(NON-PANEL SPEAKERS RARELY AUDIBLE – NOT PROVIDED WITH MICS)

PAUL HORVATIN
(Great Lakes Office, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency / U.S. Co-Chair, State of the Lakes Ecosystem Conference):

If you’re sitting more to this side of the room (inaudible)…otherwise you may get a stiff neck. We’re going to start. The plan was to start on time, but we were advised that there was a line at the registration table yet downstairs, at the bottom of the hotel, so we decided we’ll wait a few more minutes to give people a chance to find their way over here, so just so you know, we’re not just waiting here.

Well, it appears that whoever is coming is pretty much here. Why don’t we go ahead and get started? Good morning, bonjour, my name is Paul Horvatin, I’m with the United States Environmental Protection Agency Great Lakes Office in Chicago. I’m also the U.S. Co-Chair for the State of the Lakes Ecosystem Conference, SOLEC.

I’d like to introduce the other panelists that are with us this morning. At the far end we have Dale Phenicie, from the Council of Great Lakes Industries; we have Rolanda Elijah (?), from the Oneida First Nations; we have Rich Butler, from LURA Consulting; Harvey Shear, from Environment Canada, and also the Canadian Co-Chair; and at the table here, in front, Sally Leppard, with the LURA Corporation also.

I should mention that there is French translation available. For you to pick up headphone sets, they are just outside the door. Actually, we have a fairly small audience here this morning. Why don’t we just maybe go around the room real quick? I think it would be good for the panel to get a sense of who is in the room; if you give your name and affiliation, I’d appreciate it. Why don’t we just start here?

(INTRODUCTIONS INAUDIBLE – NO MIC FOR PARTICIPANTS)

Welcome. With that, why don’t we begin the program? The first presentation to be given by Harvey Shear, the co-chair for SOLEC.

HARVEY SHEAR
(Regional Science Advisor, Ontario Region, Environment Canada / Canadian Co-Chair, State of the Lakes Ecosystem Conference):

Thanks, Paul. Good morning, everyone. Bonjour, Mesdames et messieurs et bienvenue à cet atelier sur les indicateurs de responsabilité de société.

This workshop on societal indicators is something…I’d better get my notes before I forget, that would be very useful. (LAUGHS) My memory banks are somewhat full, I can’t remember all of this stuff. We have been working on this project for a number of years, and hopefully you are here to help us to move our own agenda along. Okay, that’s who we all are.

What we’re going to do this morning is go through what SOLEC is all about, what its goals and objectives are, who is involved in SOLEC. Then we’ll from Rolanda on the First Nation perspectives on indicators and traditional knowledge and so forth, and then from Rich on a proposed process for looking at indicators and selecting some, and then we’ll have a wrap-up. And you will have breakout groups at the back tables there to actually work this morning, and Sally will be explaining all of that a little bit later.

What we’d like to do this morning basically is continue on a process that started, I guess in some respects, 12 years ago in Lake Ontario and has been bumping along ever since, and sometimes gets stuck in the mud and then lurches along again, in terms of trying to define what societal indicators are and what societal responsibility is.

And our objective here, using a SOLEC process, which I’ll describe in a bit, is either to delete, modify or select or add indicators, which you will find in the workbooks. If you haven’t taken one, please do before we have our breakouts; Sally is going to hand them out, I guess.

There are a number of indicators in there that Rich has selected from sources all over the world, and we want you to have a look at them and see if they make sense, and if not, delete them, modify them, maybe suggest new ones for us. And Paul will describe the process after we finish here today of what’s going to happen with that.

In terms of SOLEC, for those of you who are not familiar, it’s the State of the Lakes Ecosystem Conference. It’s a reporting process that occurs at a conference every two years, but it is a process, it’s ongoing.

And in terms of activity, once the conference is finished, we produce a State of the Great Lakes report, which has just come out. I only have a desk copy in English and French in the display area in the lobby in the hotel. These will be available to the SOLEC attendees, they will be mailed out. It’s available online at www.binational.net . And if you want hard copies, you can leave your business card with either Paul or me, and we’ll make sure you get it in either version, English or French.

So the conference occurs, we look at the information, we produce a State of the Lakes report. From that, we’re already planning our next SOLEC, which we will be in Cleveland in 2002. The aim is to consult between Canada and the U.S. on conditions in the Great Lakes ecosystem, the Great Lakes basin ecosystem, and try to report on progress towards achieving the goals and objectives of that agreement, the purpose of which is here. I won’t read that.

And of course, from our perspective, we are looking at the entire ecosystem, so we include human health, we’ve looked at economic activity in the past, and so our spectrum of indicators is indeed very broad.

The objectives for SOLEC itself are here. They were established in 1992 by the Canada-U.S. senior committee that looks after these sorts of things. They were proposed, and basically, they have stood the test of time. And I’m not going to read them, you can read them for yourself.

But the SOLEC process basically is aimed at a very select audience, it’s by invitation only, what we call decision-makers, people who can try and make a difference in the Great Lakes basin, and so we target our information at those decision makers.

We try and inform them, and we also provide an opportunity for networking and communication as well, which most people…we have about 500-some people at our meetings, and most people find that extremely, extremely useful. It’s the only meeting of its kind in the basin.

Who’s involved in SOLEC? You can see it’s extremely broad: all levels of government, people involved in lake-wide management planning, remedial action plans, First Nations, academics, environmental groups, industry, etc., etc. We’ve had to do this to ensure very adequate representation from all of our groups.

And the reason that we report every two years is essentially the structure of the agreement requires regular reporting. Because the IJC has a biannual reporting cycle, we have our SOLEC meeting in the year alternate to IJC, and so we try to release our report prior to IJC so they can use that as input to their assessment of how governments are performing, as well as all of the other inputs that they get.

Who else is involved? Continuing on, environmental managers and decision makers, as I have said, the general public to a degree, and of course a fairly heavy dose of Agency personnel at all levels.

In terms of where indicators sort of fit into the big picture – and many of you have seen this diagram before – if you think at the highest level, what people want in the Great Lakes basin, you might consider that a vision, you could look at that vision level as sort of the purpose of the agreement. It’s very broad. For those of you who are familiar, for example, with Lake Superior, if you look at the Superior vision statement, it’s very, very broad.

As you go down into the goals, they’re going to become more specific, talking about goals for a fishery, goals for wildlife, goals for human health, etc. When you go into the objectives level, then you’re getting quite specific in terms of harvest levels for lake trout, for example, or specific levels of chemicals in a particular medium, sediment or water. And then we have targets, which may be interim levels we’re aiming towards or ultimate end points.

Indicators help us to measure both the objective and target levels and help us to find out where we are in the spectrum from a very poor condition to a very good condition. And right now, many of those assessments are subjective, simply because we don’t have an end point.

We know what’s bad: we don’t have a particular organism or we have contaminated sediment or whatever. If we don’t have a standard or a goal to aim towards, then it’s a very subjective assessment as to how good is good. And we’re looking towards the lake-wide management plans, for example, to define those end points, so we know when we’ve actually crossed into what we would consider a good situation.

What is this indicator list that SOLEC has been working on in a very sort of concerted way for the last, I guess, about four or five years? It’s a compilation of 80 indicators, and it’s proposed to be used within an integrated reporting structure, and it includes both the natural environment and the human environment, if you will, the built environment, human activity.

It’s very comprehensive. And the SOLEC indicators were screened from a list of over 850, clearly not a number that you would want to report on on a regular basis. We actually set up working groups and we reduced that down to 80. Now I know some people, including my boss, would like to see that down to one number, one indicator. Well, I’m not sure we’re there yet, in terms of an index, but we’re looking at indices to try and have groups of indicators that are reported together.

But right now, we’ve got a list of 80. And the way we screened those is we said is the indicator necessary to report on the state of that component? Is that indicator sufficient, or do you need two or three similar ones to report on that component? Is it feasible? Do you need $100 million monitoring program to do it or can you do it with existing resources? Or do you need research, or is it in the realm of, you know, 10 years more research before it becomes do-able?

And in terms of what we’re talking about today, we added a fourth element: understandable. Can you understand what the indicator is telling you to characterize the state of the system?

But why create this list in the first place? It’s not just because it’s nice to do and, you know, we have nothing else to do with our time. But actually, we felt it was required to give an overview of the conditions in the Great Lakes.

When we started in SOLEC, we essentially had an ad hoc kind of set of indicators that we put forward for the first two reports, and people were telling us that’s a great idea, but you need to be more consistent and predictable in what you are reporting, and so that’s exactly what we did. And so the second bullet talks about the consistency of information. People know from year to year what we will be reporting on.

