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At a meeting at Monsanto’s corporate headquarters in St. Louis, a group of more than 30 representatives from business, government, academia, agriculture and the nonprofit sector came together to wrestle with how to continue to meet humanity’s needs for energy, water and food while ensuring that our rivers remain healthy today and for generations to come.
In the next 40 years, there could be as many as nine billion people on planet Earth. The health and livelihoods of many, if not all, of these people will be inextricably linked to the sustainable management of freshwater systems including the world’s great rivers.
The meeting was the culmination of six months of discussion—initiated by The Nature Conservancy at the request of Caterpillar Inc.—to inform and shape the evolution of a center that would engage individuals and institutions worldwide in protecting and sustaining the Mississippi and other great rivers for people and nature. The gathering was sponsored by The Nature Conservancy and the National Great Rivers Research and Education Center.
“A central element in the first phase of the Great Rivers Partnership was the Great Rivers Center for Conservation and Learning, primarily focusing on technical exchanges between river managers on five continents,” said Leith Robotham, a senior representative of the Caterpillar Foundation.
“Since their inception in 2005, the GRP and its Center have supported conservation and sustainable development efforts for great rivers around the world,” Robotham added. “Caterpillar challenged The Nature Conservancy and other GRP partners to conceive of a second generation of this effort – one with additional and more diverse collaborations, bolder goals and the power to make a difference, and we agree this is achieved largely through the evolution of the Center.”
Center Will Initially Focus on Mississippi River
At the meeting, the Conservancy shared its vision and draft business plan for a Center with participants, soliciting their comments, questions and input on a number of design elements.
The Center will initially focus on the Mississippi River, leveraging the efforts of the many entities and organizations already working on the river to achieve greater collective impact at the basin level. Lessons learned here would be shared broadly, and the work of the Center would, in turn, be influenced by best practices taking place on other great rivers in the United States and worldwide.
This follows the logic in a recent paper by Paul Keddy and other scientists interested in the conservation of large wetlands around the world (BioScience, Jan. 2009): “The Mississippi River is probably the most intensively studied system of its type, yet it is often treated in isolation. This misses two important opportunities: that of learning from work carried out elsewhere, and that of sharing knowledge.”
The proposed new Center would be led by a small staff that is highly networked to partners. Project teams would be formed around priorities set in response to the needs and perspectives of stakeholders. The teams would gather and synthesize information on these key issues to influence public policy and develop projects that support integrated river management.
“Major river commissions around the world are struggling to implement integrated river management that balances both the human use and ecological health of rivers,” said Karin Krchnak, the Conservancy’s director of international water policy. “This is a unifying theme the Great Rivers Center could address, and the Mississippi River could be an important platform from which to advance this work.”
Initial Response Overwhelmingly Positive
“The response from meeting participants to the creation of this new Center was overwhelmingly positive,” said Diane Rudin, the Conservancy’s senior advisor, Mississippi River. “A Center that served as a single persistent voice for great rivers was perceived as adding value to the work they are already doing and seen as a mechanism for amplifying that work beyond their local areas.”
Scott Davis, Conservancy state director in Tennessee, added that “some of the difficulties in working on Mississippi River issues from Tennessee are the ability to work at a scale that makes a difference for the whole river and of really understanding how our work fits into larger basin-wide issues. The beauty of the Center is that it can serve as an organizing and unifying force throughout the basin from a science, policy and implementation perspective.”
Meeting participants also identified potential challenges in establishing such a Center including how to sustain a large network of organizations over a long period of time and how to work at scales large enough to truly impact an entire river. The Conservancy will continue to engage stakeholders in addressing these questions.
“The issues facing great rivers like the Mississippi are complex and cannot be solved by one or even a few entities working in isolation,” said Michael Reuter, the Conservancy’s director of conservation programs in the Central U.S. Region. “Neither can they be solved overnight. The Center is designed to function as an enduring institution that engages all sectors of society in sustainable river management today, tomorrow and for years to come.”
As plans for the Center evolve, the Conservancy will continue to provide updates in Great Rivers News and on the Great Rivers website.
Nature picture credits (left to right): Confluence of the Crow Wing River and the Mississippi River in Minnesota © Garth Fuller/TNC; American lotus © Andrew Simpson/TNC.
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