Print PageThere is an urgent need to reorient the relationship of humanity to the biosphere. Earth stewardship is an action-oriented framework for sustaining the well-being and resilience of people and nature in rapidly changing world. What is the science needed to support earth stewardship and how can it foster transformational changes that would move the planet toward a more sustainable trajectory?
Results/Conclusions
Earth stewardship requires an integrated science of people and nature. This research must be interdisciplinary and go beyond simple pattern description to identify critical social-ecological feedbacks, interactions, and boundary conditions that govern social-ecological system dynamics. Design principles for governing the commons (Ostrom 1990, Dietz et al. 2003) illustrate the historical utility of this social-ecological approach. We need to extend these principles to specify conditions that increase the likelihood of positive transformations toward sustainability at times of rapid change. These include fostering a sense of connection to valued places, effective engagement of all key stakeholders, prioritizing long-term benefits (near-zero discount rate), developing consensus on sustainability goals, monitoring to assess progress toward these goals, opportunities to renegotiate sustainability goals to allow adaptation to changing conditions, and emergence of facilitators or leaders that are skilled in conflict resolution and maintain focus on sustainability goals. Natural and social scientists can collaborate to foster Earth Stewardship at local to global scales through research that improves understanding of threshold behavior of social-ecological systems, leadership in defining and pursuing sustainability goals, education and outreach to foster appreciation for and commitment to local and global places, and monitoring threats to and progress toward sustainability.
Developing a renewed sense of place and an associated ethic of environmental citizenship is particularly urgent and potentially feasible through some combination of the following approaches: (1) understanding factors that might shift public goals from consumerism toward sustainability in pursuit of happiness, (2) visionary planning in both rural and urban areas during the current rapid demographic transition to cities, (3) developing partnerships with religious groups to support their stewardship efforts, (4) developing partnerships with the private sector to foster sustainable business practices, (5) engaging students and the public in observing and interpreting change and exploring solutions, and (6) providing the science needed to transform society towards a more sustainable future.