We hope that that indicator list would lead to a more efficient use of resources for collection and evaluation. If everyone in the basin is looking at least at a coarse set of these indicators – they may have other specific needs, but at least at a coarse set – then, with the scarce resources that we all have for monitoring and reporting and so on, at least we could allocate resources to report on those indicators, and also to help to reach some consensus on more information, what else is needed in terms of research on monitoring.

In addition, the indicator list basically built on the work of other people. We didn’t really invent anything new. We focused on a very broad spatial scale, so the SOLEC list really probably doesn’t apply if you look at (inaudible)…area of concern.

We selected a framework for a subdividing of the basin, which I’ll show in a second, and the indicator system that we used was the pressure state response model. There are other models around; that’s the one we picked as our system. And as I said, we selected some criteria for screening down the 850 down to a manageable number, 80.

That’s the core groups or the way we split up the indicators, into geographic zones: as you can see, coastal wetlands, near-shore terrestrial, which is the sort of one-kilometer riparian zone around the lake, open and near-shore waters, and then three kind of three kind of issue-based sets of indicators, land use, human health, and what we’re talking about today, societal.

And I know we’ve got some cross-cutting issues, which are things like climate change and acid rain, which are sort of unbounded and, in some cases, still under development.

That sort of wraps up…it’s a very, very quick sort of overview of SOLEC and the process that we’ve got, and Paul will describe a bit more what’s coming in the future in terms of what we do here.

We’re going to talk now a little bit about societal indicators, as we call them, indicators of societal response to environmental stress, and it’s my pleasure to introduced Rolanda Elijah, who is working with us and will give us a First Nation perspective on what we call societal responsibility indicators.

ROLANDA ELIJAH
(Oneida First Nations):

Good morning, my name is Rolanda Elijah. I’m from Oneida of the Tams First Nation, and I’m currently a law…in my second year of law at the University of Windsor, and I have graduated from an undergraduate program at York University in the Bachelor of Environmental Studies program.

I was asked by Harvey to write a report on, I guess, a preliminary analysis of aboriginal approaches to the environment – a lot of people aren’t familiar with what that is or what that might entail - but also to look at sustainability indicators from an aboriginal perspective.

So I did do a brief report, and I hope that everybody has a copy. If not, we can get copies made for you. And the title of the report is called Aboriginal Approaches to Environment and Preliminary Analysis of Sustainability Indicators.

First off, I would encourage you first of all to read the report, and I hope to add, I guess, additional information to the points that were made within that report. Just to give you a brief overview of what that entails should you not…I guess, to kind of whet your appetite hoping that you’ll read it, but if you don’t, just to make some general points.

The first thing I do in that report is to introduce the concept of indigenous knowledge and traditional environmental or ecological knowledge; I sort of use ecological and environmental interchangeably within that.

Some recent examples of indigenous knowledge and its use in environmental initiatives…because of the word traditional, that kind of gives a historical connotation. What I do in the report is to say that although that’s the common, I guess, jargon, to call it traditional ecological knowledge, it’s actually being used today, so it’s not really historical, it’s very contemporary, and then I provide examples for that.

I then identify some preliminary issues in utilizing the pressure state response indicator framework. Rich Butler will be presenting after me and he will be sort of elaborating on what that entails for those that haven’t, I guess, had the chance to look at that yet.

And then, finally, some ideas that need further exploration in indicator systems from a First Nations perspective or an aboriginal perspective. Again, this is only like a preliminary beginning. This is, in some ways, looking at it within this specific scientific, technical context.

So I want to, I guess, provide some insight as to what is my true answer to that question, this question here: what does a native person do when asked to look at how to incorporate, integrate scientific models in aboriginal participation or knowledge?

And I was thinking about that, because essentially, that’s sort of what aboriginal people are being asked to do, and this is perhaps a genuine response, although we’ll never see that reflected in anything written, is first off, you take a deep sigh and cross your fingers and hope that somebody else has already tried it or written a PhD thesis in the area.

I guess, so, to break that down, why that would be a first response is because the question for an aboriginal person is always where does one begin and how much time will have and what is most important, because we’re kind of deriving, trying to pull out of a whole other body, world view of knowledge that people aren’t familiar with and trying to say, well, what’s important within the time that I’m given and what do people already know, which isn’t usually a heck of a lot about aboriginal people, to try to build up some kind of knowledge within, I guess, scientists or academia.

The second thing or third thing is will it be appreciated? Unlike science, when an aboriginal person is presenting their information, we’re not presenting hypotheses. What we’re presenting are ideas from a culture that go to the very core of our existence, our identity as people and as individuals.

And also, the language is problematic in looking at environment. There are no words for environment or nature within our world view. Those are sort of like nouns; within our language, we use verbs to describe so many things, to describe relationships.

So that’s always a problem. That’s why, you know, as an aboriginal person, when coming to, you know, talk about this, it’s really problematic, and you always figure out, well, how am I going to get around this so that people come away with a more, I guess, accurate understanding of what it is that I am trying to convey.

And I address this in the report under a subheading, I call it “Meat men and beaver bosses”, because this is a literal translation from, I guess, what Ojibway peoples in northern Ontario call conservation officers.

We tend to think of conservation officers as, you know, protectors, people who are doing a service to the environment. However, from the aboriginal perspective, it’s more of a control thing, and that’s why the little translation from the Ojibway word of what you would call a conservation officer is “Meat men and beaver bosses”, so that’s kind of explained within the report. It’s also why we use the term societal responsibilities instead of stewardship.

The other issue is what will the working relationship be? And this is perhaps key and probably the point at which SOLEC and scientists might find themselves at, is will it be based on a level of respect? Because like I said, you know, within the science, you have peer review and all of that sort of thing.

Like I said, within our culture, it’s based on identity, and that needs to be respected. While I might be a little be skeptical, I still need to respect the views that these people are presenting, the aboriginal people are presenting.

And then finally, perhaps, that perhaps the whole, I guess, reluctance on the part of aboriginal people to participate, I guess, with scientists is because how will the knowledge then be used? Will it be to the benefit or detriment of native people?

Often, we participate in different technical initiatives, and we walk away with very little capacity to do any of these things ourselves. So in some ways, that leaves us feeling like, you know, we have gained nothing from this but have given so much. So that’s why I say that, you know, you take a deep sigh, and you know, you think about all of these things and then go into, I guess, the inquiry.

I look at indigenous and traditional ecological knowledge within the report, because this is essentially what we are trying to integrate or incorporate with respect to indicators. Again, this report discusses TK but only in a very general way.

And for those that aren’t familiar with that, what that is is just saying that because people have lived in a geographic area for, I guess, decades and eons, they have acquired a knowledge about their physical environment and perhaps ecological relationships within that environment and have adapted their culture to that.

And an aboriginal person, of course, would say that of course we have knowledge about that, but it’s based again in a different world view and language that isn’t really reflected in science.

I guess I just want to make some general points about that. There is a session this afternoon that does specifically deal with traditional ecological or environmental knowledge, and that will be, I understand, in this same room.

And that should be an interesting discussion, but I’ll just make my points here that it’s a way of life based on experience, again, this concept that it’s a verb, it’s not a noun, it’s something that you do, a way of doing or being. It’s a way of knowing that’s focused on relationships. It’s dynamic and adaptive, it’s not historical and just, you know, relegated to what has been.

Native languages are conduits for TK or indigenous knowledge. The language is absolutely key to understanding those relationships. And note that there are no indigenous words for environment or nature.

I’m Hudinassone (?) or Iroquois; some people might be more familiar with that term. When I said, you know, what is it that a person does when…an aboriginal person does when asked, you know, how do we integrate aboriginal perspectives into science, it is difficult because it’s based on (inaudible) culture, tradition and history, and it goes back, like, a long time ago.

For me, as a Hudinassone person, when I am asked that, it always comes back to this here. What this is, it’s called a wampum belt, and it’s made out of shells, and what it represents is our constitution. It would take about a week to properly explain this one diagram that you see.

The strings that you see going inward, that represents a political structure, and then the outer circle represents principles about how we are to live, and that also, you know, has environmental concepts with those outer strings, and they’re all shells.

We view this knowledge in its totality, so when…it’s very difficult to, I guess, try to pull things out of there, to say, well, you know, what could science learn from that or whatever. It’s not something that’s easy to do.

But what I did want to say was we as aboriginal people or indigenous people, we still aspire to live this way. Like, this is our way of living, it describes who we are, how we view the world, and this was the case too when the settlers came, I guess, 500 years ago or so.

However, I guess there was probably language problems. Again, the settlers didn’t necessarily understand indigenous politics of ways of being. So this was a second wampum bell that was…it refers back to that circle.

