The new Choosing Your Great Lakes Future game puts players in the driver’s seat to navigate present-day choices that determine the road ahead for the Great Lakes in the 2050s.
The IJC Great Lakes Water Quality Board created the game to inspire players to become champions of a sustainable future for the lakes.
The board debuted its scenario game on August 29 with a virtual launch event.
The Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement between Canada and the United States is a guiding framework for binational cooperation toward a shared vision of a healthy and prosperous Great Lakes region where efforts to restore, protect and enhance water quality may benefit present and future generations.
“To put the Agreement into action and uphold its commitments requires us all to think beyond ourselves and beyond the ‘visible time horizon’ of today’s decisions and their immediate benefits, or consequences,” said board US Co-Chair Jon Allan. “Everyone has a role to play in safeguarding the Great Lakes for the future.”
The board began a Great Lakes Horizons project in 2020, with its first phase culminating in the 2023 report: “On the Great Lakes Horizon: Scenarios, Opportunities, Threats, and Responsive Governance.”
“We began to focus on sparking conversation about the factors driving system-level changes that will impact the Great Lakes ecosystem over the next generation,” said board Canadian Co-chair Chris McLaughlin.
The board developed the Choosing Your Great Lakes Future game based on the report. Players make choices about the course of action for 13 “system drivers,” thematic categories such as climate, infrastructure, water demand, the economy and sociopolitical factors. Decisions and changes to these drivers today may, directly or indirectly, influence the present and future conditions of the Great Lakes ecosystem.
Players’ responses to the hypothetical choices about the drivers result in one of four scenarios of what the Great Lakes may look like in 2050.
The board recognizes that the drivers and scenarios necessarily simplify vast and complex systems of change.
Depictions of the four future scenarios, ranging from ‘drastically worse than today’ to an ‘ideal future,’ as illustrated by Jennifer Clausen, included in the 2023 ‘On the Great Lakes Horizon’ report.
The board hopes that people learn from the game, gain an appreciation of the value of using future scenario-based thinking and, ultimately, that it will motivate individuals to engage in conversations and decision-making processes that help keep the Great Lakes region on the path toward a thriving future.
“The future is the consequence of our choices,” said Allan. “The question we ask ourselves is: What’s the legacy we will leave for future generations? If the world that we inherited is one that we’ve had to do some fairly serious cleanup in, can we be the agents of leaving the world in a different and a better place for our future generations?”
During the August 29 webinar’s question and answer period, many participants were eager to know if and how they could use the game as an educational tool in classrooms or as a catalyst for conversation with decision makers.
“We encourage everyone: If you see an opportunity for this to be an educational tool as that’s exactly what it’s intended to be—as an intervention, a game-changer, to spark inspiration and start conversations, and inspire champions,” said Allison Voglesong Zejnati, IJC Great Lakes Regional Office public affairs specialist.
Allison Voglesong Zejnati is public affairs specialist at the IJC’s Great Lakes Regional Office in Windsor, Ontario.
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