Environmental Governance in the Great Lakes: Evaluating Institutional Performance and Collaborative Outcomes

Abstract

"The Great Lakes are an invaluable natural resource, containing more than one fifth of the world’s surface fresh water by volume and providing drinking water, commerce, and recreation opportunities to millions. They also offer the ultimate laboratory for analyzing collaborative governance of water resources. A combination of land use changes, industrialization, and climate change have led to the emergence of a myriad of environmental issues facing Great Lakes communities. Harmful algal blooms, plastic marine debris, and aquatic invasive species are but a few examples of emerging dilemmas. This study employs the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework to examine the external factors, internal structures, and policy decisions of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement (GLWQA) and the impacts these variables have on environmental outcomes. The IAD framework is applied specifically to Annex I the GLWQA and used to examine three variables that impact program outcomes: the biophysical environment, culture, and institutional rules. Data was acquired via participant observation and government documents produced by the International Joint Commission, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Environment and Climate Change Canada, state and local government agencies, nonprofit organization, and scholarly articles published on the subject. Results indicate that the biophysical characteristics of the resource, communities of people that rely on the Great Lakes, and institutional rules established by the GLWQA all contribute to the policy’s implementation and resulting outcomes."