And what it is…this is just like a rough description, but it’s really a belt made out of shells and beads, and the purple stripes represents two paths, one of them is a ship and one of them is a canoe. The ship represents the settlers, their ways, their laws and their views of the world, and the other one represents an elm or a (inaudible) canoe, and that’s for our people, our ways and our views.

And what our people had said was that there’s three…there’s three sets of parallel shells, and what those represent are peace, respect, and friendship. And what our ancestors had said was that we can co-exist as separate peoples as long as we always have this peace, respect, and friendship between us, that it’s not up to me to, you know, intervene in who you are, likewise not the settlers to intervene with who we are.

And I guess historically, we can look back and say that that’s not what has happened with that relationship, but it’s one that…this relationship, nonetheless, is one that we had envisioned for ourselves, based on co-existence.

And when we’re looking at indicator frameworks, it’s still always the aboriginal ideal that this is a way which could adequately, I guess, represent a working relationship, too, like even on a technical level, because we still carry as aboriginal people our assumptions about the world that are not, I guess, on par with science…not on par, but it’s not the same thing.

When I come to any table to talk about environment, I guess discuss indicator frameworks, technical aspects of it. However, deeply rooted in me is this concept of ethic of caring that, you know, the earth is a mother, it’s something to be cared for, the creation are my relations, and I don’t have, you know, certain rights to do certain things to that.

So that, I guess, affects my ethic and my responsibility. So when we’re asked, I guess, to look at societal responsibility, that means a whole bunch of things for us that we might not be able to discuss within a technical setting.

However, if we’re being asked to collaborate, this would accurately describe the way that we would like to come to the table, that, you know, we can work together, we can share ideas; however, we’ll always be different, and that was recognized years ago as well.

I guess one thing I wanted to point out about this wampum belt is that usually our wampum belts are finished, that they’re completed belts. On the ends of this belt here, it’s loose string, and what that represents is that this is the river of life, like, there are two ships in (?) the canoe, but they’re in the river of life.

And I guess it’s kind of a like a positive, I guess, feature of this belt, because it’s an unfinished belt, and what that implies is that it’s up to us to determine what that relationship is going to be, it’s up to subsequent generations to define what that, you know, are we still going to be that way.

I guess, to move into the next section on sustainability indicator frameworks, when I was looking at this, you know, essentially, what is it, I could see that in principle, it’s not a new question. The question is that of scale. I guess, now, I guess as a Hudinassone person, I have a modern-day life, I go to school, I go to work, that kind of thing, but at one time, our people used to be, I guess, agriculturalists, we lived like in large villages.

So I thought, you know, we didn’t have, you know, modern technology, like agricultural tools like combines and those sorts of things to do our work. We had like, you know, hoes and axes and that kind of thing.

So, you know, I thought, actually, like, that would be like a really…it could be really difficult, and you would kind of want to be smart about it when you’re doing agriculture, and farmers usually are, so I just figured, well, you know, we already had concepts of sustainability because it’s documented within, I guess, anthropology archives and what not that, you know, it was a common practice of Iroquois people that we would, you know, do our planting and, you know, living in a certain area for about 20 years, after the soil started losing its nutrients, we would relocate, so there’s concepts of, you know, sustainability within that.

And I guess why I thought it would be a good idea – and I’m not the only one – to include aboriginal people is because it’s not possible to measure everything in the Great Lakes basin, I mean, it’s just, you know…you know, you couldn’t do it, you don’t have the resources.

Because native people still pursue land-based activities, it puts us out there, onto the land, and opportunities in indicator development may arise due to the unique cultures and practices and ways of knowing and relating to the environment.

So I guess in a nutshell, because we’re out there on the land, we might have a hunch as to what’s going on, we might have a lead that, you know, technical people that necessarily don’t have the resources to go investigate every little thing

And from what I understand, just with my experience with scientists, is that some of our better scientists do do the work that they do because they have that, you know, hunch, so I think that there is an opportunity there.

And from just looking at the indicator lists that Rich had developed, I could see opportunities where aboriginal and, I guess, SOLEC or whoever could work on probably, like, let’s say, starting with one or two indicators, and aboriginal activities may be able to, like, corroborate with, you know, this is what we’re finding in science but also, our aboriginal observers who are out on the land, they might be able to also say, well, yes, we have in fact noticed that there are changes and, you know, climate or, you know, populations, or blah, or whatever.

So I did see that. But I think those are like technical issues. For aboriginal people, this is still kind of like the question. I don’t know…I think that we are concerned with technical issues, but more so what is the working relationship going to be because we still have that different world view, we have different, I guess, levels of technical capability.

For us, I guess there are more questions of equity and inclusion, will that be done fairly. In some ways, I think that we would like to renew that understanding of that peace and respect and friendship, you know, let’s be, you know, let’s be respectful of each other if we’re going to do this.

I think, yeah ... and just in conclusion, that aboriginal people do have specialized languages, and that kind of needs to be explored. That really hasn’t been developed, from what I see, in any southern initiatives.

I noticed within some of the Inuit scientific research that, like, a lot of things are being done with that; however, I think that it remains a challenge within, I guess, other geographic areas to include indigenous people, I guess, in that way, and particularly within the Great Lakes basin. And that’s it for now. Are there any questions?

UNIDENTIFIED:

(inaudible)

ROLANDA ELIJAH:

I think that part of it is because, well, within…the report that I wrote does go a little bit further into it, and the person sitting beside you, Deb McGregor, has also done a paper on it that kind of describes the relationship. It’s not really sort of where we want to be going right now.

Part of the problem is that, you know, the frameworks have already been developed and we’re kind of being asked at some later point to, you know, well, we would like your input, but we’re kind of…the aboriginal response is, well, you’ve already gone so far into it, like, down a certain path without us.

I think it’s something that needs to be looked at. I don’t think that it means that, you know, how it is going now, it’s inevitable that it’s going to continue that way, and that’s why I think that, you know, everything is, you know, what do you want to do, how can we do it. It’s a matter of, I think, will. Does that answer your question?

UNIDENTIFIED:

(inaudible)...

ROLANDA ELIJAH:

Okay. Any other questions? Okay. Oh, did you have a question?

UNIDENTIFIED:

(inaudible)...

ROLANDA ELIJAH:

Okay, other areas of research have sort of already done this. One of the areas is forestry; I highlight that in the report. Forestry is one area where it’s already being done, they’re already looking at, so it wouldn’t be like, you know, reinventing the wheel. It would be a matter of, well, what are other people doing who have decided to approach it that way, what are they doing.

And that usually begins with a change in policy, direction, like okay, well, we need to kind of get our heads around the policy. And just from what I see, that kind of hasn’t been done yet within SOLEC, like, let’s get our heads around some of these issues. So in short, I think it’s just a matter of continuing to educate. Yes, Sir?

UNIDENTIFIED:

(inaudible)...

ROLANDA ELIJAH:

Yeah, I kind of addressed that as issues for further exploration, is that what are some of the systemic barriers that impede how we would like to see ourselves responding to environmental change.

I think that those are systemic barriers and that’s something that I acknowledge…because I’ve had the benefit of growing up with culture and tradition; not everybody has that. So as an aboriginal person, so, like, how we’re behaving now is not…like, as you’re saying, is not really how we would have envisioned it, but there are reasons for why that has happened.

And what I say is, well, what are the barriers that kind of impede our response, because so much of our life as aboriginal people is a dependency on the state, for resources, for funding, for anything. So those are barriers that I would like to see identified as to ...

Well, you know, we’re responding; however, I don’t know that that’s how we want to respond. If we could respond how we wanted to, what would that be? I think that those are again equity…issues of equity.

HARVEY SHEAR:

I think that question, Chris, and some of the others, is almost leading into the session this afternoon. I just want to respond to the issue of what you raised about, you know, getting into the SOLEC process late. And I guess you know the old song about better late than never, but ...

One thing I didn’t emphasize is, you know, SOLEC has been very flexible and adaptable. And we know we’re not there yet in terms of aboriginal involvement; we’re certainly not there yet in terms of a “final set of indicators”, and I’m not sure the set ever will be final.

The whole point of it is it’s open, and as new information comes along from whatever source, we’ll use that and adapt it and drop some indicators and add some others.

And my own personal vision is that, you know, we would have two sort of parallel kind of reports, not necessarily physical, hard documents, but two kinds of reports which would be mutually supportive in terms of what are the conditions in the Great Lakes: one of them from an aboriginal perspective and one of them from a “Western science” perspective.

That’s my own personal view; it’s not necessarily SOLEC’s view. But I want to emphasize that it’s been a very open process and it will continue to evolve, so the door is open.

ROLANDA ELIJAH:

Was there any final questions? Okay. Thank you.

