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Environmental Stewardship: History, Theory, and Practice

1994, … (March 11-12, 1994). Institute of Urban …

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Conceptualising sustainability through environmental stewardship and virtuous cycles—a new empirically-grounded model

Original Article
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Published: 09 June 2021
Volume 16 , pages 1475–1487, ( 2021 )

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John W. Turnbull ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-8935-1012 1 ,
Graeme F. Clark ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-0230-6631 1 &
Emma L. Johnston ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-2117-366X 1

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Humans depend on earth’s ecosystems and in the Anthropocene, ecosystems are increasingly impacted by human activities. Sustainability—the long-term integrity of social–ecological systems—depends on effective environmental stewardship, yet current conceptual frameworks often lack empirical validation and are limited in their ability to show progress towards sustainability goals. In this study we examine institutional and local stewardship actions and their ecological and social outcomes along 7000 km of Australia’s coastline. We use empirical mixed methods and grounded theory to show that the combination of local and institutional stewardship leads to improved ecological outcomes, which in turn enhance social values and motivate further stewardship to form a virtuous cycle. Virtuous cycles may proceed over multiple iterations, which we represent in a new spiral model enabling visualisation of progress towards sustainability goals over time. Our study has important implications for collaborative earth stewardship and the role of policy in enabling virtuous cycles to ultimately realise sustainable futures.

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Introduction

We are inseparable from our environment. Humans depend on nature to provide the essentials of life, and in turn, environmental health is heavily dependent on the actions of humans (Preiser et al. 2017 ; Steffen et al. 2011 ). The fundamental importance and mutuality of human–environment relationships is embodied in the concept of sustainability—the “long-term integrity of the biosphere and human well-being” (Chapin et al. 2011 ). Despite the criticality of human–environment relationships, we have much yet to learn of the modern structures, interactions and dynamics of social–ecological systems (Messerli et al. 2019 ; Scholz and Binder 2011 ).

A key element in achieving a sustainable future is for humans to take responsibility as environmental stewards (Steffen et al. 2011 ; Preiser et al. 2017 ). Whilst stewardship is just one of several framings for the human–environment relationship, it most closely supports reconnecting people with nature and building resilience in social–ecological systems (Preiser et al. 2017 ). Environmental stewardship is a fluid concept (Turnbull et al. 2020a ); here we define it as active earth-keeping, taking responsibility to protect, care for and use the environment for positive ecological and social outcomes (Lerner 1993 ; Bennett et al. 2018 ).

The United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development provides a plan of stewardship action “for people, planet and prosperity” (DESA UN 2016 ). This social–ecological Agenda seeks to end inequality and poverty, and heal and secure our planet for a sustainable future. It is actioned through 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 targets, many of which connect humans and nature. Yet today, most SDGs are projected to fall short of their targets, with several goals currently on negative trajectories (UN Secretary General 2019 ).

Converting negative trajectories to positive, to achieve our global sustainability Agenda, will require new ways of thinking and acting (UN Secretary General 2019 ). Novel inter-disciplinary approaches such as integrating science, business and government, informed by improved knowledge networks and resulting in collaborative management, are required (Messerli et al. 2019 ). Such societal transformations will depend on new conceptualisations of the human–environment relationship, as today most theoretical social–ecological models have limited application (Binder et al. 2013 ).

Protected areas can provide places which facilitate environmental stewardship, resulting in improved social and ecological values (Powell et al. 2002 ). Protected areas may exist in both terrestrial and marine realms and have varying levels of protection or stewardship (Dudley et al. 2013 ). Fully protected areas, for example, prohibit the removal of or damage to all animals and plants. Partially protected areas have widely varying regulations but allow a range of extractive activities to occur including fishing and collecting. Such differing levels of stewardship can result in varying levels of ecological and social effectiveness (Turnbull et al. 2021 ).

In this study, we aimed to develop a novel conceptualisation of the human–environment relationship, focusing on the positive actions human society may take towards sustainability. We explored the concepts of environmental stewardship and virtuous cycles and investigated whether these concepts were supported by empirical evidence. We studied both institutional stewardship—in the form of varying levels of protection—and the individual or local environmental stewardship actions of people at a place (Turnbull et al. 2020a ).

Our approach was to examine a diverse social–ecological system to provide insight into broader-scale trajectories towards sustainability. To achieve this, we selected coastal places as they integrate terrestrial and marine realms and provide a linked system of social and ecological dynamics (Pollnac et al. 2010 ). We chose Australia’s Great Southern Reef coastline, spanning five jurisdictions and 7000 km for our study due to its size, diversity and ecological importance (Bennett et al. 2016 ).

Frameworks and models

Human–ecosystem relationships can be visualised through multiple frameworks including unidirectional (such as ecosystem services or stewardship alone), bidirectional (such as closed loop production), and intersecting or nested domains (Fig. 1 ) (Folke et al. 2016 ; Moskell and Allred 2013 ; Raymond et al. 2013 ). Selection of a given framework both highlights and hides elements, preferencing one set of perspectives, ethics and outcomes over another (Preiser et al. 2017 ; Raymond et al. 2013 ). The closed-loop framework, expanded beyond production to encompass values, services and dis-services, as well as positive and negative human impacts on ecosystems, has some limitations yet has potential for broad application (Masterson et al. 2019 ; Raymond et al. 2013 ). It is manifest in varying degrees in a number of existing systems models or derivative frameworks. We now discuss three such derivative frameworks, selected to illustrate the diverse yet still limited practical applications of the general closed-loop framework.

Frameworks for human–ecosystem relationships. a unidirectional, b bidirectional, and c nested

The DPSIR framework—driving forces, pressures, states, impacts, and responses (Smeets 1999 )—is a widely used framework for environmental indicators. DPSIR models a mostly one-way flow from Drivers such as industry, to Pressures such as pollution, State of environment such as water quality and Impacts such as loss of biodiversity or drinking water. The final step, Response, closes the loop with a human intervention to mitigate impacts, states, pressures and drivers through actions such as wastewater treatment. The language of DPSIR is focused on the negative impacts of humans on the environment although it may be applied in the context of sustainability with the use of suitable indicators (Smeets 1999 ).

The Human–Environment Systems (HES) framework (Scholz and Binder 2011 ) focuses on managing the negative impacts of humans on the environment but with explicit recognition of the reciprocal impact of environmental factors on humans. HES is grounded in the social and sustainability sciences and decision theory, and enables the general formation of goals and strategies to manage the human–environment relationship (Scholz and Binder 2011 ; Binder et al. 2013 ). It models primary and secondary feedback loops for the evaluation of environmental responses and dynamics arising from these strategies. The HES framework does not contain a sustainability component, but it can be used to investigate sustainability learning in a given context (Scholz and Binder 2011 ).

The Social–Ecological Systems Framework (SESF) is balanced in its treatment of social and ecological subsystems but takes an anthropocentric perspective that views ecological components as resources (Ostrom 2009 ). This is reflected in its application in the management of agriculture, fisheries and water resources. It acknowledges the governance system and resource “users”, with feedback loops for the social and ecological outcomes arising from system interactions. As with HES, the SESF does not explicitly contain a sustainability component but can be used to analyse sustainability of the social–ecological system (Ostrom 2009 ).

The originating context, perspective and assumptions for each of the above frameworks are manifest in the specific language and limitations of each framework, often resulting in a focus on the negative or exploitative aspects of the human–environment relationship. In our study, we aim to develop a model, grounded on empirical evidence, which highlights the positive actions that humans can take to drive upward trajectories in both environmental health and human well-being. This virtuous circle or cycle has potential as a basis for such a model; however, this concept has been used in varying, sometimes differing ways in both the academic and management literature.

Early research regarding the virtuous circle or cycle proposed a model in which social and ecological capital were mutually reinforced and concluded that a key objective of policy should be to achieve “virtuosity in the landscape” (Selman and Knight 2006 ). Qualitative, trans-disciplinary approaches were considered necessary to fully appreciate the interdependency between “people and place” and develop representative models (Selman and Knight 2006 ). Protected areas were recognised as pivotal in achieving virtuosity, leading to sustainability improvements in both landscape quality and community quality of life (Powell et al. 2002 ), although recent research highlights the difficulty in simultaneously meeting social and ecological goals in coastal settings (Cinner et al. 2020 ).

Tidball et al. ( 2017 ) applied virtuous and vicious cycles to develop the concept of resilience in social–ecological systems. They used systems theory, in which positive feedback amplifies change and negative feedback inhibits or counterbalances change. Virtuous and vicious cycles were, therefore, both positive or reinforcing feedback loops, but driving the system in desirable or undesirable directions. The definition of desirable vs. undesirable is value laden (Preiser et al. 2017 ), but in terms of sustainability these could be represented by, for example, endemic biodiversity preservation vs. loss, and the gain or loss of human well-being. The authors placed desirable states in the virtuous domain and undesirable states in the vicious domain, with a bifurcation zone between which may tip in either direction based on policy and management actions. They encouraged future research to detect the practices contributing to virtuous cycles and provide evidence of the resulting social and ecological outcomes.

Masterson et al. ( 2019 ) most recently conceptualised the relationship between ecosystems and human well-being as a holistic cycle that can be either positive (virtuous), or negative. The virtuous cycle results from effective stewardship, whilst the negative cycle results from overexploitation of the environment and poor management. The model integrates human values, attitudes and actions and recognises the mediating role of institutions and policy in the cycle. Human benefits are modelled broadly as a “basket” of direct use, monetary income and experiences. In presenting this broad conceptual model, the authors call for further empirical research to understand and verify components of the cycle.

