Living on the Edge: How we converted challenges into profitable opportunities

Abstract

In 2063, the Great Lakes–St. Lawrence River basin is Living on the Edge of system resilience, characterized by poor governance yet good environmental/economic balance. The Great Lakes region benefits from and depends upon human choices and natural forces outside the region pushing and pulling it toward that balance. Choices within the basin are insufficient to maintain system resilience, and there is minimal government involvement in Great Lakes governance. The Great Lakes region perseveres like a pampered but powerless slave, contributing value but lacking liberty. The predominant drivers of change that have brought the basin to this perpetual knife's-edge existence of dependency are the global economy, societal values, and technological innovation. Climate change, energy, and demographics in turn drive those drivers on a global scale, but the region itself has evaded the most extreme climate-change impacts, which proved highly variable through space and time. Global changes in energy demand resulted in the most massive investment in green energy technology in planetary history, dramatically shifting the global demand for wind, solar, wave, and nuclear power. Coupled with aggressive pro-business North American policies and endemic private-sector intellectual capital, the Great Lakes region reemerged as an economic engine to serve the demand. This shift occurred despite the death of cooperative federalism and after decades of ideological politics gutted science-based, citizen-participatory regulatory structures. Governance at local scales remains highly variable, so the Great Lakes region rides on the coattails of past policies. This scenario represents one of four described in the Great Lakes Futures Project.