This June marks the twentieth anniversary of the first Gulf of Maine Council meeting, which was held in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1990. But the Council’s beginnings originated years before that in the minds of those who imagined a new way of cooperating across traditional boundaries.
The December, 2009, meeting of the Gulf of Maine Council on the Marine Environment marked the actual 20th anniversary of the founding of the program and the council. (Photo: naturesource communications • www.naturesource.net)
Unifying concerns about preserving water quality and habitat as well as the desire to prevent the types of environmental catastrophes experienced elsewhere in the county precipitated the Council’s formation.
Add to that equation a group of invested coastal program managers in the United States who were already routinely meeting to talk about ocean and coastal issues.
The need for an approach that crossed state boundaries emerged. The relative geographic proximity of the northern New England states to the Maritime Provinces as well as a culture of collaboration made the group’s idea to involve their Canadian neighbors a natural next step.
“We proceeded; at the beginning our federal partners, like the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency, were just observers. That was out of necessity – because this was a state/provincial thing, we had gotten advice from the State Department and Foreign Affairs not to get them involved,” said David Keeley, then director of the Maine Coastal Program at the State Planning Office.
Keeley, one of the founders of the Gulf of Maine Council and the current Council development coordinator, remembers meeting in the basement at the University of Southern Maine in the late 1980s with a core group of individuals from both sides of the border to envision a new vehicle for regional collaboration.
David Keeley, one of the founders of the Gulf of Maine Council on the Marine Environment, recounts the early days of the program during the 20th anniversary celebration of the founding.
At first, these Council founders faced skeptics from their respective government authorities, with the U.S. State Department and Canadian Foreign Affairs Department warning of “flirting with international law,” said Keeley.
In December of 1989, the governors of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine, and the premiers of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick adopted the Agreement on Conservation of the Marine Environment and the Gulf of Maine between the Governments and Bordering States and Provinces.
Despite the title, the agreement is informal in nature and is not an official international agreement, making the Council a unique entity. The premiers and governors agreed to work to achieve sustainable development in the region, protect natural resources, and maintain the ecological balance of the Gulf. A revision in 1995 allowed federal partners with interests in Gulf-wide issues to participate fully in the Council.
The Council’s work began with consensus-building and developing a 10-year action plan. The plan took an ecosystem-based approach by including coastal watersheds as well as marine waters. Since then an additional three 5-year action plans have been developed, the most recent being the 2007-2012 plan. The Council also established specific program committees to direct action plan implementation, including a committee for monitoring and research, data and information management, and outreach.
The Council convened a second Gulf of Maine Conference in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, in 1994 with more than 150 non-governmental and community organizations, following which the Council adopted “habitat” as its unifying program theme for the future and began work on a revised action plan.
Since then, habitat restoration has been an important component of the Council. Additional key accomplishments include:
- the Gulfwatch Program, which was launched in 1991 and is one of the only monitoring programs that crosses government boundaries
- the Gulf of Maine Times educational newspaper
- the Ecosystem Indicators Partnership, a consolidation of Gulf-wide environmental indicator data.
Today the Council continues to provide a framework for the states and provinces to learn from each other, share data, and work on common goals.
To see all the programs and publications of the Gulf of Maine Council on the Marine Environment, go to: http://www.gulfofmaine.org/
The original founders of the Gulf of Maine Council on the Marine Environment are:
States:
Richard F. Delaney (Massachusetts Coastal Zone Management Program)
David Keeley (Maine Coastal Zone Management Program)
David Neville/David Hartman/Jeff Taylor (New Hampshire Coastal Zone Management Program/Office of State Planning)
Provinces:
Barry Jones (New Brunswick Fisheries)
William Ayer (New Brunswick Environment)
Peter Underwood (Nova Scotia Environment)
Art Longard (Nova Scotia Fisheries)