The recent Global Sustainable Development Report (UN Secretary General 2019 ) mentions transforming “vicious to virtuous circles” but offers no conceptual basis for these terms. Virtuous circles are not explained, but vicious circles are referenced in the context of negative tipping points in Earth’s natural systems and the acceleration of global warming through melting sea ice and permafrost. Importantly, eleven of the seventeen SDGs embody one or both directions of the virtuous circle, in the general form of humans caring for, or benefitting from, the environment (Table 1 ). Ultimately, the vicious-to-virtuous transformation is described as “key to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda” (UN Secretary General 2019 ).

Existing social–ecological and virtuous cycle models only partly enable visualisation of such transformation. They generally focus on the relationship between components in the social–ecological system, but do not directly incorporate the concept of sustainability nor allow visualisation of positive progress towards sustainability over time. This would require representation of both a direction—towards (or away from) the goal; and time—as current sustainable development goals are set for a given year (DESA UN 2016 ). Tidball et al.’s ( 2017 ) model does include a graphical landscape which enables visualisation the system state between virtuous and vicious domains, but with the goal of resilience rather than sustainability. There is, therefore, an opportunity to further conceptualise the positive pathways through stewardship and virtuous cycles to sustainability (Chapin et al. 2011 ; Mathevet et al. 2018 ).

Our research along Australia’s Great Southern Reef spanned the southern half of the continent of Australia, from Port Stephens to Perth. We studied 56 sites, spanning five jurisdictions (States), with roughly even distribution across protected area levels to model different policy (institutional stewardship) settings; 19 sites were fully protected areas, 18 sites were partially protected areas and 19 sites were open areas (Fig. 2 and Table S1). We selected site boundaries to encompass the diversity of recreational uses observed at the site and a mix of terrain such as water, rocky shore, beach, parkland and other developed areas, where they were present.

Study sites spanning five States (jurisdictions) in southern Australia. Numbers indicate the number of sites in each region

Our social–ecological research questions called for a diverse set of methods. We used structured observation (Bryman 2016 ) to record site factors such as mix of users (people swimming, walking, fishing etc) and signage. Perceptions, values, motivations and recreational and stewardship activities of individuals at each site were gathered using semi-structured interviews (Bryman 2016 ). We used purposive sampling, selecting people in proportion to the numbers in each user category at each site (Table S3), and aiming for representation of sex and age classes where possible. At several of our sites, the numbers of people present were small, allowing sampling of most or even all users.

We chose underwater visual census as implemented in the global Reef Life Survey (RLS) program for the ecological part of our study (RLS 2016 ). RLS uses highly trained volunteers and scientists to gather fish, invertebrate and habitat data on shallow reefs, and has been used in many studies around the world (for example, Edgar et al. 2014 ). RLS data include size-classed abundances of all visible fishes, abundances of all visible mobile macroinvertebrates, and twenty photo-quadrats of habitat along each 50 m transect. We verified that the RLS dataset contained ecological data aligned with the top three categories of marine life that were mentioned as important by participants in interviews; fish, algae and seagrass (habitat data set) and marine mammals (included in the “fish” data set).

Data collection

We gathered social data over a 15-month period commencing in March 2018. Due to the practical limitations inherent in covering large distances in Australia, we travelled primarily from east to west, surveying NSW then Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia and Western Australia. To check for the influence of seasonal effects, we completed our final site and social surveys once we had looped back to NSW and confirmed that site usage figures did not vary significantly by season (PERMANOVA p > 0.05). In total, 190 site surveys and 439 interviews were conducted during daylight hours over a mix of weekdays and weekends. The interview guide is provided in Table S2. We prompted for stewardship activities using the categories in the Local Environmental Stewardship Indicator (Turnbull et al 2020b and Table 2 ). The average duration of each site visit was 97 min. Interviews, which typically took 15 min each but in some cases lasted up to 45 min, passed the point of theoretical saturation by the end of the project (Bryman 2016 ).

Due to the large public Reef Life Survey database we were able to incorporate retrospective ecological data spanning 6 years. We chose this period as a balance between the duration of participants’ experience at a site and the duration of our study. We included a total of 625 RLS fish surveys, 556 invertebrate surveys and 1971 photo quadrats in our study.

Our approach followed grounded theory, one of the most widely applied analytical approaches in the study of qualitative data (Bryman 2016 ), identifying and developing concepts via structured analysis and inductive reasoning over the course of our research (Glaser et al. 1968 ). We evaluated: the perceptions, values, motivations and stewardship actions of people; policy settings in the form of levels of protection; and ecological health factors including biodiversity and abundance of fish, invertebrates and algae at each site.

We used a combination of indicators incorporating Likert scales (agreement/disagreement), frequency scales (how often an activity was performed or observed) and categorical coding of open and closed questions during each interview (Bryman 2016 ). Responses to open questions were recorded by a combination of audio recordings and in situ written transcripts and were later coded and analysed in nVivo software version 12 (QSR 2018 ). Further classifications were created, for example locals vs. visitors, based on self-reporting or observation. Signage was classified as compliance (e.g., relating to fishing regulations) or marine life (e.g., celebrating the local fauna).

To understand relationships between social factors and ecological condition, we conducted Gaussian linear mixed-effects models (LMM) via the LME4 package in R (R Core Team 2018 ). Response variables were the richness, abundance and biomass of fish, invertebrate and habitat communities, and predictor variables were local stewardship and protection level. We included random intercepts for Year (6 levels), State (5 levels), and Site (56 levels), where Site was nested in State and Year. Data were log-transformed to meet the assumptions of homogeneity of variance. Fish biomass was calculated using constants from the allometric growth equation Biomass=aL b (Froese 2017 ). We used Collaborative and Annotation Tools for Analysis of Marine Imagery (CATAMI) guide version 1.2 (Althaus et al. 2013 ) to analyse habitat to the morphotaxa level in CoralNet (Beijbom 2012 ) as we were most interested in the visible and structural aspects of habitat.

Stewardship was calculated for each participant as a continuous variable based on the reported frequency of the seven stewardship actions using the Local Environment Stewardship Indicator (LESI) (Turnbull et al. 2020b ) (Table 2 ). We calculated site stewardship levels as the maximum stewardship score across all participants at a site, due to the importance of “uber-stewards” in directly and indirectly influencing local ecological and social outcomes (Turnbull et al. 2020a ).

This study was conducted under the ethics approval of the University of NSW, permit HC180044

The sustainability spiral

Our findings are summarised in a new empirically grounded framework comprising a conceptual diagram and spiral model which we name the Sustainability Spiral. The conceptual diagram (Fig. 3 a) portrays a virtuous cycle in which institutional and local stewardship combine to improve ecological outcomes, which in turn motivate further stewardship. Multiple iterations of this cycle are portrayed in the new spiral model, enabling visualisation of progress towards sustainability goals over time (Fig. 3 b).

Sustainability spiral model; a conceptual diagram in which the people-policy sub-cycle empowers local stewardship and improves the effectiveness of institutional stewardship, which combine to drive ecological outcomes in the main social–ecological virtuous cycle. Ecological outcomes result in improved ecosystem services and values, which motivate further stewardship; b spiral model representing multiple iterations of the virtuous cycle over time, progressing towards sustainability goals

Empirical support for the sustainability spiral

Overall 48% of our sample identified as female, 58% of participants regarded themselves as local, participants had been coming to their site for an average of 14.8 years and had visited 7.3 times in the last month. The majority (89%) of participants reported undertaking one or more stewardship actions at their site (Table 2 ).

When asked to elaborate on the motivation for their stewardship actions, 91% indicated one or more components of the virtuous cycle (Table 3 ), and almost half (43%) acted to achieve ecological outcomes alone such as protecting marine life from harm. Favoured marine life were primarily fish (valued by 26% of participants) followed by algae and seagrass (10%), marine mammals (9%) and birds (8%). People who fished at their site valued fish the most (valued by 42% of fishers). Whilst non-fishers talked more generally about marine life or wildlife (30%), their focus on fish as favoured marine life was still high (23%).

Over one quarter (27%) of people were motivated by social outcomes alone such as swimming in water free of debris, and 30% were motivated by both social and ecological factors, effectively describing both directions of the virtuous cycle and in many cases longer term sustainability outcomes (Table 3 ). Over half (55%) of stewards were motivated by sustainability or related long-term concepts such as preservation for future generations, integrity of nature or ecosystems and reducing unsustainable human impacts.

Our quantitative analyses provided correlative support for this virtuous cycle. Sites with higher maximum local stewardship levels and higher institutional stewardship (fully protected areas) were associated with significantly more fish biomass (Fig. 4 c, d). We detected no significant improvement in fish diversity or biomass in partially protected areas compared to open areas. Participants reported undertaking higher levels of local stewardship action at sites with more diverse habitat and when they perceived better marine life at a site ( p < 0.05 for all results, Fig. 4 e, f, and Table S3).

