By Nate Drag:
Living on the shores of Lake Erie, it is easy to take the Great Lakes for granted. While Lake Erie often means beautiful sunsets, beach visits, and lake effect snow in our daily lives, it is important to remember that the Great Lakes also contain approximately 20% of the world’s available freshwater. As part of its Fluid Culture series, the University at Buffalo’s Humanities Institute is helping our community remember just how fortunate we are in Western New York to have such an amazing resource in our own backyard.
Last evening at 8 pm, global water rights activist Maude Barlow delivered a free public lecture in 120 Clemens Hall on North Campus to discuss issues of Great Lakes water security in the context of water rights issues across the globe. Author of over 15 books and participant in numerous documentary films such as FLOW: For the Love of Water, Barlow is a leading voice in the global debate on water rights and the perception of water as essential component to life that should be respected and held in public trust. And while the rain had been pouring all day and it doesn’t look like Lake Erie will dry up tomorrow, Barlow offered insight to growing scarcity of water for many people around the world and the importance of developing a sustainable relationship with water for those that do.
As a region blessed with Lakes Erie and Ontario, it is hard for us to imagine that water could be of a concern to ours. And with the Great Lakes Compact in place, we should be able to rest easier knowing large scale pipe diversions will not ship Great Lakes water to the arid regions of country. Maude Barlow, in a discussion held yesterday afternoon, put our seemingly infinite Lakes into perspective. Barlow described a myth of abundance that exists in many peoples’ minds about the Great Lakes in her recent report Our Great Lakes Commons: A People’s Plan to Protect the Great Lakes Forever. This report describes the challenges to the Lakes infiniteness through examples such as the fact that if groundwater around the Great Lakes was to be drawn down at the same rate as it is globally, the Lakes will be bone dry in just 80 years. Projections and calculations aside, Barlow also stressed the importance of personal decisions in our relationship with water. With 1/3 of the daily water use in the United States being exported in the form of agricultural commodities, relying more on locally produced sustainable agriculture helps close a loop that leads to net loss of water for a region.
However you view Lake Erie, whether as the backdrop for a sunset, the stage for an adventure, or the source of a glass of water, having discussions about how we relate to our water in our communities and worldwide can be as important as the discussions on what development should occur on the shores of those waters.