Priorities And Progress Under The Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement

Through the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, the governments of the United States & Canada have committed to restore & maintain the chemical, physical, & biological integrity of the waters of the Great Lakes Basin Ecosystem. To fulfill its mandate to evaluate Agreement progress and provide advice to governments, the International Joint Commission requires data & information. The Commission has identified, as one priority activity, the identification of indicators to evaluate Agreement progress. Consequently, it established an Indicators for Evaluation Task Force in 1993 which undertook to develop an appropriate framework & indicators which would facilitate the Commission's evaluation of Agreement progress. This report begins with background on the Agreement, the Task Force, the Commission's approach to evaluation, and the Task Force's investigations. Chapter 2 describes the concept of indicators. Chapter 3 presents indicator organizing principles and an ecosystem-based methodology. Chapter 4 describes a framework for evaluation of Agreement progress which relates the Agreement purpose (ecosystem integrity) to desired outcomes, indicators to characterize each desired outcome, associated data & information to support each indicator, and relevant stresses. Chapter 5 identifies nine selected desired outcomes for the Great Lakes basin ecosystem, along with representative indicators & associated measurements that can be used to evaluate Agreement progress. Chapter 6 presents conclusions & recommendations.

Today, however, other concepts need to be incorporated into the Agreement so that it can facilitate contemporary efforts to protect and restore The purpose of the Agreement is to "restore and the water quality of the Great Lakes system and maintain" the water quality of the Great Lakes. [...] The following are four areas the Commission to the development of the Agreement in the 1970s suggests be considered for the purpose and scope and its amendment in 1987:. [...] For purposes of the Agreement, the Commission However, the Commission believes firmly that is of the view that a definition of the ecosystem adopting the ecosystem approach should not lead approach should be developed that is appropriate to to broadening the purpose of the Agreement. [...] This the objectives of the Agreement and the conditions means that the scope of the new Agreement - that in the basin. [...] Because the Commission basinwide consultations conducted by is recommending that the Agreement be endorsed the Commission, of the triennial progress by the U. S. Congress and the Parliament of reports under the Binational Action Plan, Canada, it is of the view that its role should be set out in a formal reference pursuant to Article IX of and (b) the Commission's independent the Boundary Waters Tr.