Great Lakes Natural Resource Governance Symposium: The Good Governance Watershed

Abstract

The Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law's students have done a tremendous service to the region-and the nation, since the Great Lakes hold some 95 percent of the country's fresh surface water-by hosting its symposium on Great Lakes Natural Resource Governance.' In the day-to-day scramble to understand issues, make decisions, implement them, then test those decisions, we do not often get the chance to hit the pause button to ensure this entire system of decisionmaking is working as well as it should. The thinking supporting this symposium is a rare chance to do just that. In close to three decades of doing Great Lakes work, I have seen how it is all too easy to rely on reading a quick headline or focusing on a single issue to judge whether our system of decision-making is effective. But "good governance"-the process of making, implementing, and refining our decisions-is not just about a single issue or policy. It is about how tens of millions of people use the Great Lakes every year.