PAUL HORVATIN:

Thank you, Rolanda. The next presenter will be Rich Butler; he is a science horizon intern with Environment Canada and LURA Consulting.

RICHARD BUTLER
(Environment Canada / LURA Consulting):

Okay, good morning. What I’d like to do this morning, as we move towards the workshop and facilitator workshop program, I’d like to review briefly the process of indicator development in SOLEC, specifically as it relates to societal responsibility.

My job as a science horizon intern, I have split duties between Environment Canada and LURA Consulting, and this has been the project that I have been working on specifically. The process that SOLEC uses that I have been following is rooted in continuous input and review and discussion by SOLEC members and by partner groups that Dr. Shear mentioned previously. So what I’d like to do briefly is just review the process, where we’ve been with some of the information on societal responsibility, where we’re going, and then that will help us to understand where your feedback…and help you as well to understand where your feedback will fit into SOLEC and how it will be really useful for us.

Initially, this work began in the spring of 2001, my work, actually, I should say. What we did is we established a panel of experts, and with that panel, we reviewed the goals and objectives of societal responsibility, what is it we were really hoping to achieve from this particular suite of indicators.

The experts came from Environment Canada, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Great Lakes Fisheries Commission, academia, First Nations, industry, a very broad-based panel of experts, and in that way, we hoped to gain from that diversity.

Following that, understanding the goals and objectives of the group, it was my job to mine (?) existing documents – that’s the kind of thing you hire an intern for – and then what we did is we took that back to the panel and we looked at these indicators, and that process is ongoing at this time.

And we’re very fortunate now to have the IJC workshop to float these indicators with another group of people, which is yourselves. So as I say, the panel review is ongoing, we have the workshop today, and Paul will describe a little bit later the ongoing process and where we hope to do after this afternoon.

So a little bit about the path that we’ve come with societal responsibility. Originally, in 1998, we had five indicators developed. At that time, SOLEC had sort of an ad hoc group of indicators to look at the health of the Great Lakes basin. And then, moving in 1998 to 2000, the core group that Dr. Shear outlined with the various areas and the various groups was defined, and in that there was a definition for a group of societal responsibility indicators. So, moving on from here, in 2001, we have the panel and the workshop and continued review.

I should mention that between 1998 and 2000, there have been two SOLEC workshop conferences, and this information, the original indicators, were discussed and reviewed at that time. So as we mentioned before, this is an ongoing process and we have been building that feedback into what we are hoping to accomplish today.

So I’d like to set a little context for where does societal responsibility or indicators of societal responsibility, where does it fit into SOLEC, the overall goals? So what we have is we have sort of two streams of indicators, one being those directly related to the health of the environment, and the other side being those related to society.

So I have a quote here…the process of producing and communicating policy-relevant information on key interactions between people and the natural environment, Dr. Shear outlined the vision of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, and I think that the important term, the need to maintain chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the Great Lakes basin ecosystem, the ecosystem being the combination of people and the natural environment.

So in this way, by examining societal responsibility, we’re hoping to make SOLEC an integrated reporting system, looking at both society and the natural environment. And you might notice that while there is no single suite for sustainability per se in SOLEC, it’s implicit within this suite itself and within the other suites.

So a little bit about the previous work we’ve done. Societal responsibility has been defined by our groups as responsible governance. There was a focus particularly on institutional bodies, indicators that were directly associated with program actions and responses that address the issue of sustainability, and it was particularly focused on the scope and organizational capacity of partnerships, these partnerships supported by the community or government interests and leading to an improved state of the environment.

So that’s where we sort of initially began. And with this new expert panel that we’re developing this year, some of the things that we’ve expanded on would be the definition of societal responsibility. There is a move for a more inclusive scope of governance, not just top-down approach, not just from above, but as well a bottom-up approach, more community-based in that way, moving beyond a focus on partnerships.

So we’d like to include the efforts of individuals, individual communities, industries, expanding who is involved, really, horizontal in their scope. By that, I mean looking at issues that have a broad reach in their scope. So something, for instance, like transportation, where you can examine the role of commuters, the individuals, the choices they make, as well as perhaps the manufacturing industry, the choices that they make, and legislation, and so the legislative and institutional bodies and the decisions that are made there, so the responses and the programming.

One of the biggest direction that we’ve taken is that the indicators be quantifiable and measurable. SOLEC is a science-based reporting system, and so it’s our hope that although this is societal responsibility and it’s difficult in some ways to measure societal response or societal perception, we’re hoping that the indicators that we’ve got can in many ways give us a quantifiable number. So that will allow for year-to-year comparisons, and we can measure trends instead of just a single year.

So, the goals for this suite: to quantify, simplify, and communicate the state and trends in societal responsibility in the Great Lakes basin, to assess societal responsibility activities as a process towards positive change in ecosystem health.

So to allow us to keep the broad scope of governance and management, what we have done is separated the indicators into three spheres: community/individual, industry, and institution. So in order to succeed in our goals, we’ve got to ensure that there’s a comprehensive nature to SOLEC. So I’ll just look at these three briefly.

For community/individual, we’re looking at the status and capacity of community commitment to societal responsibility by examining quantifiable action, so we’re talking about time, money, attendance, looking at group participation, environmental education, hours, public awareness, community-based governance, equity, for our community/individual indicators.

And you’ll see, if everybody has their booklet, that we have separated the indicators according to these three headings, I should say.

For industrial indicators, we’re looking at industry, because of the magnitude that it can have in terms of environmental change in the Great Lakes basin. In terms of the market-driven nature of industry, we’re looking at indicators that would focus on internalizing the costs of environmental programming, things like pollution reduction initiatives, green technology, and research and development, sharing and partnerships. Efficiency and conservation would be two big ones as well.

And finally, for institutional indicators, we’re looking at multiple levels of government, non-governmental organizations and other agencies.

SOLEC itself, it doesn’t represent a status report on Great Lakes programming – there are other bodies for that – so we don’t look at individual programs and judge whether or not they are effective. What we’re hoping to do is to get a better idea of the present and future priorities of Great Lakes officials. That’s more the role of SOLEC and that’s definitely more the role of these indicators.

So we’re looking at integrated decision making, partnerships, financial programming, commitments, and societal responsibility initiatives, institutional and legislative frameworks as well.

So that’s all I have to say this morning. Thanks very much.

PAUL HORVATIN:

Thank you, Rich. I guess the one question that’s been asked is where we’re going to go with all this and how does this process fit in…okay, we actually have this going on here: we have a process and a process, depending on which side of the border you’re on. Those of us in the SOLEC group, we’re always arguing whether it’s a process or process; one of these days, we’ll sort of find a third word to use, but ...

The bottom line is this workshop here today with the IJC meeting and the work that’s going on is actually a continuing process itself from the standpoint that, you know, we’re just getting into this area of trying to develop the area, the societal indicators.

The plan would be that we would take the results from this morning’s workshop, we’ll continue to develop it between now and the SOLEC conference itself, which is actually a year from today – God forbid, it’s coming quick.

So we’re going to continue the developmental process through this but present the results of this effort plus what we do in the upcoming year in 2002. But even there, the plan would not necessarily bring all that to closure. There still will be probably even work going on for the next several years, even beyond that.

So the participation and the interest that everyone has for this is greatly appreciated because in some cases, we’re taking a lot of different sciences and different concepts and trying to bring it together so we can have a better understanding of where we’re going and how we can define sort of societal perspective for the Great Lakes.

This basically wraps up the technical component. I would like to introduce someone, Mr. Jack Blaney. He is a Canadian IJC commissioner who is with us here this morning, and I think he’d like to say a few words. Mr. Blaney, come up here or use the mic here.

JACK BLANEY:

I’ll be brief and I’ll use the mic here. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I am a commissioner with the IJC, and I just want to say thank you. The work of the workshops are absolutely critical to the functioning of the IJC. They inform us of our priorities, inform us when we write our biannual reports, so we just want to take this opportunity in each workshop to thank the presenters, the organizers, and all of the participants. Thank you very much.

PAUL HORVATIN:

Thank you, Mr. Blaney. With that, I’d like to introduce Sally Leppard, with LURA Consulting, who will then sort of lay the groundwork for the work that we’re going to be doing right after the break, when we come back.

SALLY LEPPARD
(LURA Consulting):

Thanks very much and welcome. This is, as people have been mentioning this morning, this is going to be an actual roll-up-your-sleeves workshop, in the SOLEC tradition. And also in the SOLEC tradition, I’d like to note that we are actually right on time, which is surprising, because we were a little bit late off the mark.