Linear model plots of quantitative empirical support for the virtuous cycle of the Sustainability Spiral with bands showing standard error; a higher participant stewardship levels empowered by fully protected areas ( p = 0.027); b higher maximum stewardship levels at sites with more marine life-related signage ( p = 0.034); c higher big fish biomass at sites that have high maximum local stewardship, grey: all sites and red: fully protected areas only ( p all sites = 0.03 and p fpa = 0.009); d higher big fish biomass in fully protected areas ( p = 0.05); e higher stewardship levels at sites with more diverse habitat ( p = 0.033); f higher stewardship activity when participants perceived better marine life at a site ( p = 0.007); and g significant results mapped onto the Sustainability Spiral conceptual diagram by their panel letters ( a – f )

Participants also undertook stewardship actions as a result of the presence of, and to improve the effectiveness of, their local marine protected area. These are generally represented by empowerment and informal enforcement arrows in Fig. 3 a, respectively. Stewardship was significantly higher in fully protected areas than in partially protected areas and open areas, but there was no significant difference in stewardship between partially protected areas and open areas (Fig. 4 a and Table S3). Empowerment included having effective rules to enforce in fully protected areas, enabling the connection between shore and marine life, and valuing and preserving fully protected areas (Table 4 ). Informal enforcement was undertaken by over one fifth (21%) of participants (Table 2 ) and took the forms of documenting transgressions, speaking with people breaking the rules and sometimes reporting them. Signage also appeared to correspond with increased stewardship of sites, with significantly higher maximum stewardship levels at sites that had more signs promoting local marine life (Fig. 4 b and Table S3).

The Sustainability Spiral portrays the mutual interdependency of social and ecological domains in progressing towards sustainability through time, over multiple virtuous cycles. It conveys the dynamic, adaptive nature of social–ecological relationships (Chapin III et al. 2010 ; Folke et al. 2016 ) in general terms, describing how effective stewardship moves virtuous cycles upwards towards sustainability, whilst poor stewardship and overexploitation of natural systems result in downward vicious cycles towards unsustainability.

The spiral model is an important contribution to the conceptualisation of stewardship. Existing theoretical models rely on the two-dimensional closed-loop framework and show the relationship between virtuous cycle components, but make it difficult to visualise changes in the status of these components over time. Reframing stewardship to recognise its dynamic, transformative nature is an essential step towards achieving conservation and sustainability goals (Chapin III et al. 2010 ; Mathevet et al. 2018 ).

The Sustainability Spiral enables visualisation of the direction of progress and position in time for sustainability overall, or at a more discrete level such as a particular SDG or target. For example, the goal of Life Below Water (SDG #14) includes the target of protection of 10% of marine and coastal ecosystems by 2020. The Sustainability Spiral can be applied for this one component alone, visualised by placing the 10% goal at the top of the spiral and noting the current position at points in time on the vertical dimension [4.4% in 2015 and 7.4% in 2020 (UNEP-WCMC 2020 )]. The model then encourages elaboration of the stewardship actions that are required (for example, steps to increase the area of ocean under protection and enable local community support) and the values and ecosystem services that motivate progress towards the goal (for example, more fish diversity and biomass, sustainable supply of protein and tourism revenue).

Stewardship

Numerous studies have found that effective institutional stewardship, in the form of well-managed fully protected areas, results in higher fish biomass and diversity (Costello and Ballantine 2015 ; Edgar et al. 2014 ; Turnbull et al. 2018 ). Our study builds on these results to show that institutional stewardship combines with the stewardship actions of people in the community to result in an even stronger positive association for fish biomass (Fig. 4 c). This is in keeping with studies in other settings, for example co-management of tropical reefs (Cinner et al. 2012 ; Pollnac et al. 2010 ).

The most frequently reported stewardship action among participants in our study was restoration (75% of participants), primarily through cleaning up debris, followed by educating others (41% of participants) (Table 2 ). These represent direct and indirect stewardship actions, respectively, with the former impacting directly on the environment and the latter potentially raising local stewardship levels by influencing the actions of others (Bennett et al. 2018 ). The high rates of stewardship reported in our study reflect our broad measure, encompassing seven actions, and provide evidence of substantial pro-environmental behaviour despite the recognised gap between human values, intentions and actual behaviour (Kollmuss and Agyeman 2002 ). Overall, 89% of participants were motivated to act on their values and intentions to undertake some form of stewardship.

Positive local signage relating to marine life, for example showing “what lives here”, was significantly related to higher levels of stewardship (Fig. 4 b). Previous studies have found that signage can influence pro-environmental behaviour (Martin et al. 2017 ; Marschall et al. 2017 ) although the effect can vary depending on presentation, content and placement (Martin et al. 2015 ). Such signage may flag the presence of social or collective norms for stewardship and, together with compliance signage, may signal the existence of policies focused on preservation vs. exploitation (Goldstein and Cialdini 2007 ). Social norms can provide a mechanism to reduce consumption of shared resources, for the collective good (Levin 2006 ). We found no significant relationship between local stewardship and compliance signage (signs explaining the rules); however, compliance signage does improve awareness of regulations (Turnbull et al., 2021 ) and may, therefore, still act indirectly on ecological outcomes.

Ecological outcomes

The most direct ecological outcome of combined institutional and local stewardship—more fish—appears to also be the most socially valued ecological factor on the virtuous cycle, and is, therefore, the primary basis for the empirical support for our model (Fig. 4 ). Participants also valued and were motivated by broader sustainability outcomes including the welfare of and reduction of harm to animals in general, keeping a place ‘natural’ or ‘pristine’, and protection from overexploitation and pollution (Table S5). Key supporting themes included the fragility of the environment and the need to respect and care for it, the unsustainable level of human impact, and resulting degradation of ecological integrity, health, abundance and diversity.

Valuing marine life generally, and fish more specifically, was driven primarily by aesthetic, non-extractive reasons. Liking, beauty, nature and watching were all more prevalent as reasons for favouring marine life than catching or eating fish. This reflects the diverse range of coastal users, 82% of which did not fish in the context of our study, and highlights the importance of considering such non-consumptive stakeholders in coastal studies (Farr et al. 2014 )

Social outcomes

Over half of participants reported undertaking stewardship of the environment to achieve social outcomes such as the enjoyment of observing wildlife, human benefits based on our dependence on nature, identity, preservation for future generations and business (Table S6). Aesthetics, cleanliness and families were key themes in valuing and caring for the environment, as well as directly experiencing wildlife in its natural habitat (Table S6).

These social factors were enabled by healthy natural ecosystems, perpetuated and improved by ongoing stewardship (Fig. 3 ), as represented in the Sustainability Spiral. Our quantitative results aligned with these findings via the significant relationship between more diverse habitat and the level of local environmental stewardship. We also found a significant positive relationship between the perception that local marine life is better than surrounding areas and higher stewardship activity. Multiple theories propose that behaviour is the result of values and perceptions, for example the Theory of Planned Behaviour (Ajzen 1991 ), supporting a potential direction of causality from ecological improvement to perception of this improvement and finally stewardship behaviour.

Policy and management implications

Policies for sustainability through institutional stewardship, in the form of fully protected areas, empowered local stewardship and directly improved ecological outcomes in our study. Policies, therefore, synergised with the actions of local community stewards to deliver an even stronger virtuous cycle (Fig. 3 a). Protection-related policies were highlighted as important enablers of sustainability by participants undertaking stewardship, including the presence of protected areas in general and fully protected areas in particular (10% of participants each), effective rules and regulations (7%), effective management (6%), enablement of science and research (3%) and prevention of user conflict through zoning (3%).

Fully protected areas were associated with higher levels of maximum and individual local stewardship (Table S4), enabling the realisation of the desire for improving ecological health. They empowered local stakeholders to undertake advocacy, education, and informal enforcement (Table 2 ). Informal enforcement, both alone and in combination with formal enforcement, can improve the effectiveness of protected areas (Santis and Chávez 2015 ). Empowerment at individual and collective scales is essential for the transformation that is necessary to achieve global sustainability (Andrijevic et al. 2020 ; Messerli et al. 2019 ).

One component of our model—the policy-to-place relationship—is well documented in other studies (for example, Edgar et al 2014 ) and so the direction of causality is supported in the literature. The other four relationships all entail social factors which we support in this study with qualitative evidence in Tables 3 and 4 to support our interpretation of causality. Further research may target each of these relationships to further explore them with new statistical methods and designs.

We designed our study to focus on local contexts and draw conclusions in aggregate at a semi-continental scale. Our qualitative results provide insight into individuals and their motivations at the local level, and our quantitative results provide evidence for the large-scale relationships between people, policy and place. Global environmental problems need action at multiple scales (Sterner et al. 2019 ) but solutions are often best implemented at local scales (Duarte et al. 2020 ). Our study illustrates the operation of virtuous cycles via people undertaking stewardship at their local coastal place, enabled by effective higher level policy.

Whilst we developed our model for broad application, our general language may need refinement to suit the prevailing terminology in other settings. We distinguish between local stewardship—arising from the motivations and actions of individuals and groups at a local level; and institutional stewardship—driven by higher level authorities through policy and regulation. These terms are in keeping with prior research such as the co-management of tropical marine social–ecological systems (Cinner et al. 2012 ), although the two forms of stewardship may be hybridised as combined customary and modern management institutions (Cinner and Aswani 2007 ). We believe further research is warranted to explore the concepts, framings and dynamics of virtuous cycles in other social–ecological contexts.

Today, human society and our biosphere urgently need to achieve sustainability through effective earth stewardship (Folke et al. 2016 ; Steffen et al. 2011 ). In this study, we conclude that effective institutional and local stewardship can drive iterative virtuous cycles of improving social and ecological outcomes, which over time may progress towards sustainability. Pursuit of the UN 2030 Agenda requires such virtuous cycles to conserve and protect wildlife and the environment, maintain natural resources and preserve the long-term integrity of our social–ecological systems. This depends on more positive, generally applicable ways of conceptualising social–ecological systems, such as the Sustainability Spiral. Such framings are essential to engage and facilitate collaborations with stakeholders, enable transformation, and pursue mutually desirable outcomes for a sustainable future.

