Community engagement is critical to achieve a “thriving and prosperous” future for the Great Lakes–St. Lawrence River basin

• Significant challenges remain in implementing existing policies.
• GLFP workshop outcomes indicated that we are heading away from the desired future.
• There is a lack of strategic policy and programs to move us to the desired future.
• A basin-wide top-down and local, place-based bottom-up initiative is needed.

Despite the existence of agreements, legislation, and institutions at the international, national, and subnational levels within both Canada and the United States, significant policy implementation and reform challenges exist for the Great Lakes–St. Lawrence River basin. The Great Lakes Futures Project (GLFP) fostered collaboration among individuals from academia, government, industry, nongovernment organizations, and others to understand the past, present, and potential futures of the Great Lakes–St. Lawrence River basin, explore in what direction current policies are taking us, and assessing how potential changes in policies and approaches can move us toward the more desirable future. Participants within the GLFP emphasized the importance of stakeholder engagement within the policy recommendations and implementation strategies for reaching a “thriving and prosperous” future for the Great Lakes–St. Lawrence River basin. Here, we propose an implementation strategy founded on stakeholder engagement that 1) identifies clear basin-wide, cross sector, binational, and inclusive priorities, goals, objectives and tactics and 2) increases the roles and responsibilities of local actors and non-governmental sectors to provide a better balance between topdown and bottom-up efforts, all nested within a framework of strong stakeholder engagement. In taking such an approach, the GLFP presents an opportunity to implement mechanisms for fostering change to lead to a more sustainable future for the Great Lakes–St. Lawrence River basin.