Essentially, this opportunity today provides people here with a leading-edge opportunity to influence the societal indicators suite for SOLEC. Your insight and knowledge will be recorded and a workshop report will be prepared after this which will feed directly into the indicator development process for SOLEC, and as Paul said, will be looked at again at SOLEC 2002 and beyond.

So this is an opportunity for you to shape from the beginning the societal indicators. It is the first time also that they have been publicly vetted. There has been this expert panel and a lot of research has been going on for the last ten years, at least on this, but this is the first time that they will be publicly vetted, so we very much appreciate it.

SOLEC is a snow-balling process, it’s a building process, so as SOLEC develops insight, knowledge, and has consultations like this, the indicators get further refined and reiterated and certainly more useful.

So the objective of this session here this morning is to pick several indicators that when they’re taken together will provide insight into the state of and trends in societal responsibility within the Great Lakes basin. That’s a huge task, I suppose, but we’ve put them together in a workbook here, and I’d like to take you through that so that you know how we’re proposing to proceed.

As you know from workshops you’ve been to before, there are a number of different ways we could have organized the conversation, but we’re really interested in getting your input into each one of these indicators, to the extent that that’s possible in the time available.

As Rich mentioned, if you turn to page 5 of the workbook, you’ll see that there are three groupings. There’s community/individual activities as a group, industrial activities as a group, and institutional activities as a group.

And you’ll see that then the workbook proceeds to list the indicators under each of their groupings, and it asks you, will ask each one of you to think about them in terms of whether those indicators are as a whole reflective of what we’re trying to achieve, and individually whether they’re necessary, sufficient, feasible, and understandable.

And so we’re going to be asking your advice as to whether we should keep each one of these indicators, whether we should ditch any one of these indicators, whether we should hold them for further thinking, or whether we should add new ones, because these as a whole, as the work is developing, may or may not do the job that we want them to do.

So we’re really interested in your views on that. The way that we hope…because there are some 53 on the list, and we only have an hour and ten minutes with you to really pick your brains, what we’ve done is we’ve divided you into three groups, and that’s completely up to you as to which one you pick, and the labels for each group is on the back tables there.

We’ve divided you into three groups to reflect the indicator groupings. So if the community/individual activities table is full up at 10:00, you’re going to have to go to the industrial or institutional one.

So what we’re trying to do is vet each group of indicators and then report back as to your findings. The table discussions will be led by members of our panel here, so we’re trying to get some organization to the conversation because as you know, with societal indicators, you could range anywhere and everywhere with the conversation.

So there will be three tables. They are labeled at the back there. And at around 10:00, after the break, we’ll get working on those.

There are 53 of them in total so far. The temptation when you’re discussing indicators is often to add more as opposed to take them out. As I think in the presentation we saw today, that the total SOLEC suite, that is the environmental-ecological piece and the societal piece, has currently 80 indicators in it, which by…some people think that’s too many.

So if we have 53 just on the societal category, we’re adding considerably to that, and I think the objective might to reduce that as opposed to add. So we have 53, so it could look at them very hard and see do we really need these, which ones can we take out, or are there ones that aren’t reflected here that would better do the job of many of them? So the idea is to pare them down to the extent that we can while still being able to tell whether or not we’ve met our objective.

So we’ll have reports from each table at around 11:30, discuss the results of each table. And as well, we want to talk about Rolanda’s question, which is a very significant and important question, which is not only relationships, but also the linkages and how we’re going to use that knowledge.

And some of the earlier work that we have done is reflected in here, but still, it’s probably one of the largest questions that’s in this workshop today. So we want to have your insight into how we may, and we’ve had a couple of questions on that already, but generally would like to have a group discussion on that.

So at 12:00, we should have everything that you know about indicators documented so that we can prepare a workshop report and it could move into the SOLEC thinking process. And perhaps in 2003, there will be a nice, brightly colored State of the Lakes report and you’ll see your input in there.

So that’s the idea. I hope that you’ll stay with us until 12:00. We need to pick your brains and harvest your knowledge. There’s coffee out there, I think I saw it, if we’re quick. There isn’t? There was some this morning.

UNIDENTIFIED:

It’s not for us.

SALLY LEPPARD:

It’s not for us? You said just take it if you could get it, though, when I asked you, so ... but yes, a question?

UNIDENTIFIED:

(inaudible)...

HARVEY SHEAR:

We have five now in the list of 80 that are essentially place-holders. I don’t have any pre-conceived idea of whether it should be 10 or 15 or 20. Let’s just see what comes out of this.

SALLY LEPPARD:

Yeah. Sir?

UNIDENTIFIED:

Are we allowed to pose just a general question?

SALLY LEPPARD:

Absolutely.

UNIDENTIFIED:

For more than two decades, the International Joint Commission has been attempting to develop (inaudible)... ecosystem approach (inaudible)... stakeholders (inaudible)... In reading over this material, I don’t see any linkage to the ecosystem approach (inaudible)...somebody who is interested in institutional analysis would love to see how this particular work on the development of indicators, how it’s moved the development of the ecosystem (inaudible)...greater level of maturity (inaudible)...

HARVEY SHEAR:

This set of indicators is a subset of the entire suite, and that entire suite encompasses the physical environment and the human environment, the built-up environment, if you will, human society and the “natural environment”. So if you take it as an entire suite, that is what we would consider, from a reporting perspective, an ecosystem approach to reporting.

Prior to SOLEC, most of the reporting that was done was focused on chemicals and transient chemicals. With our first SOLEC report, we looked at habitats, at wetlands, we looked at fish populations and so on, we looked at human economy and human health.

So from our reporting perspective, it’s very comprehensive. This is another element of that comprehensive reporting which, taken in its entirety, would be our view of an ecosystemic reporting approach.

Programmatically, we hope these indicators will show us if there is a weak spot in the program delivery part of that ecosystem approach by saying we’re not making any progress here, what’s wrong, there’s something wrong programmatically. Does that answer your question?

UNIDENTIFIED:

(inaudible)...more forceful linkage to the ecosystem approach (inaudible)...IJC and Environment Canada (inaudible)... The other question is, Harvey, you mentioned that you could continually add to this suite (inaudible)...

If (inaudible)...scientists (inaudible)...better to really focus attention on (inaudible)...and make sure that you’ve got consistency through time, so that after 1-2-3-4 decades, at least we’ve got (inaudible)... If we keep on adding to the see suite, we may never get to the point where we’d be able to do good time (inaudible) analysis.

HARVEY SHEAR:

Go ahead.

PAUL HORVATIN:

Well, I guess one comment…stepping back to the overall suite we’ve put together, we started looking at 800 of them, indicators, of which there were literally dozens of societal indicators there.

The problem that we’re running into is there are dispersed researchers working on different parts and pieces. So for some indicators we came up with, there may be a very good dataset for the western basin of, say, Lake Erie, because there is a university close by and they have done it very, very well, and because there was 10, 15, maybe 20 years worth of data that’s been collected over time.

But the problem we’re running into is that the only place the data exists is the western basin of Lake Erie. If the question comes up, well, what do you have for the eastern basin of Ontario or southern Lake Michigan, well, it’s not there.

So one of the things that we’re attempting to do within SOLEC itself is to identify what are those indicators where we don’t maybe have 20-30 years worth of data out of the western basin of Erie that is doing a very, very good of quantifying the state of the environment for Erie. And the question is can we take that and can we transport that approach to throughout the basin.

Now one of the things that we talk about in SOLEC, we look at things from a three-scale perspective, and the one slide that we usually use is that you’ve got the space shuttle at one scale, and what you can see from the space shuttle is you see the five big Great Lakes smacked on top of North America; what you get at that scale is pretty broad.

The next representation we use is a biplane. Well, a biplane you can fly at a pretty low altitude and you can start seeing much more of the land features and the lake features. The third scale we use is basically a canoe. Because if you’re paddling a canoe, you can literally see the cattails, you can see the frog, you can see the fish.

So we have a scale issue that we’re dealing with in terms of how do you quantify the environment, how do we pull that together. And unfortunately, we tend to think and act more two-dimensionally, but in many cases the environment itself doesn’t necessarily fit into the approach that we would like to do things in terms of two-dimensional. So we have to sort of…we’re finding alternate ways.

In terms of the societal indicators themselves that we’re looking at here, the problem that we’re facing is there are parts and pieces of the database that’s available throughout the Great Lakes basin. In some cases, some of these came from outside of the basin and may have been suggested.

So what we’re trying to do is sort of go through the 50-some of these proposed indicators to see which ones are most applicable for all five Great Lakes, which ones would be acceptable to the majority of people that would say yes, this does represent something.

I can give you an example: contaminants, at one point, the question was raised probably 20-30 years ago, well, should we mention contaminants in birds, should we measure them in fish, should we measure them in water, should we measure them in sediments?

