With our rallying cry of “solving for sustainability,” the Council of the Great Lakes Region (CGLR) brings together leaders from business, government, academia, environmental organizations, and community partners to protect what connects us and strengthen what sustains us.
As both a convenor and a catalyst, we unite diverse perspectives to advance freshwater stewardship and economic modernization, creating lasting solutions for the Great Lakes–St. Lawrence region and the generations that depend on it.
–Vance Badawey
CEO & President, CGLR
Powerful and vast, the Great Lakes have been a lifeforce since First Nations people first set foot on their shores. The largest group of interconnected freshwater lakes on earth, today they provide drinking water for over 40 million North Americans. Straddling the Canada-US border, the Great Lakes basin also, crucially, sustains the economies of the eight states and two provinces they touch. For the multitude of communities that depend on them, the Great Lakes are ceaselessly generous. But there are limits to their depths, their waters are imperiled. The Great Lakes need a champion. Who speaks for them?
Enter Council of the Great Lakes Region. With its rallying cry of “solving for sustainability”, one voice emerges. CGLR is both a convenor and a catalyst, summoning partners from government and business, academia and advocacy, and environmental NGOs, creating a community whose common bond is the Great Lakes and common challenge, sustainability. Stronger together, CGLR’s network coalesces around an urgent purpose: to protect what connects us and strengthen what sustains us. Uniting freshwater stewardship with economic modernization for future generations is our shared mission based on a fundamental truth: that no one single organization can address the region’s environmental, economic and social sustainability issues alone.
CGLR helps solve our partners’ discrete business sustainability problems when their own resources are at capacity. Partners gain unparalleled access to high-level conversations with sector decision-makers and valuable thought leadership, resulting in enhanced brand reputation, both individual and collective. CGLR turns advocacy into action by harnessing regional expertise, resources and cross-sector agility.
Catalyzing our network, CGLR is able to advance efficient, cost-effective, scalable solutions that deliver measurable impact. The process is a type of alchemy: as individual interest ignites collective purpose, a course of action takes shape and one voice, above all, rings clear. CGLR speaks for the Great Lakes.
Charitable contributions to the CGLR Foundation is the US and the CGLR Canada Foundation are crucial for helping us integrate environmental considerations into our regional public policy decisions, business strategies, and investment choices.
Charitable contributions to the CGLR Foundation in the US and the CGLR Canada Foundation are crucial for helping us integrate environmental considerations into our regional public policy decisions, business strategies, and investment choices.
Supporting CGLR and joining our programs and outreach efforts will help bring sector leaders and stakeholders together to grow the region’s US-Canada economic partnership, transition to a sustainable future, and strengthen our competitiveness in today’s fast pace global marketplace.