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Turnbull, J.W., Clark, G.F. & Johnston, E.L. Conceptualising sustainability through environmental stewardship and virtuous cycles—a new empirically-grounded model. Sustain Sci 16 , 1475–1487 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-021-00981-4

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Environmental Stewardship: A Conceptual Review and Analytical Framework

Nathan j. bennett.

1 Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability, University of British Columbia, Columbia, Canada

2 School of Marine and Environmental Affairs, University of Washington, Washington, USA

3 Center for Ocean Solutions, Stanford University, Stanford, USA

Tara S. Whitty

4 Center for Marine Biodiversity & Conservation, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, USA

Elena Finkbeiner

5 Hopkins Marine Station, Stanford University, Stanford, USA

Jeremy Pittman

6 School of Environment, Resource and Sustainability, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada

Hannah Bassett

Stefan gelcich.

7 Center of Applied Ecology and Sustainability, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Santiago, Chile

Edward H. Allison

There has been increasing attention to and investment in local environmental stewardship in conservation and environmental management policies and programs globally. Yet environmental stewardship has not received adequate conceptual attention. Establishing a clear definition and comprehensive analytical framework could strengthen our ability to understand the factors that lead to the success or failure of environmental stewardship in different contexts and how to most effectively support and enable local efforts. Here we propose such a definition and framework. First, we define local environmental stewardship as the actions taken by individuals, groups or networks of actors, with various motivations and levels of capacity, to protect, care for or responsibly use the environment in pursuit of environmental and/or social outcomes in diverse social–ecological contexts. Next, drawing from a review of the environmental stewardship, management and governance literatures, we unpack the elements of this definition to develop an analytical framework that can facilitate research on local environmental stewardship. Finally, we discuss potential interventions and leverage points for promoting or supporting local stewardship and future applications of the framework to guide descriptive, evaluative, prescriptive or systematic analysis of environmental stewardship. Further application of this framework in diverse environmental and social contexts is recommended to refine the elements and develop insights that will guide and improve the outcomes of environmental stewardship initiatives and investments. Ultimately, our aim is to raise the profile of environmental stewardship as a valuable and holistic concept for guiding productive and sustained relationships with the environment.

Introduction

The need to promote improved human-environment interactions through stewardship is ever pressing, which applies to terrestrial, marine, aquatic, and aerial environments in both rural and urban environments (Millenium Ecosystem Assessment 2005 ; Allsopp et al. 2009 ; Rockström et al. 2009 ; Chapin et al. 2010 ; Díaz et al. 2015 ; Davy et al. 2017 ). Many individuals, local communities, environmental groups, and governments around the world are taking and promoting actions to steward the environment. The term environmental stewardship has been used to refer to such diverse actions as creating protected areas, replanting trees, limiting harvests, reducing harmful activities or pollution, creating community gardens, restoring degraded areas, or purchasing more sustainable products. It is applied to describe strict environmental conservation actions, active restoration activities and/or the sustainable use and management of resources. Stewardship actions can also be taken at diverse scales, from local to global efforts, and in both rural and urban contexts. The global scale of many current environmental issues might lead to the perception that local actions can no longer meet these challenges. However, one way through which people get involved in promoting sustainability and in responding to external drivers of change, using their own expertise and knowledge, is through engaging in local environmental stewardship actions and initiatives. Thus, implicit in our framing of environmental stewardship throughout this article is a focus on the often-central role of local people in caring for the environment that they are proximal to, connected to and, in some contexts, that they depend on for subsistence needs and livelihoods.

Our focus on local stewardship also aligns with an increasing emphasis on local communities and resource users in conservation and environmental management policies, programs and practice globally, as evidenced in initiatives such as community-based conservation (CBC), community-based management (CBM), community-based natural resource management (CBNRM), indigenous and community conserved areas (ICCAs), integrated conservation-development projects (ICDPs), locally managed marine areas (LMMAs), “other effective area-based conservation measures” (OECMs), and urban stewardship initiatives (Barrett and Arcese 1995 ; Berkes 2004 ; Cinner and Aswani 2007 ; Govan et al. 2009 ; Krasny and Tidball 2012 ; ICCA 2013 ; Jupiter et al. 2014 ; Jonas et al. 2014 ; Riehl et al. 2015 ; Campos-Silva and Peres 2016 ). As these examples show, locally-oriented stewardship practices, policies and programs have emerged in fisheries, agriculture, forestry, protected areas, wildlife, ecosystem service, and water management across rural to urban environments. Fisheries management, for example, has seen a growing emphasis on the role, rights and responsibilities of small-scale fishers in stewarding local resources—as evidenced in programs such as Chile’s Territorial Use Rights Fisheries program (TURFs) (Gelcich et al. 2015 ), the rise of community supported fisheries programs globally (Brinson et al. 2011 ; McClenachan et al. 2014 ), the release of the global “Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries” (FAO 2015 ) and increased funding of NGO programs that focus on small-scale fisheries (e.g., the Fish Forever Program (Barner et al. 2015 )). In the agriculture sector, community supported agriculture initiatives—which reward farmers for stewardship-oriented practices—have emerged over the last few decades (Fish et al. 2003 ; Campbell et al. 2014 ; Raymond et al. 2016 ). Community-based forestry programs have grown in popularity since the 1980s, and have spread from the global south to the global North (McDermott and Schreckenberg 2009 ; Baynes et al. 2015 ). In urban environments, municipalities can support civic-led efforts or develop and promote initiatives such as community gardening, shellfish re-introductions, tree planting, invasive species removal, and conservation of soil, water and green spaces (Krasny and Tidball 2012 ; Connolly et al. 2014 ; Krasny et al. 2015 ). These are just a few examples to demonstrate that local environmental stewardship is promoted for diverse natural resources across all environments and geographies.

The academic literature provides many insights into environmental stewardship that might guide these local efforts. The phenomena of local environmental stewardship has been studied in numerous different contexts, including forests (English et al. 1997 ; Adhikari et al. 2007 ; Kilgore et al. 2008 ; Messier et al. 2015 ), freshwater (Shandas and Messer 2008 ; Kreutzwiser et al. 2011 ), grasslands and rangelands (Appiah-Opoku 2007 ; Squires 2012 ; Sayre et al. 2013 ; Henderson et al. 2014 ), rural agricultural landscapes (Worrell and Appleby 2000 ; Plummer et al. 2008 ; Ellis 2013 ; Gill 2014 ; Raymond et al. 2015 ), urban environments (Krasny and Tidball 2012 ; Connolly et al. 2014 ; Romolini et al. 2016 ), fisheries (Gray and Hatchard 2007 ; McConney et al. 2014 ; van Putten et al. 2014 ; Medeiros et al. 2014 ) and coastal or marine habitats (Sharpe and Conrad 2006 ; Friedlander et al. 2013 ; Silbernagel et al. 2015 ). These studies tend to focus their analysis either on a subset of the different factors that can support or undermine stewardship—for example, on ethics, motivations, capacity, institutions, networks, context—or simply on whether or not action is being taken to steward the environment. Few of these papers provide definitions of stewardship and those that do often focus either on the ethical dimension or simply on stewardship as behaviors or actions. To our knowledge there are no academic studies that provide a comprehensive definition and integrative analytical framework to bring together the different elements of environmental stewardship that have been discussed and examined across the literature. However, there are many existing frameworks for related concepts such as social–ecological systems, sustainable livelihoods, CBNRM, adaptive co-management, and environmental governance (Scoones 1998 ; Plummer and Fitzgibbon 2004 ; Tyler 2006 ; Ostrom 2009 ; Armitage et al. 2010 ), which can inform such an effort. In particular, these frameworks provide useful ways of thinking about the capacities and institutional factors that might support stewardship efforts.

In sustainability science, frameworks attempt to bring together the essential elements of a phenomena in order to facilitate descriptive, evaluative, diagnostic and prescriptive inquiries by diverse groups of interdisciplinary scholars on a topic of mutual interest (McGinnis and Ostrom 2012 ). The lack of an integrative framework for environmental stewardship limits our ability to systematically analyze case studies, build theory, and produce practical guidance on such questions as: How can local stewardship initiatives be designed or supported to be effective and appropriate in different contexts?; What enables or undermines the effectiveness of environmental stewardship?; or, How might external organizations, governments and consumers effectively promote or support local stewardship efforts? This paper thus fills a gap in the literature through presenting such a comprehensive definition and integrative analytical framework to structure future research and to help to improve efforts to support stewardship of the environment. To achieve this, we review and resituate insights from across the empirical and theoretical literatures on environmental stewardship, management and governance to understand and define the central factors that influence stewardship outcomes.

The paper is structured as follows. First, we provide a definition for local environmental stewardship. Next, we unpack the elements of this definition to develop an analytical framework. Finally, we discuss potential interventions and leverage points for promoting or supporting local stewardship and future applications of the framework to guide descriptive, evaluative, prescriptive or systematic analysis of environmental stewardship.

Towards an Integrative Framework for Local Environmental Stewardship

Building on the broader body of work on this topic that is reviewed throughout this paper, we propose the following definition for local environmental stewardship:

Local environmental stewardship is the actions taken by individuals, groups or networks of actors, with various motivations and levels of capacity, to protect, care for or responsibly use the environment in pursuit of environmental and/or social outcomes in diverse social-ecological contexts.

In this definition, stewardship actions hinge on three central elements—actors, motivations and capacity—that are influenced by the social–ecological context and that converge to produce both environmental and social outcomes (Fig. (Fig.1). 1 ). Below, we draw on a cross section of the literature on environmental stewardship, management, conservation, and governance from different contexts to unpack the elements of this definition and present an analytical framework for understanding local environmental stewardship.