Now you can take the same molecule of PCBs, theoretically, and measure it throughout the environment, but where is the best place? What represents the basin? It’s a debate that’s been going on now for…I’ve been involved with the EPA for 25 years and I don’t think it’ll be resolved before I retire before it’s different perspectives of where things should be at.

So we’re facing this same dilemma here for the societal questions. And what we’re trying to do is find what is the best approach that we can take to address the situation.

Will it be perfect? Probably not. Will it change over time? I can almost guarantee it, because we’ve already seen some fairly significant changes already in the list of the 80 indicators we’ve already come up with over the last 3-4 years already because people have introduced different ideas, different concepts, and we’re tweaking it. It’s a very dynamic process.

So does that get closer to an answer? Okay.

SALLY LEPPARD:

Any other questions about the presentations? Just quickly, yeah.

UNIDENTIFIED:

(inaudible)...

PAUL HORVATIN:

I would hope that you would share your advice with us at 10:00, because that’s part of the reasons of this workshop and over the next two to three years, to start bringing those levels of integration into the process.

Those of you who have attended any of the SOLECs over the last couple of years, John Mills from Environment Canada and my regional administrator have said all along they would like to see one, maybe two, maybe three total indicators representing the entirety of the Great Lakes basin.

What are they? I have no clue. How we integrate it ... if you remember, one of the things that has been talked about is indices; within SOLEC, we’re trying to find ways of developing indices, where we can take 5-6-7-8 indicators, sort of finding ways to combine them to find an index.

I know both in the U.S. and Canada, we have gross domestic production, we have all of these economic indicators where there is literally millions of data points every months, from unemployment, etc., brought together to do an index.

So that’s a concept we’re trying to work on. Unfortunately, a lot of those indices that we’re thinking about haven’t been done before, they haven’t been developed and aren’t proven, but we’re thinking about trying to work on it.

UNIDENTIFIED:

(inaudible)...

PAUL HORVATIN:

But that’s the real challenge and we recognize the fact it’s there.

SALLY LEPPARD:

There’s a lady at the back there.

UNIDENTIFIED:

(inaudible)...

SALLY LEPPARD:

Harvey, I think you mentioned that at the beginning.

HARVEY SHEAR:

Yes, we have. The way we operate in SOLEC is not a whole lot of original writing, but we mine existing information, we don’t waste any.

And in fact, I mentioned specifically, when I said some of this work goes back 12 years, that was specifically on the old Lake Ontario ecosystem objectives group, I think they had something they called stewardship. So we’ve gone back to that; we hopefully haven’t lost very much of the work that’s been done over the last 12 years.

UNIDENTIFIED:

(inaudible)...

SALLY LEPPARD:

It’s in the development process.

HARVEY SHEAR:

For this, it’s developmental, yeah.

SALLY LEPPARD:

Yeah.

HARVEY SHEAR:

I think ...

UNIDENTIFIED:

(inaudible)...

HARVEY SHEAR:

Things move slowly in government. Marilyn?

UNIDENTIFIED:

(inaudible)...

SALLY LEPPARD:

Okay, thank you.

HARVEY SHEAR:

Good point.

SALLY LEPPARD:

In terms of the discussions at the tables, there’s types of ideas that can come out. What we would really like is to look at the specific ones because that sort of grouping can happen…you can group them any way, I guess, you could group them that way afterwards. We look at the very specific ones today, and we could also talk about the overall structure and framework, if your table wishes to do so. So are there any other specific questions or should we break up? Yeah?

UNIDENTIFIED:

(inaudible)...

SALLY LEPPARD:

Are there any comments from the panel on that point?

UNIDENTIFIED:

I’d like to make one comment on that. We had a good presentation, I think, this morning on the traditional knowledge basis as a point of departure, as we like to say in SOLEC, and so we really need to be thinking along the lines of what indicators will tell us if, at our very fiber of what we do, we’re considering ecological impacts or ecological consequences of ecological protection or whatever you want to call it.

I think that’s how you resolve the “what does the number mean” sort of thing to different people.

HARVEY SHEAR:

Caroline, these indicators are meant to fit in the pressure state response box. This is the societal response…how is society responding to various environmental pressures. Are we reducing our miles traveled by car, for example? And if the answer is no, then presumably there will be a negative environmental impact both in terms of fuel and CO2 and materials used and highways built and so on. So it doesn’t stand…it’s part of the response component.

SALLY LEPPARD:

Okay, last one.

UNIDENTIFIED:

(inaudible)...

SALLY LEPPARD:

It’s not going to be an easy hour and a few minutes, I don’t think, but I mean, that’s the whole point of this conversation we’re having today, is to get that insight in time so that it can influence the outcomes. We’re at the very early stages and we’re trying to build on work that’s done and create new ideas. So how about we take ten minutes – is ten minutes okay? – just to make phone calls, stretch your legs, pick up a glass of water – is there any water, I think? We really wouldn’t ...

PAUL HORVATIN:

There’s coffee over there, you can steal some ...

SALLY LEPPARD:

You can try and steal some. But we would like to have you back at 10:10 and I would appreciate if you wouldn’t leave the building and go anywhere else because I’ll never get you back then.

PAUL HORVATIN:

Don’t leave the floor.

SALLY LEPPARD:

This is a great opportunity to influence the societal indicators for SOLEC. We’ll see you at 10:10, I hope.

(BREAK AND BREAK-OUT SESSIONS)

HARVEY SHEAR:

Okay, folks, I know you could probably go at this all day, but we do need to wrap up. This is not the end of a process process, it’s only the beginning, so we’ll have more opportunities to discuss this. But if you can wrap up in the next minute or so and then we’ll hear a short report from each group. Really, nobody listens to me. It’s terrible.

SALLY LEPPARD:

Okay, Rich, let’s go.

HARVEY SHEAR:

You always listen to me? No, nobody ever listens to me.

UNIDENTIFIED:

Why would anyone ever listen to you?

HARVEY SHEAR:

God, my wife doesn’t listen to me, you don’t listen to me, nobody listens to me. My dog listens to me, because I feed him.

SALLY LEPPARD:

We’re not usually as impolite getting people back. Are people comfortable sitting there, where they are? Good. Dale, do you want to begin to report?

DALE PHENICIE
(Council of Great Lakes Industries):

Well, it’s too bad I had to be first, and it’s a long ways from here to there. We had a very interesting discussion and far too little time to develop it to the point that it needs to be developed, but we did make progress. We’re down from 13 indicators to 7. How that’s, huh? All right, so that’s pretty good.

But the bad news is that we threw out essentially every one that’s been proposed and added a bunch of new ones to replace them, which have to be developed further.

But just to recap what people said in general terms was that they wanted to see us be available to develop a structure or framework for the industrial stewardship activity list such that they kind of would fit into categories that would apply to many different sectors, and you’ll see how we did that in a moment.

We also said that the indicators have to somehow be understandable by the public, and we realized that that probably was inconsistent with the direction that we headed. We agreed that there were too many and we sought to try to reduce them. And there was a big concern about being able to show a response.

So having had that kind of introductory discussion, we went through and said things like CFC recovery rates and knocks and socks (?) abatement equipment, on stationary sources, percentage of forest harvest regenerated, managed forest ratio, technical cooperation, grants, investment and pollution prevention and control, and percentage of R&D…of GNP spent on R&D, rather, herbicide, fertilizer, pesticide consumption, renewable energy as a percentage of total consumption, number of industry lifecycle programs, and the price of premium gasoline. None of them fit the bill, so we said those should disappear.

And in place, we would keep, with perhaps some little modification, number 31, membership to voluntary compliance agreements, and things like ISO 14000 or environmental management systems or some other sort of thing - and we may be doubling up here because you’ll hear something a little different in a minute – as long as that assessment is weighted in some way.

Because it’s one thing to say that there’s a lot of these programs in place, but there’s another thing to say is what percentage of production in any particular sector does that include, so it needs to be weighted.

And then the reinvestment of natural capital one we said was okay as long as it included things like reforestation, rehabilitation of resource sites, things like wetlands and other features, the incorporation of forest management practices and plans within forest activities, and that kind of thing, as long as you include that in whatever natural capital is, then that can replace some of the ones further up the list.

Then we added some new ones to take place of the ones that were decimated here. Money spent on development or implementing sustainable practices and/or technologies replaces a number of those that I previously mentioned as ones we thought were too specific and didn’t really get at the whole concept of sustainable practices.

