Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement Team
What we're working on
The Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement (GLWQA) requires the governments to periodically review “the operation and effectiveness” of the Agreement and possibly make changes in the Agreement and its implementation.
The federal governments are starting a review of the 2012 GLWQA aiming to see whether changes should be made in the GLWQA or in the implementation of the Agreement. GLEN has submitted two letters in July, 2024: one on the process for the review, another on issues to be reviewed. GLEN submitted a follow up letter in December, 2024.
This is our opportunity to engage in that review and rally people across the basin to strengthen the Agreement. The GLWQA Team will be working for the next several months to transform the Agreement into a situation where all decisions are based on embracing precautionary and preventative strategies, regeneration and resilience, to have strong benchmarks, to add more effective accountability mechanisms, provide for meaningful public involvement, and incorporate environmental justice principles.
Join us as we detail the changes we want in the Agreement and in its implementation mechanisms.
GLEN SUBMISSIONS TO GOVERNMENTS
Improving Physical Integrity & Watershed Security in GLWQA
The GLWQA calls upon the two federal governments to "restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the Great Lakes Ecosystem." From the physical integrity aspect of the Agreement, not enough attention has been paid to allowing the waters of the Great Lakes and their tributaries to retain their natural flows that should be neither diminished nor disrupted by poor development and stewardship practices. We also have failed to adequately focus on watershed security from their sources to the Great Lakes. Thirty-Seven organizations led by the Ontario Headwaters Institute and the Great Lakes Ecoregion Network have offered recommendations in the following document to the Great Lakes Executive Committee on how to better implement physical integrity and watershed security under the Agreement.
Draft Priorities for Actions and Science for the next three years: 2026-2028
Great Lakes Public Forum in Chicago on February 4 & 5, 2026
The first submission was GLEN's cover letter to the governments on their 2025 Progress Report of the Parties and State of the Great Lakes 2025 Report
The second submission was given to the International Joint Commission with some proposals for their approach to their Triennial Assessment of Progress Report, which they are currently writing
The case for a stronger, more accountable Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement
Over the past fifty years, the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement (GLWQA) between the federal governments of Canada and the United States has played an important role in setting the agenda for Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River protection. Its purpose is to provide a framework for cooperation across the border on issues like areas of concern, lakewide management, chemicals of mutual concern, nutrients, aquatic invasive species, habitat and species, groundwater, climate change impacts, and science.
The GLWQA commits the governments to follow essential guiding principles such as prevention and precaution. zero discharge, precautionary approach, anti-degradation, polluters pay, public engagement, and science-based management. To read the Agreement go to https://binational.net/agreement/.
Many activists from community organizations, regional and national groups and transboundary organizations have worked for 50 years or more to strengthen the Agreement and its implementation. GLEN’s GLWQA Team continues that work at the transboundary, ecoregion-wide level.
Unfortunately, governments have often failed the Great Lakes and their inhabitants. They have taken an incremental approach towards addressing complex environmental problems. But incrementalism has failed to protect the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence ecoregion. We are working to lead us from incrementalism to innovative approaches that lead us down a new path.
To see GLEN’s assessment of progress under the GLWQA – accomplishments, limitations and disappointments, and our assessment of aspirations and opportunities – see The Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement at Fifty. For a summary of the document see Highlights.