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A conceptual framework for local environmental stewardship

Actors: Individuals, Groups or Networks of Stewards

Stewardship actions are carried out by stewards—which can be individuals, groups, or networks of actors (Svendsen and Campbell 2008 ; Wolf et al. 2011 ; Bodin 2017 ). Individual stewardship actions, for example, might include daily decisions made by individual resource users regarding maintenance or restoration of soil, the management of vegetation, removal of invasive species, the quantity of marine resources extracted, the type of extraction practice used and its related environmental impact, or where harvest occurs depending on sensitivity or vulnerability of habitat. Stewardship actions can also be executed collectively by groups or communities to manage common-pool resources or common areas (e.g., urban community gardens) (Ostrom 1990 , 1999 ; Cox et al. 2010 ; Krasny and Tidball 2012 ). This might even include collective decisions within cooperatives or communities to enforce more stringent conservation measures than mandated by the government (McCay et al. 2014 ). Which actors are involved in different stewardship actions largely depends on the scale and complexity of the issue as discussed below. In many cases, stewardship actions involve hybrid networks or multi-stakeholder partnerships that include public agencies, civil society organizations, funding bodies, NGOs, and local communities (Connolly et al. 2014 ; Finkbeiner and Basurto 2015 ; Romolini et al. 2016 ).

To understand how and why stewardship is or is not occurring, it is useful to understand the different individuals or configurations of actors across scales of organization who are initiating and driving local stewardship initiatives (Ostrom 2010 ; Guerrero et al. 2014 ; Alexander et al. 2015 ; Sayles and Baggio 2017 ). It can also be instructive to explore the actual, appropriate and desired allocation of rights, roles and responsibilities to different actors in the stewardship of local resources or areas. For example, in many places traditional harvesters or indigenous groups have legal or historical tenure or rights to local areas or resources—and, indeed, have often been the effective custodians of these resources (Berkes 1999 ; Gavin et al. 2015 ; McMillen et al. 2017 ). The assignation of rights to and support for stewardship to these local communities who are most dependent on local resources might be deemed most appropriate by some actors but not others. Understanding who should be key stewards of a system might be considered through the lens of subsidiarity—which suggests that decisions and actions affecting interests should be carried out at lowest levels of organization possible, with the capacity to do so (McCay and Jentoft 1996 ; Marshall 2007 ).

Whether local actors—people and communities—have the motivations or capacity or not to take stewardship actions cannot be assumed, as it often is. As will be discussed below, stewardship is a phenomenon that depends on intrinsic and extrinsic motivations (e.g., ethics or incentives) and the capacity to act (e.g., assets and institutions), which can be differentiated by individuals and groups. Varying circumstances will influence both whether and how individuals, groups, or multi-stakeholder partnerships and networks mobilize to carry out stewardship actions. Thus, it can be helpful to understand the characteristics of (e.g., levels of resource dependence, socio-economic status, race, gender, etc.) and institutional, economic and social barriers facing different actors or groups and how these relate to stewardship motivations, capacity and actions (Henderson et al. 2014 ). Stewardship is also a fluid phenomenon that can change over time—as incentive structures, social norms, levels of dependence on resources, or access to resources and rights may change, individual actors or groups of actors may gain or lose the will and/or the ability to act as stewards.

The Capacity to Steward: Local Assets and Governance

A fundamental concern of stewardship is capacity—i.e., whether individuals or communities are able to steward their resources. We suggest that there are two central factors that influence, positively or negatively, the capabilities of would-be stewards to take action: (1) local community assets and (2) broader governance factors.

First, the capacity of local communities to take stewardship actions is enabled or constrained by the presence or absence of local assets, which provide the resources or capabilities that can be mobilized to take action (Sen 1984 ; Allison and Ellis 2001 ). For example, research has suggested that factors such as infrastructure, technology, financing, levels of wealth or poverty, rights, knowledge, skills, leadership, and good relations can all support the capacity of communities to take stewardship action (Chapin et al. 2010 ; Gutiérrez et al. 2011 ; McConney et al. 2014 ). Yet, a more systematic consideration of assets could help to more clearly indicate how different assets influence stewardship. To this end, we draw on the literature on the set of capital assets listed in the sustainable livelihoods and community development literatures to propose a categorization that includes six assets that might be used to analyze local stewardship capacity: social capital (i.e., relationships, trust, networks), cultural capital (e.g., connections to place, traditions, knowledge, and practices), financial capital (e.g., income, credit, debt), physical capital (i.e., infrastructure and technology), human capital (e.g., education, skills, and demographics) and institutional capital (e.g., empowerment, agency, and options) (Scoones 1998 ; Allison and Ellis 2001 ; Green and Haines 2008 ; Bennett 2010 ; Bennett et al. 2012 ) (see Table Table1 1 for definitions).

Categories of assets that provide capacity to enable local environmental stewardship

Second, governance—including systems of institutions (i.e., laws and policies, formal and informal organizations, and decision-making processes (Lockwood et al. 2010 )) and structural processes related to power and politics (i.e., economic inequality, discrimination, exclusion from decision-making)—can empower or constrain the sense of agency, available options and capacity of would-be stewards (McLaughlin and Dietz 2008 ; Robbins 2012 ). For example, focusing on the context of small-scale fisheries, local stewardship efforts can be supported by national laws or policy frameworks that protect local fisher’s rights and tenure, formalize local fishers’ stewardship responsibilities, or that provide resources to support local community efforts to steward their own resources (Soliman 2014 ; FAO 2015 ). On the other hand, even when local small-scale fishers want to take action locally, the broader policy landscape may undermine their efforts by creating bureaucratic challenges or failing to recognize active or historical local stewards (Ayers and Kittinger 2014 ; Bennett et al. 2014 ). The presence, structure, and procedural norms of organizations—including formal government agencies, NGOs, local organizations, co-management bodies, or informal networks—can provide reinforcement for local collective actions, generate resources or facilitate learning for stewardship (McConney et al. 2014 ; Trimble et al. 2014 ; Medeiros et al. 2014 ). When external programs are introduced that do not align with local efforts this can crowd out local initiatives (Murtinho et al. 2013 ; Jupiter 2017 ). Procedural considerations, such as inclusion of stakeholders, participation in planning, social learning, knowledge co-production, cooperative management, trust building, negotiation, and conflict resolution, can also enable the effective stewardship of resources (Lockwood et al. 2010 ; Jupiter et al. 2014 ; McConney et al. 2014 ; Turner et al. 2014 ). Moreover, this past research demonstrates that local actors and communities can be empowered to steward local resources or their agency can be undermined by governance processes (e.g., top-down, co-managed, or bottom-up governance) or by structural power differentials or inequalities. We refer to the resultant level of empowerment and agency within local communities as institutional capital.

Yet local assets and supportive governance alone are insufficient—as they might be applied in support of actions that facilitate or that undermine stewardship. For example, in fisheries, more advanced or innovative technology (physical capital) might function as a “double-edged sword” leading either to overfishing (e.g., through more efficient gears) or to more sustainable harvesting of resources (e.g., through gears that reduce by-catch) (Finkbeiner et al. 2017 ). Similarly, access to additional financial resources might be used to develop alternative livelihoods thus reducing pressure on resources or be re-invested in increased capacity and intensification of fishing activities (Allison and Ellis 2001 ; Torell et al. 2010 ). Moreover, the mere presence of capacity and agency does not guarantee that actors will steward resources. As discussed below, individuals and communities with sufficient capacity need also to be motivated to pursue stewardship actions.

Motivations: The Rationale and Will for Stewardship

Even when adequate capacity is present, some individuals or groups choose to steward resources while some do not. What, then, drives people or groups to take stewardship actions? Stewardship motivations might be defined simply as the reasons or incentive structures that drive people to take action to care for the environment. The literature on motivations and stewardship is vast. For our purposes, it is useful to engage with two broad analytical categories—intrinsic and extrinsic motivations—under which the array of previously discussed motivations for stewardship might be subsumed (Ryan and Deci 2000a ; Cetas and Yasué 2017 ) (Table (Table2 2 ).

Categories of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations for engaging in environmental stewardship

Intrinsic motivations are associated with actions that are expected to bring personal pleasure or satisfaction, through the achievement of psychological needs such as self-acceptance, feelings of competence or self-efficacy, sense of autonomy or wellbeing, and the need for belonging or affiliation with a group (Ryan and Deci 2000a ; Tabernero and Hernández 2011 ). In the context of local environmental stewardship, we suggest two subcategories of intrinsic motivations: (a) underlying ethics, morals, values and beliefs and (b) a need for self-determination or self-actualization. First, people can be intrinsically motivated by their ethics, morals, values and beliefs. As Worrell and Appleby ( 2000 ) succinctly put it “…the ethical aspects of stewardship…provide an explicit, rational, moral underpinning for our treatment of natural resources and the natural world”. The idea of stewardship based on an underlying ethic has been examined extensively in environmental philosophy (Welchman 1999 ; Fernandes and Guiomar 2016 ). Take, for example, the classic “A Sand County Almanac” wherein Aldo Leopold argues eloquently for a “land ethic” (Leopold 1966 ) and similar volumes focused on the marine environment such as “The Sea Around Us” (Carson 1951 ) and “Values at Sea” (Dallmeyer 2003 ). These and similar texts suggest that an ethic of care, which is rooted in connections to non-human species, environments or special places, will motivate people to take stewardship actions. A stewardship ethic might also be derived from a person’s sense of moral responsibility to a god or other higher power to care for creation (Dyke et al. 1996 ), a sense of responsibility for a piece of land or resource (Berkes 1999 ; Ryan et al. 2003 ), altruistic concerns for current or future generations (Bourdeau 2004 ; Robinson et al. 2012 ), or an understanding of what constitutes a right relationship with others or the natural world (Chan et al. 2016 ). Simply put, actors might take stewardship actions because it is intrinsically motivating to do what is perceived to be the right thing.