The next one was – and this may be a duplicate of our keeping number 31, so we’ll have to look at that further – application of BMPs in all sectors. So it takes car of the farm, fertilizer, herbicide, pesticide, because it’s not the consumption that we wanted to focus on, it was what do people that are practicing those activities, how do they do it. And so that was put into this BMP thing, as was other industrial activities, things like forestry, things like industrial processes and what not.

Then, the next new indicator we added was a category called employing eco-efficiency, which means that you take a look at the entire activity and decide is energy use efficient, are resource uses efficient, are environmental costs being considered and that kind of thing.

A separate indicator entitled product stewardship, which looked at are you taking back products, are you incorporating recyclable materials into products, are you designing your products for the environment, are you doing all those kinds of things.

And then, a final one, which dealt with the waste disposal aspect, because you’re always probably going to have materials that you can’t reuse, recycle or whatnot, then how are you doing that, how well are you complying with regulations, what about air emissions, what about water discharges and all of that kind of stuff.

So we realize that those last five replacements indicators need to be developed and flushed out, and of course volunteer to help do that.

SALLY LEPPARD:

And you’ve got ...

DALE PHENICIE:

But that’s the way…that’s the way we would do it.

SALLY LEPPARD:

You’ve got the names and addresses down.

DALE PHENICIE:

I sure have.

SALLY LEPPARD:

Good, that’s great. Thanks very much. Is there any discussion on that? I’m sure there is.

UNIDENTIFIED:

(inaudible)...

SALLY LEPPARD: So we could add that to the list of things to consider and flush out. Any other ...?

UNIDENTIFIED:

(inaudible)...

SALLY LEPPARD:

It is ...

UNIDENTIFIED:

(inaudible)...

SALLY LEPPARD:

Anything else on the industry? I know that others at other tables would have loved to have had a go at those, and we’ll talk about that opportunity, if there is an opportunity for that, after we’ve heard all of the reports. Rich, do you want to go next?

RICHARD BUTLER:

Okay, at the institutional table, we started off on the first three, 37 to 39, and we took quite a bit of time working on those first three because I think what we were looking to do was actually shift from what some of these indicators appear to be in terms of process-based and try to look more towards the end points.

If I look for an example here, we have expenditures on energy efficiency, alternative energies, and climate trends research, and we were looking more at adjusting that.

So in terms of 37 to 39, we’d sort of held these with a review to look at necessarily, rather than the activity, the desired state, so the end point, the actual money being put into, say, climate change research as it relates to improving knowledge specifically, or looking at regulations and programs and the amount of money put directly into regulations and programs, so separating in that way

Moving down toward protected area as a percentage, again, we were looking at the sufficiency of that indicator is more, better – there’s some underlying assumptions in that indicator – so more work needs to be done on it.

In terms of charges for waste disposal and the one below, 41 and 42, we talked about there being in many ways a parallel stream between the two, looking less at the actual money spent in that way and looking on a broader perspective, the management plans of municipalities and groups like that, so looking at watershed planning and management within municipalities and then having those actions a function of that greater policy leading to process in that way, if I’m explaining it correctly.

43, we pretty much nicked. 44, we didn’t like that particular indicator, but from an institutional perspective, education was a very big issue. So in our add your owns, we talked a good deal about looking at environmental curriculum, possibly time spent on environmental activities in education. We also made mention that we weren’t looking directly at children, it was education in a broad sense, so we expanded on that.

Xed 45. Looking again, 46, looking at the number and scope of sustainable development strategies, there would of course be some conversation around what represents sustainable development. So in terms of the understandability of that indicator, that was questioned. But again, it goes back to the larger issue of looking at strategies and municipalities rather than that indicator particularly.

Number 47, this was an interesting indicator because it spoke to a larger issue that we were talking about in our group, which was an evolutionary ability of these indicators.

So looking at the number of sectoral guidelines, is it possible to have an indicator that in some way sets a benchmark, sort of an absence or presence, of regulation in that way? Later on, once you’ve established that sort of structure, can we take it that its effectiveness is being measured, are there positive steps being taken? And again, as things hopefully improve, is there a target or is there an end point at which point you can say you have been successful in that way? So that was an interesting indicator in terms of how to build indicators in this suite entirely.

Next, 48, and then, again, 49 relates to the larger issue of planning in municipalities. 50 we didn’t discuss. And then, 51 through 53, we looked at some of the points that were raised by these indicators, the way that sustainability might be able to be measure on a spatial scale, perhaps, its integration in different areas, and its spread, although we didn’t particularly like the language of those.

And so in that way, we’re probably going to get rid of or recommend the removal of those because of the language. But some of the ideals people mentioned they thought were relevant to the larger argument of framework.

So we talked a little bit about larger issues in this group in particular, some of those being expenditure towards knowledge, as I mentioned, the institutionalization of watershed planning, which would go to several of these as a measurement of that, but I need to look at whether or not there are indicators that can actually measure this integration, and definitely an educational shift as well.

And I hope I…I think I covered everything. Did I miss anything from our group? Yeah?

UNIDENTIFIED:

(inaudible)...

RICHARD BUTLER:

That’s right, we talked about the lack of rural coverage, particularly with this indicator.

UNIDENTIFIED:

(inaudible)...

SALLY LEPPARD:

Okay, I’m just going to take one last question on this segment, report the next segment, and then we’ll try and get some (inaudible)...to the high-level comments, because I know we should…somebody said we should be here for five days, not one hour, so we can’t keep you hear for five days, as much as we’d love to. I think ...

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UNIDENTIFIED:

(inaudible)...

SALLY LEPPARD:

Thanks very much. Okay, I’m just going to report on the community/individual activities briefly. We started off, I think as many of you did, with some fairly high-level discussion, then there were a few major comments that it depends what we’re trying to measure. If we’re trying to measure response or responsibility, then the indicators would be different.

And so after a small talk about that, we decided that we would look at it from the point of view of responsibility, individual and community responsibility, but taking into account that we must bear in mind that those indicators are to be used for that.

Another major point that came out is that it’s very difficult to divide people into the other categories. For example, there are other categories under society in the SOLEC suite, urban economics and this one, which is community and individual and institutional and so on. It’s very, very difficult to do that, so we have to be careful and look at the thing holistically.

We too in our group noted that there was mostly emphasis on urban and not much at all on rural. And as well, we looked at the whole question of these being principally fairly middle-class types of indicators, that social equity issues are not represented, and we tried to grapple with the question that was raised this morning by Rolanda relating to the aboriginal perspectives.

And there was a suggestion for SOLEC to consider that in fact, there could be three groups in the side of each category – urban, rural, and aboriginal – just so we could make sure that the gaps were addressed and we weren’t trying to integrate them too much.

The other thing was of course was the need to define what we mean by community, because in some of the indicators in this particular grouping, a community is confused with municipal governments. And so those indicators would go to the institutional side probably.

So those were the sort of fairly high-level comments. Of course, the need to connect it always and keep focused on the Great Lakes basin ecosystem, the ecology and health of the system, because with societal and particularly with community, they could be as broad as they are large, and we could end up with thousands.

And in fact, what we tried to do was to shorten the list and ended up with some new ideas and we didn’t really get rid of very many; I think we only got rid of one. And I’m not responsible; I was just the facilitator for that. (LAUGHS)

We also only got through 1 a). We didn’t get to 1 b), which leads to the question I think that you were raising, Sir, which is how can people continue to be involved in this exercise.

But just very quickly, I’ll go through them. Inside of the indicators of which we looked at, ten, there was a need for some structure, as the gentleman mentioned, and grouping of them, and we identified three major groupings within resource use and conservation: they would be water quality, solid waste, and air.

And then we looked at the indicators within those categories. In terms of water quality, there was a suggestion that in fact, that it needs to reflect the number connected not only to sewage treatment, but specifically to secondary and tertiary treatment, and probably that one is more in the institutional category.

And one was added, which is to look at the percentage of people whose septages pumped and treated at sewage treatment plants, and that would deal more with the rural side. In terms of…and that was the water quality one, that’s number 1.

The next water quality one we looked at was number 5, and we got into that whole discussion that’s raging in municipalities right now about that question on household pesticide and herbicide use. So we decided that it needs to be much better clarified, that particular one, and we need to really make sure that what is meant, however it is important, it needs more work.

In terms of additional ones relating to water quality, we talked about the public perception of the quality of drinking water and that that could be mentioned by the number of - is it water bottles? – bottled water consumed.

Another one that relates not only to water quality but waste is the number of household hazardous waste programs in the Great Lakes basin. Water consumption was also a measure that was proposed.

I think those are the ones…but really, I think the message we got from the group is that there is really a need to show community and individual contributions to improving water quality. So that was the key message in relation to the ones on water quality which, as I said, is number one and number five and then some new ones.

