When it comes to “sustainable development,” environmentalists, industrialists, developers and lakeshore residents are all in agreement …

They agree that not one of them can specifically define this most recent focus in planning philosophies.

But many also agree that this elusively defined philosophy might be the best chance out there to get everyone talking - together - about crucial decisions facing the Lake Superior basin without conversation disintegrating into combat.

Ask what “sustainable development” - or for the developmentally squeamish “sustainability” - projects exist in Lake Superior’s basin, and you will be regaled with an extraordinary range of examples like:

• School children spray-painting links-to-Lake Superior reminders on town storm drains.

• Cities weaning industrial operations from waterfront areas to create lower environmental impact businesses and lakewalks to attract visitors.

• Citizens restoring sites once contaminated by past ill-informed industrial practices.

• Lumber operations cooperating with multi-layered forestry management that not only ensures future log harvests but future ecological diversity.

The lists, like the definitions, seem endless. What, then, is “sustainable development?” 

Essentially, it’s three legs for any project to stand on … planning that takes equally into account the environmental, social and economic impacts of actions. Give short shrift to any of the legs, and the stool becomes unstable and wobbly, just as the project would for those who believe in the three-way balance.

“Sustainable development,” as described in the 1987 report of a world commission on environment and development, strives “to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

The concept has gained national and international attention. In the United States, the President’s Council on Sustainable Development in 1996 published a report titled, “Sustainable America: A new consensus for prosperity, opportunity and a healthy environment.” It followed an international lead from 10 years earlier.

Around the lake basin, states and communities are gathering their own councils on “sustainability.”

The Lake Superior Binational Program has encouraged a focus on “sustainability” within the lake basin. In defining the role of a “Developing Sustainability” Committee, however, the program’s Lake Superior Work Group, a collection of U.S. and Canadian government agency representatives, skirted a specific definition for outlining of broader concepts and dropped the word “development.”

Jim Cantrill, U.S. co-chair of the work group and a professor at Northern Michigan University in Marquette, outlines the three legs this way:

“You don’t want to save the environment to run everybody out of the basin. You can’t foreground just the economics … because that’s not going to be sustainable. You can’t sacrifice the (region’s) social values on the altar of economic and environmental sustainability.”

The concept in this region borrows in philosophy and language from cultures with a longer history around the lake: the Native American idea of the Seventh Generation (see next section).

While many elements of “sustainable development” started with moves toward environmental awareness in the 1960s, the concept gives humans a new role. Rather than putting humans outside the ecosystem as either simply users or abusers of it, sustainable development incorporates them into thinking about the system.

“At least for me, in resource management for 20 years, I felt I was looking at the landscape, I was looking at wildlife and I was looking at water quality, but when it came to human beings, I came to separate them as … part of the problem,” says Carl Lindquist, member of the Lake Superior Binational Forum and director of the Chocolay River Watershed Project.

“We are part of it. We are here to stay; we’ve been here since the removal of the glaciers.”

Cantrill agrees. “Agencies and industry across the board have come sooner or later to that decision: that we are part of the ecosystem.”

Some planners feel “sustainable development” is just a fancy term for what should be common practice.

“I think it’s one of those buzz words, with a nice, warm fuzzy feeling about it,” says Jim Hendricks, planning and development director for the city of Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan.

“It’s basic, fundamental garden-variety responsible planning.… Comprehensive planning, when developed properly, takes in all of the economic, environmental and social issues.… Thousands of competing issues have to be balanced to provide a community with quality of life.… You’d minimize the adverse impacts with anything you do.”

Yellow dots represent population congregation in 
this Great Lakes’ graphic, making it easy to see 
why many feel Lake Superior, with its low population, 
has the best chance for controlled, reasonable 
development along its shores. [CLICK TO ENLARGE.]

According to others, the “sustainability” may reflect the ability to sustain on-going discussions between groups that often find themselves in battle over development projects. Commitment to balance environmental, social and economic needs may give common ground for conversation.

“Is it simply a way of keeping those with diverse interests at the table talking? A way to try to balance the various and the sometimes conflicting views?” asks Mark Smith, long-range planning manager for Thunder Bay, Ontario.

“For me, it’s such an obvious concept, it’s like living within your means,” says Mary Rehwald of Northland College in Ashland, Wisconsin. She’s one of those who has been instrumental in gathering diverse groups for four years in a regional Alliance for Sustainability.

“Too often we build our bunkers and climb within them and lob our stones whether we’re on either the green or the brown side of the controversy,” says Cantrill.

Whatever name is given to integrated planning, all also agree that now is the time in the Lake Superior basin for local residents to take command of future development and preservation.

“Certainly, at the level of landscape, you’re dealing with a relatively pristine body of water, so there’s an imperative here,” insists Cantrill. “If you can’t start developing sustainable lifestyles in a place that hasn’t been raped over by the ravages of time, where can you do it?”

For those concerned with the health of Lake Superior, what happens in its narrow watershed remains vitally important.

“The lake isn’t an entity itself. It’s a product of the land around it,” says Mike Gardner with the Sigurd Olson Institute and the Inland Sea Society in Ashland.

Rethinking how to plan and mending wounds of past development vs. environment battles will take time, Cantrill advises. The benefits of opening the discussion will be reaped well beyond the present.

“When you look at sustainability, it is measured in generations, not years. The things that we do today, we may not see the results of in our lifetime,” he adds. “Whether they start today or tomorrow, it really doesn’t matter. Whether it starts sooner rather than later, that does matter.”

Copyright 1999 Lake Superior Magazine