A Social Charter for the Great Lakes
The Great Lakes, of course, are already a commons—something shared by many and owned by none. But can a commons truly be a commons if not recognized in law, public policy and the minds of the public at large? This was a central inquiry at the Great Lakes Commons Gathering, held at the University of Notre Dame last fall, which sparked exploration about how to activate people in various arenas to work for the recognition of the lakes as living commons.
One form of governance for the Great Lakes could be the creation of a social charter.
Social charters are a tool commoners have long used to protect themselves from destruction or enclosure of their commons. When people in 13th Century England found their commons lands under threat by the monarch, they drafted the Charter of the Forest alongside the Magna Carta to protect what belonged to all. In South Africa, the South African Freedom Charter ratified by the Congress of the People in 1955 articulated a just vision for the country and unified resistance to the oppression and exploitation of apartheid.
A social charter process will do two vital things toward the establishment of a Great Lakes Commons. First, it will help activate commoners to see they have a rightful, in fact critical role in establishing the vision and principles that can reshape governance of the Great Lakes. Secondly, by engaging people about what those principles ought to be, it will invite a sense of responsibility and stewardship in what happens to the water.
Today, the average person thinks little about their relationship to the waters or their responsibility for them. And yet there is a deep love of the Lakes that evident among the people of the region, but rarely is tapped politically or socially. That’s why we are embarking on a social charter creation process to renew, rediscover and reinvent a stewardship relationship and culture around the Lakes. Beyond the importance of the charter itself, the audacity and clarity of calls for a social charter will break through the status quo and galvanize people around a new possibility.
All of us realize that we need to deepen and expand our knowledge of each other if we are to forge a life sustaining future for our Great Lakes. But it is not easy to connect given the history between the region’s people—Native and settler, urban and rural, descendants of African, European and First Nations peoples. When a commons has been lost, taken or forgotten, our first task is reweaving the web of relationships and understandings. In our days together at Great Lakes Commons gathering we worked to build, recover and recreate the knowledge and connections that will enable us to act together—it marked the beginning of a truer spirit of “we” for the Great Lakes commons that extends hope for the path forward.
—ON THE COMMONS TEAM