In terms of solid waste, that would be number two and three. And again, in numbers two and three, waste minimization and recycling, they are program-related, so those would be institutional probably; they should go into the institutional section because they are municipalities that are developing and providing those programs.

But the key here in terms of community and individual is the extent to which people are participating in those programs, so that would be the measure for solid waste, that is number two and three.

We then got into the air quality side, and those were number 4, 6, 7 and 8, and we called upon Harvey to talk to us about how important air quality is in the whole SOLEC indicator suite and he reiterated it’s extremely important, so we continued with vigor, I’d say.

And number 4, which is the first one we looked at, which is the ratio of alternative (inaudible) fuel vehicles, we decided that that was really too early to say, there really weren’t measures there, it really wasn’t an advanced process, so that that should be put on hold.

In terms of number 6, per capital miles traveled by automobiles, we thought that that was better reflected in a new number 8, which I’ll talk to you about. So that one was the one that we ditched.

And number 7 we thought had merit, but weren’t really sure if it was necessary or not, vehicles per populated land area.

So in terms of number 8, which is really a big air quality category now, it would include number 6 potentially, but the whole titlery (?) should be related to fuel efficiency, and that within fuel efficiency we should look at private automobile use, but we should also look at public transit. And so a new one was suggested around use of public transit because it was thought that that could be measured, and if it increased, that would be good.

We didn’t get to numbers 9 and 10 because we elected to spend our last three or four minutes on talking about the whole question that was raised by Rolanda this morning, and I think I’ve addressed that. Is there anything that I missed? I mean, I know I missed a lot, the report will be more detailed, but is there anything I missed, big things? No? Any questions? Great.

So in terms of overall or broad questions that you have about the work that we have just done in the last hour and a half, are there any big gaps you have noticed? I mean, you have talked about the need for structure, you have talked about the need to look at end points, the need, you know, for a systematic approach. Any other big ideas you have that you want to share with us at this point?

UNIDENTIFIED:

(inaudible)...

SALLY LEPPARD:

It’s huge and you should be congratulated for doing as much damage as you did in an hour. (LAUGHS) Yeah?

UNIDENTIFIED:

(inaudible)...

SALLY LEPPARD:

Yeah, thank you.

UNIDENTIFIED:

(inaudible)...

SALLY LEPPARD:

And that’s just one, potentially, right? But two or three big ones like that (inaudible)...of these other things, yeah.

UNIDENTIFIED:

(inaudible)...

SALLY LEPPARD:

Thinking outside of the box, right? Any other big ideas that you have for…I mean, I’m not sure if we kept you together for five days whether or not you could work this out, but I’m pretty confident you could. (LAUGHS) Any other take-home messages for SOLEC?

UNIDENTIFIED:

(inaudible)...

SALLY LEPPARD:

Well, thanks very much. Just one last point and then I’ll turn it back to ...

UNIDENTIFIED:

(inaudible)...

SALLY LEPPARD:

Yeah, I think that we had one on pesticides, too, because there are a number of things combined. So I think that message has been heard and really appreciated. And Marty (?) is here and he is trying to kick us out because he has to get ready for the next one…you’re not? You are. Anyway, we’re finished, Marty. So it was great. I just want to thank you all and then pass you over to Paul and Harvey to provide closing thank yous.

PAUL HORVATIN:

Again, I’d like to thank everyone for participating. It’ll take my notes. I think we moved…I won’t say we moved it, but I guess we nudged the concept of societal indicators a little bit further.

As we said this morning, this is the first step of probably a many, many, many step process. We’re hoping to be able to bring a little bit of closure to this concept a year from now at SOLEC 2002 in Cleveland, Ohio. But in the meantime, there is a lot of additional work that needs to continue on this.

What we’re proposing is we’re going to take the results of this workshop here this morning, we will put it online in some sort of an interactive web-based process so that what could happen is that you’ll see the results of this, be able to provide comment, further ideas, and we’re going to continue working on this.

And it will be available at binational.net, which is the website we have here. If you haven’t heard yet, this is a new website that Environment Canada and the U.S. EPA have worked on and we finally got it through all of the Internet security issues in both countries, the language requirements in both countries, and this thing took us about a year to make it happen.

It should normally take 30 seconds to buy a website name from somebody and go forth and do great things, but the government being what it is, we had to go through a whole bunch of hurdles and hoops and keyholes to get through, but we succeeded.

The one thing that we will also be doing here is that the Canadians will have the task of doing the language conversion, so it’ll be in both French and English, it will be available.

And we would hope that this will be in some interactive format so that input from today will be put on the site, you’ll be able to see it, be able to interact, give us feedback, and you’ll be able to see the input from everyone, so we’ll try to make this as interactive as we can through the next year.

And again, we’ll be hoping to be able to bring closure to this in Cleveland a year from now, so you’ll be able to hopefully see a little better, refined versions of where we’re at.

And one thing I do want to say, because during the break and after, now, people, one thing I want to react to is that the way we’re doing a lot of this stuff in SOLEC, this is absolutely not top-down, this is really bottom-up. We’ve done that for literally all of the indicators and everything we’ve been doing for about the last about six years now.

What we do is we basically collect a lot of good ideas, great ideas, and maybe sometimes not so great ideas, suggestions and ideas people have, try to compile it together, and then we try to get a lot of bright, smart people together to basically then tell us or give us advice or steer us in the right way to go.

So this is not like Environment Canada and the EPA saying, well, we know the right answer and the answer is, you know, 42, don’t ask me how we got there but we know 42 is the right answer and that’s what you have to go do. So we don’t take it from that perspective. We’re trying to build it from bottom up.

And the whole idea is at the end of the day, the end of the week, end of the month, there will be people in the Great Lakes community at large willing to accept what we’ve got and help us to create and develop what we’re doing.

Creating an indicator is only as good as we have the willingness of organizations to collect the data, analyze the data and report it back out. We’re not looking for a bunch of indicators that, you know, are pious, in fact, wow, aren’t these great, but then if nobody ever collects a single stitch of information and data on it, that indicator to us is worthless and so the Great Lakes community as a whole is worthless.

So the concept is to try to do things that will be usable across the board, both countries, and help us better understand what we’re doing. Again, SOLEC stands for basically state of the lakes, which is what we’re after in terms of understanding what the state of the lakes are, and it’s not just the water chemistry or the biology, but it’s the whole basin as a whole.

So with that, I’ll pass the mic onto Harvey, if he has anything else to add to it, and we can move on.

HARVEY SHEAR:

Before I do, I think Dale wanted to have a quick word before I finish off.

DALE PHENICIE:

I just wanted to thank the IJC staff and commissioners for this opportunity because early on, when they were planning for this meeting, they came to the Council of Great Lakes Industries and said what would interest industrial participants and how can we make this meeting better, and we said, well, what we need is some productive, hands-on opportunities to work on important questions and issues rather than just everybody come and listen.

And this has been just a really good opportunity, and I’m sorry that there aren’t more industrial people here. Unfortunately, necessary to change the date, and the travel restrictions that everybody’s operating on now prevented a bigger crowd, but we really do appreciate it.

And I’m sorry that Commissioner Blaney left so he couldn’t hear me say that, but this has been just great and this is what biannual forum-type programs ought to be like.

HARVEY SHEAR:

I second that. When somebody from the IJC asked me back last November did I have any thoughts on break-out sessions and workshops at the forum, my immediate reaction was yes, we need to do a workshop on societal indicators. Without any thought of what it might be, I said here’s a perfect opportunity to tap into several hundred people, and so we have been pursuing that and developing that over the last few months.

And again, I want to thank the Commission and staff for providing the facilities and so on to put this on and the translation, even though it probably wasn’t needed, but ...

This is, as Paul said, it’s a step along the path. Hopefully, we’ll be able to get some interactive electronic input to continue this on. And certainly from my perspective, I think we’d want to have a break-out session at SOLEC 2002 in Cleveland to further this and, you know, maybe even begin to report on some of these indicators; I’m sure there is data around.

We will get the revised version of this put up on the website as quickly as we can, in both languages. So all I would suggest is sort of keep an eye out and tap into that website ever so often and see if it’s there.

We don’t have an easy way of getting at you unless you all leave your business cards and we establish an e-mail network or a list of some kind; I guess we could do that. But otherwise, just tap into that once a week or something and eventually, shortly, you’ll see a site marked societal indicators, and that’ll be your clue.

With that, I’d like to thank everyone for attending. I think it was a good session. And I guess we can go and have some lunch. Merci beaucoup.

UNIDENTIFIED:

(inaudible)...

PAUL HORVATIN:

We’ve got thick skins.

UNIDENTIFIED:

(inaudible)... (LAUGHS)

PAUL HORVATIN:

You’re welcome.

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