About the presentation: Over 25% of the world’s surface fresh water is found in the seven African Great Lakes. These basins are of vital importance to hundreds of millions of people, providing drinking water, protein, jobs, and transportation, and further supporting the Gross Domestic Product of each of the ten riparian countries. The lakes are the most species-rich freshwater systems on the planet, harboring over a thousand fish species, and hundreds of other aquatic and terrestrial species. The importance of these lakes is undermined, however, by myriad anthropogenic stressors, including climate change, overuse, gas and oil exploration, habitat loss and degradation, agricultural runoff, industrial and urban pollution, invasive species, and a host of other issues. The lack of attention to the health of these lakes is a modern-day tragedy, with a dearth of research barely enough to provide information to make good policy and management decisions. The AGL are all multijurisdictional in nature, suffering from tragedy-of-the-commons-type issues. Recognizing that no one organization or institution can address the challenges that our global freshwater resources face, recent efforts by African, North American, and European experts are proactively seeking to build partnerships that leverage the combined skills, assets, technologies and resources of public, private and nonprofit entities to deliver sustainable instruction and research. The major goal is to positively influence policy and management of freshwater resources in East Africa through sound science. The process is a long-term collaborative process by which the scientific, academic, policy and management, and other interested community interact through a structured process to prioritize research and thus, harness the resources and knowledge to conduct research that results in useful, harmonized data, and ideas to influence positive change. The full process, described in this talk, is to ensure that the ecological structure of the African Great Lakes, and those who depend on them are preserved and enhanced.

About the speaker: Dr. Ted Lawrence is the Executive Director of the African Center for Aquatic Research and Education (ACARE)—leading work to ensure scientists from North America and African collaborate and share knowledge to protect freshwater Great Lakes around the world.

He has been living, working, and researching in Africa for over 20 years. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Michigan, researching governance and management of large, multi-jurisdictional freshwater resources, specifically on Lake Victoria, East Africa and conducted comparative analysis of management approaches between African and North American lake systems.

Based on his background and research, Ted and his colleagues formed ACARE, a highly collaborative organization whose goals are to positively affect policy and management on Africa’s Great Lakes by executing a long-term network of freshwater experts to strengthen science in Africa. He also spent 15 years as the Communications and Policy Specialist at the bi-national Canadian-U.S. Great Lakes Fishery Commission where many of the building blocks for successful collaboration are used to inform the processes on the African Great Lakes.