Council of the Great Lakes Region Foundation

https://cglrfoundation.networkforgood.com/

https://cglrfoundation.networkforgood.com/projects/194658-sustainable-food-production-in-the-great-lakes-region?

The CGLR Foundation is a qualified 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and contributions are tax-deductible to the fullest extent of the law. If you are located outside of the United States, please check with your tax advisor for guidance.

The Foundation is a part of a bi-national network of related organizations, collectively referred to as the Council of the Great Lakes Region (CGLR), which includes CGLR USA, an Ohio-based, 501(c)(6) trade association, and CGLR Canada, a not-for-profit corporation based in Ontario, Canada.

Let’s keep the Great Lakes free of plastic litter!

Help us Accelerate the Shift to Sustainable Farming in the Great Lakes Region

Sustainable food production is great for farmers and the health of our Great Lakes and environment!

Agriculture is a primary land use in the Great Lakes region, holding the key ingredients for feeding not only the region – but also North America and the world.

However, as the demand for more foods grown in our region increases, so will the pressures on our environment, such as our freshwater and wildlife.

For example, agricultural nutrients flowing into Lake Erie are already causing toxic blue-green algae blooms, killing fish and polluting our drinking water.

By donating today, you can build a better future by helping us bring businesses, government representatives, scientists, and NGOs together to advocate for and invest in sustainable agricultural practices.

Updated 6/21/2023

Membership is $150 for an individual, $350 for a nonprofit organization.

The Council of the Great Lakes Region is a binational, non-profit corporation that seeks to deepen the United States-Canada relationship in the Great Lakes region by creating stronger, more dynamic cross-border collaborations focused on finding new ways of harnessing the region’s economic strengths and assets, improving the well-being and prosperity of the region’s citizens, and protecting the environment for future generations.

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Our Mandate

I wrote to Judy Goldhaft of Planet Drum Foundation in September 2021:

The idea of creating bioregional councils is not a new one, but it takes on new importance in the context of the present crisis of modern civilization. Our existing governance structures, even the democratic ones, are typically based on political boundaries and are ill-equipped to address the biodiversity issues in the right context or at the right scale.

My intention in suggesting these is to provide a vehicle for citizens, experts, and activists to take the larger view, one based on looking at watersheds, ecosystems, and bioregions, to advise existing decision-makers regarding the right approaches to the natural habitat we share with other species. Eventually, perhaps these councils will be granted powers, e.g., to review development proposals. But at the outset, they are simply ways to bring other perspectives to the table.

I see them, moreover, as deliberative bodies of Bioregional Knowledge Keepers, including the descendants of the original or indigenous inhabitants who in some cases lived in harmony with their environments for thousands of years, deriving what they needed to live while preserving the health and vitality of these places for subsequent generations. It is increasingly recognized, for example, that the great forests of the Pacific Northwest — which settlers saw as virgin territory, ripe for the taking — were actually maintained and cared for by their Native American inhabitants.

In addition to our concern with human and civil rights, we need to think of the Rights of Nature — not simply, as some have proposed, the right of humans to a healthy environment — though that’s also important — but also as the rights of other living beings to occupy their established ecological niches rather than having them destroyed or swept aside in the interest of “development” or commercial exploitation. Bioregional councils could be tasked with seeking the right balance between the needs and rights of humans versus those of the other species we share this planet with — and on whose well-being we ourselves depend on. Moreover, I believe it is possible for humans to thrive without doing so at the expense of other species, and indeed to create systems, such as those of agroecology, where human inhabitants may enhance the environment for other species as well.

Thank you for your long-standing championing of these ideas, and for the consistent values you have expressed since the 1970s.