Second, stewardship actions can also be intrinsically motivated by the desire for autonomy, relatedness, and competence—which correspond with the three universal psychological needs of self-determination theory (Ryan and Deci 2000b ; Cetas and Yasué 2017 )—and the higher order need for self-actualization (Maslow 1943 ). Autonomy refers to the desire to be able to affect one’s own future, relatedness is about feeling connected or belonging to a group, and competence refers to the feeling of being able to act and to achieve one’s goals. The idea of self-actualization is that the ultimate human aim is to be able to learn and grow and become one’s most accomplished self. Themes related to these concepts can be found across the literature on stewardship. For example, autonomy comes up in two ways: (1) Stewards can often be motivated to ensure the sustainability of resources so to maintain cultural or livelihood autonomy (Bennett et al. 2010 ) and (2) Stewardship programs that undermine the autonomy of resource users or land-owners may be opposed (Sorice et al. 2013 ). Other research has shown that environmental volunteers are often motivated by wanting to belong to a social group (Measham and Barnett 2008 ; Asah and Blahna 2012 ) and local stewards can be motivated by their affiliation with a community or group, such as farmers, fishers, hunters, or Indigenous groups (Silva and Mosimane 2014 ). A study by Ryan et al. ( 2003 ) shows that farmer’s are motivated to demonstrate a level of competence in caring for a resource and Bramston et al ( 2011 ) show that participation in environmental stewardship networks in rural Australia is motivated by a sense of belonging, care for the environment, and personal learning. While autonomy, relatedness, competence, and self-actualization focus on the individual, at the community level, similar framings for these intrinsic motivations might include the desire for community agency, collective solidarity, empowerment, identity or pride in collective achievements.

Extrinsic motivations on the other hand are associated with the expected achievement of separable outcomes, such as social reinforcements or economic benefits that are external to the self. Here we categorize extrinsic motivations as (a) the perceived balance of direct costs and benefits of stewarding natural resources and (b) externally provided rewards or sanctions which can be economic, social, physical or legal. First, stewards can be extrinsically motivated by the perceived direct lost opportunity costs (e.g., time, money) and instrumental benefits of stewarding resources. For example, farmers might be wary of the lost economic benefits associated with increasing a buffer along a stream just as fishers are often opposed to the creation of marine protected areas that restrict their ability to fish. On the other hand, the potential instrumental benefits that motivate environmental stewardship include direct economic benefits stemming from increased productivity, increases in provisioning, regulating, and supporting ecosystem services or improved health and well-being (Ryan et al. 2003 ; Grafton et al. 2006 ; Lopes and Videira 2013 ).

Second, external rewards and sanctions that can motivate stewardship include economic, social or legal factors. Economic motivations, which have received significant attention (Wunder 2007 ; Sorice et al. 2013 ), include financial rewards (e.g., payments to enable certain management actions, payments for ecosystem services, market premiums for more environmentally sustainable products) or financial disincentives such as fines or loss of access to markets. The desire for social recognition or avoidance of sanctions, which are both related to group norms and collective orientation, are often strong motivators for conservation of resources or for following rules set by a group (Basurto et al. 2016 ). Social recognition can take the form of praise, awards or certification and maintenance of good relations with other resource users. Social sanctions include declines in social capital with other members of a group or in some places the loss of property or gear, physical violence by other resource users, or being socially isolated or ostracized from the group (Acheson 1975 ; Hauzer et al. 2013 ). Finally, legal mechanisms (including customary laws) can be significant motivators—either through clearly articulating the societal norms and expectations as duties and responsibilities or through the use of legal sanctions and enforcement mechanisms (Gandiwa et al. 2013 ; Soliman 2014 ).

In short, intrinsic and extrinsic motivations can provide will (i.e., energy and persistence) and influence the choices and direct the actions chosen by stewards. They help to define the “of what?”, “why?” and “for what or whom?” of stewardship and to delineate the duties, obligations, and responsibilities of the steward. In general, a complex combination of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations work in concert to promote stewardship actions (Stern et al. 1993 ; Tabernero and Hernández 2011 ; Asah et al. 2014 ; Krasny et al. 2014 ). Some types of motivations, however, might have a stronger influence than others. For example, Asah and Blahna ( 2012 ); Asah et al. ( 2014 ) show how personal and social motivations are stronger predictors of people’s participation in volunteer urban stewardship activities than environmental rationales. Furthermore, intrinsic motivations might be more durable than extrinsic ones for promoting environmental action (Ryan et al. 2003 ; Cecere et al. 2014 ; Cetas and Yasué 2017 ). Motivational crowding out can occur when extrinsic incentives (e.g., monetary payments for stewardship, payments for ecosystem services) are applied in contexts where strong intrinsic motivations for stewardship already exist (Rode et al. 2015 ; Sorice and Donlan 2015 ). Thus, it is important to understand the array and strength of different motivations that actors in different contexts might have to engage in environmental stewardship.

Stewardship Actions: Protection, Care or Sustainable Use

Taking action is the central focus of any discussion of environmental stewardship. Stewardship actions are the suite of approaches, activities, behaviors, and technologies that are applied to protect, restore or sustainably use the environment. The stewardship actions of local actors can emerge informally during day-to-day decision-making, can stem from formal or informal decision-making processes involving local collectives or networks, or can result from formal top-down processes or mandated requirements of government. Likewise, stewardship actions can derive from direct objectives relating to environmental sustainability, or indirectly as an ancillary effect of other objectives (i.e., livelihood security or social justice). Stewardship actions can occur at different scales, can address issues that are of greater or lesser complexity, and are taken by different individuals or groups of actors because of their motivations and available capacities. Below, we briefly discuss examples of the types of stewardship actions that might occur at different scales and levels of complexity.

Different stewardship actions may be taken to address problems of greater or lesser ecological or social–ecological complexity. Stewardship actions can be targeted for individual species, multiple species, individual habitats, entire ecosystems, or even integrated human-environment systems at scales ranging from neighborhoods to landscapes. For example, these actions might include limiting the harvest of a single recreationally, commercially, and culturally important species (Groesbeck et al. 2014 ), the establishment of no take terrestrial parks or marine protected areas to protect a species or habitat (Micheli et al. 2012 ), the active restoration of degraded habitats through replanting stream buffers (Sheppard et al. 2017 ), the practice of traditional comprehensive watershed management from mountaintops to the near-shore marine environment to protect ecosystems (Kaneshiro et al. 2005 ), the creation and management of urban green spaces or community gardens (Krasny and Tidball 2012 ), or the strategic reduction of dependence on resource-based livelihoods to decrease harvests (McCay et al. 2014 ). Stewardship can also take the form of passive management—leaving an area to regenerate—or simply choosing to not harvest from an area. In other words, stewardship might be accomplished through purposeful inaction. We do not pre-suppose the types of actions that constitute stewardship—and encourage a view of stewardship that looks beyond western conceptualizations of conservation and is inclusive of indigenous world-views and approaches (Berkes 1999 ; Brosius and Russell 2003 ; Hunn et al. 2003 ).

Stewardship actions can occur at different scales from local to macro scales. As an example of stewardship at the local scale, individual landowners might restore habitat on their land or a community might conserve a local forest or a coral reef. At the meso-scale, stewardship might take the form of protected land-scapes or sea-scapes—for example, through the creation of biosphere reserves (Reed 2016 ) or marine conservation planning that includes social and ecological considerations (Ban et al. 2013 ). Broader scale stewardship actions might be taken at national, eco-regional scale, or even at transboundary or regional scales—for example, this is the case with the planning of the Yellowstone to Yukon protected area and wildlife planning initiative (McGregor 2003 ) or regional marine conservation efforts such as the Coral Triangle Initiative (Walton et al. 2014 ).

These different stewardship actions can have impacts across scales and, in particular, local stewardship can be undermined or supported by stewardship actions taken (or not taken) in other places or at higher scales. Pulling invasive species from a single farm may do little good if not supported by actions in the surrounding landscape. Similarly, in inherently complex systems, specific stewardship actions (or lack thereof) can have unintended “cross-scale” benefits or consequences for other actors, system components, or systems (Gunderson and Holling 2002 ; Bunce et al. 2010 ; Larrosa et al. 2016 ). For example, the local retention of benefits from sustainable use of a forest resource is more likely than from a marine protected area designed to protect a migratory fish species. The latter example may instead benefit others who are further away. On the contrary, a coral reef ecosystem might be impacted by upstream farming practices that fail to deal with erosion or agricultural run-off (Álvarez-Romero et al. 2011 ; Bégin et al. 2016 ). In sum, to comprehend the nature and effectiveness of local stewardship, it is critical to analyze the scales where stewardship actions are taking place, cross-scale interactions and whether stewardship action is occurring at the relevant scale to achieve the desired ecological and social outcomes.

