What Is Environmental Stewardship?

Environmental Stewardship is a term used to describe the describes an individual’s or community’s actions to preserve and sustainably utilize natural resources. These actions can be carried out on a variety of scales from the local to the global, in both rural and urban contexts. Stewardship-supporting activities can include educational programs, social marketing campaigns, and payments for ecosystem services (PES) that aim to promote intrinsic motivations by creating a connection with nature, or changing people’s ethics, values or beliefs. Rewards or sanctions that are extrinsic such as financial incentives can also be used to inspire stewardship behavior.

The term “environmental stewardship” is often used as a synonym of conservation. However, it also encompasses an overall understanding of humans’ relationship with the natural environment. It is based upon the assumption that humans are all connected to nature and therefore must take care of it. This kind of stewardship includes concepts such as sustainable livelihoods, adaptive co-management and the social-ecological ecosystem. These concepts can provide a comprehensive approach to thinking about the role of humans in managing natural resources.

The majority of stewardship-related abstracts are coded under Action with 76%, indicating that environmental stewardship is a crucial aspect of reaching desired ecological and social outcomes. Of the remaining abstracts, the smallest proportion is coded under Outcome with only 1%, suggesting that interventions that target outcomes tend to be at broader eco-regional and/or national-international scales, and not on the individual level.

www.mountaincountryfarm.com/what-is-environmental-stewardship