow economic interests. The current governance of the Great Lakes reflects the dominant economic system, which is biased toward commercial and private interests at the expense of ecological and human well-being.

The Great Lakes Commons Initiative arose out of an understanding that fundamental change was needed if we want to create a sustaining future for our Great Lakes. We face an urgent choice—we can continue on the current path toward depletion and degradation, or we can make a dramatic change in our relationship to this living and life-giving ecosystem.

One way to achieve this goal is the establishment of a Great Lakes Charter, a new social contract guiding the ways that communities treat our shared resource. A collaboration amongst Indigenous communities, inner city groups, local community organizers, major academic and advocacy organizations, lawmakers and more in both Canada and the United States, this Charter can help develop a new shared cultural water ethic and use legal leverage to form policy.

This blog will provide updates on this Initiative and feature stories about individuals and groups working to ensure a healthy future for the Lakes. Check back often, subscribe to updates and find us on Facebook and Twitter!