While our focus here is on direct stewardship actions, some activities that are labeled environmental stewardship operate indirectly. These stewardship supporting activities might include activities such as environmental education of resource users or youth (Stern et al. 2008 ; Tidball and Krasny 2011 ), transmission of traditional ecological knowledge (Bussey et al. 2016 ; Reo et al. 2017 ), network building activities (Alexander et al. 2015 ; Blythe et al. 2017 ), environmental governance or policy reforms (Gelcich et al. 2010 ), systems of rewards and punishments (Ostrom 1990 ; Hauzer et al. 2013 ), and scientific or participatory monitoring and research (Shirk et al. 2012 ; Silva and Krasny 2016 ). Activities such as these are fundamental to local stewardship; however, these activities alone do not improve the environment. The premise is that through promoting motivations and augmenting capacity these activities can indirectly encourage and enable the direct actions of actors to protect, restore or sustainably use the environment. Stewardship supporting activities can be implemented by local groups, or as discussed later, instigated by external organizations.

The Social–Ecological Context of Stewardship

We define social–ecological context as the broader set of social, cultural, economic, political and biophysical factors occurring beyond the local system of study. The broader social–ecological context influences local stewardship efforts in two ways. First, stewardship capacity is influenced by the speed, scale, severity, complexity, and predictability of the social and ecological changes that are occurring and how these impact social and ecological aspects of local systems. This framing builds on both resilience (Holling 2001 ; Lebel et al. 2006 ; Walker and Salt 2006 ; Berkes and Ross 2016 ) and governability (Chuenpagdee and Jentoft 2009 ; Kooiman and Bavinck 2013 ) literatures, which suggest that adaptive and governance capacity needs to be understood within the broader socio-economic, environmental, and governance context. For example, the impacts of climatic change can severely impact resources and people’s ability to respond proactively (Kalikoski et al. 2010 ; Marshall 2016 ). Communities are constantly confronted with a number of other social, economic, political, governance, and biophysical drivers of change occurring at higher scales that might challenge stewardship efforts (Tuler et al. 2008 ; Bennett et al. 2015a ; Moshy et al. 2015 ). Barratt and Allison ( 2014 ) highlight how vulnerability to environmental change can undermine community management of natural resources through a case study of Lake Victoria. Yet, not all changes are negative and change can also support community stewardship efforts—for example, the resurgence of external market interest in Community Supported Fisheries or Community Supported Agriculture can incentivize local management (Brinson et al. 2011 ).

Second, the broader social–ecological context determines which stewardship actions will be socially, culturally or politically feasible, appropriate or effective. In different cultural contexts the types of stewardship actions that will be deemed appropriate will differ (Gavin et al. 2015 ; Ens et al. 2016 ). For many indigenous communities whose cultural identity and harvesting practices are deeply interconnected, the idea of “no-take” conservation may be antithetical to their holistic “social-ecological” worldview (Berkes 1999 ). Additionally, in a context where local cultural identity depends on the harvest of certain mega-fauna (e.g., sea turtles, whales, caribou, polar bear), the complete closure of these areas to harvesting (even when species are considered vulnerable or endangered) may be deemed unacceptable (Clark et al. 2008 ). Considering what might constitute due and appropriate process for promoting management or conservation interventions in different socio-political or governance contexts is also important. Externally driven stewardship actions may be considered a form of “green grabbing” or “ocean grabbing” when the process of implementation undermines local autonomy or sovereignty in the process (Corson and MacDonald 2012 ; Bennett et al. 2015b ). Negative perceptions of governance and decision-making can lead to opposition to conservation or management and, in effect, discourage stewardship (Gelcich and O’Keeffe 2016 ). Thus, it can be instructive to understand the extent to which stewardship actions and decision-making process align with or fit the local social and ecological context (Wilson 2006 ; Epstein et al. 2015 ).

The Outcomes of Stewardship

Stewardship is for naught if it is not producing desirable ecological and social outcomes. Environmental objectives may be a primary motivator for engaging in stewardship—for example, improving the sustainability of resources, restoring degraded habitats, recovering wildlife, increasing fish stocks or preserving a wilderness area. However, these environmental objectives are often directly linked to or associated with desired social outcomes, which might be social, cultural, economic, health, physical or governance-related (Donatuto et al. 2014 ; Biedenweg et al. 2016 ; Breslow et al. 2016 ; Kaplan-Hallam and Bennett 2017 ). Social objectives also include process considerations—e.g., how stewardship decisions are made and the roles that different actors play in stewarding the resource (Jupiter et al. 2014 ; Bennett and Dearden 2014 ). Local resource users and communities may pursue both ecological and social objectives simultaneously (Kittinger et al. 2016 ).

Thus, analysis of the outcomes of environmental stewardship should seek to understand how stewardship affects both ecological and social aspects and whether the outcomes of stewardship match with desired objectives. Given that stewardship occurs in complex social–ecological systems, attention is needed to feedbacks, synergies and trade-offs between social and ecological considerations in stewardship planning processes and in monitoring and evaluation frameworks (Chan et al. 2006 ; Kareiva et al. 2007 ; Oteros-Rozas et al. 2013 ). Additional considerations when seeking to understand the full impact of environmental stewardship requires inquiry into: (a) both the intended and unintended consequences of stewardship actions (Larrosa et al. 2016 ), (b) the potential benefits that occur beyond the environmental stewardship schemes remit (Courtney et al. 2013 ), (c) the distribution of the costs and benefits of stewardship initiatives between different groups (Pascual et al. 2014 ), and (d) the impacts of initiatives across spatial and temporal scales and for both current and future generations (Chan and Satterfield 2013 ). Understanding the extent to which outcomes match objectives and produce other (positive or negative) outcomes provides feedback for evaluating and adapting local stewardship approaches or to aggregate lessons learned and improve broader policies and programs intended to improve stewardship. Additionally, demonstrably positive outcomes from stewardship may be necessary to establish the legitimacy of local stewardship efforts.

A Definition and Analytical Framework for Environmental Stewardship

In sum, we bring these various elements together in an integrative conceptual framework for environmental stewardship (Fig. (Fig.2)—in 2 )—in order to provide a structure for analysis, a common language to stimulate further engagement, and a guide for efforts aimed at strategically promoting environmental stewardship. The different elements of the framework come together as follows: Stewardship actions are the suite of approaches, activities, behaviors, and technologies that are applied to protect, restore or sustainably use the environment; Individuals, groups or networks of actors initiate and take stewardship actions; Intrinsic and extrinsic motivations determine the rationales, moral obligations, and willpower for taking stewardship actions; Capacity, which is determined by both local assets and broader governance, influences the ability of local actors to engage in stewardship actions; Broader social and ecological contextual factors, including the speed and complexity of change, can support or undermine stewardship capacity and determine what actions will be appropriate and/or effective; and these factors converge to enable or undermine actions and to produce social and ecological outcomes. We provide separate definitions for each of the elements of environmental stewardship in Table Table3 3 .

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Analytical framework for the elements of local environmental stewardship. Strategic interventions – government policies, NGO programs or market mechanisms—can be applied at different leverage points (*) to support or promote local environmental stewardship efforts

Definitions of key concepts related to environmental stewardship

Supporting and Researching Local Environmental Stewardship

Having set out a framework, we now briefly examine how different organizations might use it to guide interventions aiming to support or promote local stewardship and also how it might be applied in future research efforts.

Interventions and Leverage Points for Stewardship

Different organizations—including governments, NGOs, and the private sector—and individuals often attempt to develop or support pre-existing environmental stewardship efforts by local people. To do so, these external groups promote and implement specific policies, programs and market mechanisms—which we call “interventions” here—to support or enable local stewardship potential and improve outcomes through different “leverage points”. Leverage points is a term which refers to the levers or places in a system where a strategic shift can produce changes in the entire system (Meadows 2009 ). Our preliminary analysis suggests five primary leverage points in the framework (see * in Fig. Fig.2) 2 ) where many governmental and non-governmental organizations attempt to promote environmental stewardship through interventions that: (1) introduce new actors, (2) provide incentives, (3) augment local capacity or institutions, (4) promote or support the implementation of specific actions, or (5) monitor and evaluate the outcomes of stewardship to facilitate adaptive management.

For example, many education programs and social marketing campaigns may seek to change people’s mental models or alter intrinsic motivations through creating connections with nature and changing people’s ethics, values or beliefs (McKenzie-Mohr et al. 2011 ; Leisher et al. 2012 ). Payments for environmental service (PES) programs were originally designed to provide external financial rewards for engaging in stewardship (Wunder 2007 ), thus targeting extrinsic motivations , though PES programs are becoming more nuanced in how they are designed to match a variety of local motivations (Rode et al. 2016 ). Some stewardship programs focus on building stewardship networks, at times introducing new actors or organizations to facilitate these processes (Kowalski and Jenkins 2015 ; Jenkins et al. 2017 ). Sustainable livelihoods programs aim to build local capacity for environmental stewardship (Cattermoul et al. 2008 ; Bennett 2010 ). Programs that advocate for recognition of local rights (i.e., rights-based approaches) or property rights or the creation of higher-level policies that recognize and support local stewardship are intervening at the level of institutions (Georgakopoulos et al. 2008 ; Gilmour et al. 2012 ). Some conservation organizations often simply promote specific actions —for example, the creation of more marine or terrestrial protected areas, the use of stream buffers in farming to protect streams, etc. Many real-world interventions focus on more than one leverage point simultaneously—for example, the Fish Forever program that is promoted by Rare and Environmental Defense Fund combines environmental education and outreach, property rights, capacity supports for technical management with specific actions (Fish Forever 2017 )—and many programs are getting more holistic and comprehensive over time. Yet, the leverage point(s) being targeted through different interventions, and how these interact with other elements of stewardship, are often not explicitly articulated by government policies or NGO programs (Foale et al. 2013 ). This is surprising as many of the interventions focus not on promoting specific actions but rather on stewardship supporting activities.

