Freshwater Ecosystems and Human Populations: Great Lakes Case Study

The Great Lakes of North America were brought to the brink of ecological disaster and are now being returned to a healthier condition. This paper reviews the relationship of human populations to the Lakes’ ecosystem in broad terms and offers advice on go-forward strategies. The interaction of three major forces led to the Lakes’ decline: altering flow regimes by conversion of the landscape, biological pollution, and chemical pollution. Great progress has been made in restoring chemical integrity to the waters of the basin ecosystem, and modest progress has been made in managing the consequences of biological pollution. In the future, work within the basin must expand to include flow restoration strategies. Beyond work within the basin, new foreign policy instruments must manage the global problems of air and biological pollution. INTRODUCTION This is a personal account. I have spent the last twenty years learning about the Laurentian Great Lakes, the world’s largest freshwater ecosystem, identifying impairments and restoration opportunities, and aligning ideas, people, and resources to improve its ecological health. The opinions that follow are mine alone. They are not those of the Great Lakes Protection Fund, the Fund’s directors, owners or staff, or any other organization. This paper uses a case study approach. A brief history of the interaction of human populations and the basin ecosystem is presented. In the pages that follow, I begin to unpack the case by summarizing the state of the Great Lakes ecosystem, through the lenses of physical, biological and chemical integrity. I briefly describe the key threats to the integrity of the ecosystem. I attempt to link those threats to sources related to various human populations. Finally, I suggest ways in which our collective conduct might be changed to avoid continued injury and better take advantage of the ecological restoration opportunities we now have. By necessity, this paper focuses on key interactions, key systems, key stresses and key opportunities. In the space available, a comprehensive treatment is impossible, and I have not attempted it. I have also chosen to be provocative, and have written this as means of beginning a new conversation on how we can effectively govern our behavior – both within and outside of government – in a recovering freshwater ecosystem. THE CASE – THE GREAT LAKES ECOSYSTEM In search of a water route to Asia, Europeans came to the Great Lakes in the 16th century. Instead of the fabled Northwest Passage, they found beaver and began a robust fur trade. Forts were established on key water bodies to protect trade routes. Soon, the forts became towns and as the fur bearing animals became harder to find, the towns became more important than the trade they were established to protect. Over the next three hundred years, the Europeans and their North American descendents wrested control of the land from the native people they had The scale of the Great Lakes basin is difficult to comprehend, even for those who live and work in the basin. The five Great Lakes – Superior, Huron, Michigan, Erie and Ontario – themselves contain over 5,500 cubic miles of fresh water. This is 18% of the world’s available supply. The drainage basin includes parts of eight U.S. states and two Canadian provinces.