Sixteenth International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability

Abstract

In 2017 the International Joint Commission (IJC) implemented a December, 2016 order to allow the water levels of Lake Ontario to rise and fall more naturally by changing the management of the release of water to the Great Lakes. The purpose of the policy was to allow for more growth of natural wetland areas and to ease human intervention into water allocation. The implementation of the policy coincided with a higher than average rainy season which led to flooding and erosion of housing and recreation areas along the Ontario lake shore on both the Canada and US sides. This paper explores the policy implementation and its impact on various stakeholders and public opinion to better understand the danger of implementing sustainable ecosystem policies on an uninformed public sees itself as separate from the ecosystem. Through discourse analysis of local US and Canadian Newspaper coverage we examine how the policy was framed, how it was linked to various stakeholders, and how it was perceived as either a policy failure or natural occurrence. Our findings show implications on the importance of community scientific literacy and public education campaigns when implementing sustainability policies.