The overall effectiveness and appropriateness of the myriad interventions and associated leverage points is a matter of ongoing debate, which requires more space than we can devote to it here. Suffice it to say that all stewardship interventions should be considered a “work in progress”, which require continual monitoring, evaluation and adaptation. The effectiveness of these different interventions and leverage points needs to be better understood and tested empirically, to understand whether they are actually supporting or undermining local stewardship efforts. The above discussion also highlights the importance of understanding the local context and clearly articulating and continually revising a “theory of change” for all externally promoted interventions that seek to promote stewardship.

Future Applications of the Stewardship Framework

The analytical framework that we provide here might be applied to future research that seeks to: (a) descriptively assess the elements of stewardship in case studies in different contexts, (b) guide decision-making and the design of environmental stewardship initiatives or interventions, (c) evaluate the effectiveness of local initiatives or external interventions that seek to promote stewardship, and (d) delve more deeply into questions related to specific aspects of stewardship to provide crucial theoretical and practical insights. We discuss each of these briefly below.

Descriptive assessments of stewardship in different contexts

The descriptive analysis of localized environmental stewardship efforts in different contexts can help researchers, local stewardship groups and/or external organizations to understand the configuration of the different elements of stewardship. For example, one might find that local communities are highly effective at conserving local resources and thus that their efforts should be recognized and supported by external organizations rather than undermined through the imposition of external models of conservation (Jupiter 2017 ). Conversely, local community groups may have strong motivations to take stewardship actions but may simply lack the capacity to do so (Bennett et al. 2014 ; Barratt et al. 2015 ). However, accurate analysis of stewardship in different contexts may require extended engagement to get a complete picture of how the different elements of stewardship come together. In the case of traditional resource harvesters, different motivations for stewardship are co-constituted with culture, customs, harvesting practices, and traditional knowledge, manifested in group norms and rules of engagement and emerge as linked use and management actions (Berkes 1999 ; Reo and Whyte 2011 ). Analysis of case studies can help to build a corpus of research on the topic, might inform local deliberations in other locations on how to (re)design local stewardship actions or could help to guide the investments of external organizations who are interested in investing in environmental stewardship in different locales.

Prescriptive analysis to aid design and decision-making

By strengthening environmental stewardship, it is hoped that communities will be able to foster a virtuous circle of improved environmental management and social welfare. One of our aims in proposing this framework is to aid in the integration of stewardship considerations into planned or anticipated interventions, and to provide the basis for making recommendations for the types of interventions likely to be most beneficial (i.e., should we increase capacity, improve institutions or leverage motivations?) in different contexts. For example, when interventions are made by outside organizations, care must be taken not to undermine pre-existing institutions or cooperation between actors by targeting specific levers as if they were merely a resource or a means for external organizations to meet their own goals and motivations of environmental conservation. This does not mean that attempts to intervene, support, leverage and, where necessary, promote local stewardship should be abandoned. However, we urge cautious and mindful engagements as there are no panaceas.

In particular, it can be critical to understand the local context, including the level to which stewardship already exists and the current configuration of the different elements (actors, capacity, motivations) of stewardship, to ensure that outside efforts are aligned with local efforts, realities, and aspirations. Recent attention to motivations, and related concepts, has stressed the need for alignment of conservation policy incentives with local ethics, values, norms, and motivations (Chan et al. 2016 ; Nyborg et al. 2016 ; Lubchenco et al. 2016 ). Murtinho et al. ( 2013 ) show that external funding is often necessary for stewardship but is only beneficial when it is asked for rather than offered. Careful consideration is also needed to minimize any negative impacts of stewardship actions on the most vulnerable and marginalized groups within these communities (Mansuri and Rao 2004 ), and to ensure that the responsibility to steward is not expected from individuals or groups who do not have the capacity to carry out such actions, or who might experience costs that are greater than benefits. The genuine inclusion of local communities in decision-making and stewardship practices has the potential, if done well, to help improve the fit of stewardship interventions and increase the likelihood of success. We highlight the potential of participatory methods of engagement, human-centered design thinking, and adaptive co-management for innovating in the design of stewardship programs (Evans et al. 2006 ; Reed 2008 ; Armitage et al. 2010 ; Chevalier and Buckles 2013 ; Sorice and Donlan 2015 ; Gelcich and Donlan 2015 ; Romero Manrique de Lara and Corral 2017 ).

Evaluating the effectiveness of local stewardship initiatives, external interventions, and associated leverage points

The effectiveness of local stewardship can be improved through monitoring and evaluation, either by scientists or through participatory processes (Driscoll et al. 2012 ; Silbernagel et al. 2015 ; Silva and Krasny 2016 ), and subsequently adapted based on this knowledge (Armitage et al. 2010 ; Plummer et al. 2012 ). As discussed above, in all environmental policy realms, there is an array of external interventions that target different leverage points to promote and facilitate environmental stewardship. Yet it is often unclear the extent to which these different programs, policies or market mechanisms are effective at enhancing stewardship outcomes. There is thus a need to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of both local initiatives and external interventions as well as to understand the impacts of focusing efforts on different leverage points (motivations, capacity, governance, etc.) in different contexts. This research can build on past research that focuses on specific elements—such as actors, actions, local capacity, governance or motivations—and synthesize these findings to better understand the effects of different elements on stewardship outcomes. The insights from evaluations can be applied to adaptively manage stewardship interventions, revisit an organization’s “theory of change,” and even to re-formulate entire interventions when found to be ineffective or guide strategic investments of external organizations.

Further research to develop theoretical or practical insights

Finally, the framework that we have provided here might serve as a guide for more systematic analysis to develop practical insights or targeted theoretical inquiries into the individual elements and their relation to overall environmental stewardship. Practically, there is a need to better understand what factors or combinations of factors are enabling or inhibiting the success of environmental stewardship. The framework that we provide can aid in the systematic analysis of how contextual factors, intrinsic and extrinsic motivations, and the various elements of local capacity or institutions influence the stewardship choices of actors and their respective effectiveness. The application of this framework across a suite of research case study sites would enable comparison across sites and the scaling up of insights to develop more generalizable insights or lessons learned to guide future initiatives. Theoretically, there is a need for continued research on and testing of hypotheses around many of the elements of the stewardship framework.

The global scale of many current environmental issues might lead to the perception that targeting local environmental stewardship could no longer meet these challenges. However, environmental stewardship is one way through which people get involved in promoting sustainability. This paper addresses a gap in the literature by articulating a definition and presenting an integrative analytical framework that encompasses important elements of local environmental stewardship. The framework is applicable to different social and ecological contexts. A common language for the elements of stewardship is proposed to stimulate further engagement while helping to build a more robust body of academic research and theory on environmental stewardship. This more comprehensive understanding and analytical framework for environmental stewardship will also provide important practical insights into how to design and promote more meaningful and effective environmental policies and programs. Ultimately, our aim is to raise the profile of environmental stewardship as a valuable and holistic concept for guiding productive and sustained relationships with the environment.

Acknowledgements

NJB acknowledges the financial support of the Liber Ero Fellowship in Conservation Science and the Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship Program of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada. NJB is also affiliated with the Ocean Canada Partnership and Community Conservation Research Network research projects. All authors acknowledge the support of their respective academic institutions.

Compliance with Ethical Standards

Conflict of interest.

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Norman, Lita. "Community empowerment approaches to environmental stewardship." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1999. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/ftp01/MQ35919.pdf.

Carmer, Stephen I. "Corporate Environmental Strategies for Balancing Profitability with Environmental Stewardship." ScholarWorks, 2019. https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/dissertations/7279.

Vena, Christopher J. "Beyond Stewardship: Toward an Agapeic Environmental Ethic." [Milwaukee, Wis.] : e-Publications@Marquette, 2009. http://epublications.marquette.edu/dissertations_mu/16.

Fischer, Kelly Anne. "Cultivating Environmental Stewardship in Middle School Students." PDXScholar, 2011. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/560.

Clark, Erica M. "Kids Planning Our Environment: Environmental Education as a Tool for Community Stewardship." Virginia Tech, 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/37082.

Anido, Philip J. "Environmental stewardship on Canadian military training areas, rhetoric or reality." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1998. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/tape17/PQDD_0017/MQ36808.pdf.

Chambers, Kristy LeAnn. "Stewardship of creation: A guidebook for the Episcopal Church." CSUSB ScholarWorks, 2007. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd-project/3206.

Handelman, Corinne. "Natural Area Stewardship Volunteers| Motivations, Attitudes, Behaviors." Thesis, Portland State University, 2013. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=1543073.

To better understand the value of those who engage in environmental stewardship of natural areas, we studied volunteer steward's motivation to participate, their sustainable behaviors and attitudes toward stewardship-related constructs. Specifically, we designed and conducted a survey of volunteers who work as stewards in urban natural areas in Portland, Oregon. We hypothesize that as volunteer frequency increases: participants will be more motivated to participate for environmental reasons, volunteers will be more likely to feel a strong connection to the stewardship site, participants will be more likely to engage in public pro-environmental behaviors, and their level of environmental literacy will increase. Participants were sampled using a face-to-face survey methodology over the course of late winter and spring of 2012 during 18 different Portland Parks and Recreation sponsored stewardship events. We examined the motivations, attitudes and behaviors of the volunteers, and devised appropriate management implications for those organizing volunteer efforts. We equated a three-tiered typology of environmental literacy, based upon the frequency of volunteer participation, and analyzed our survey data using a principal component analysis, generalized linear models, and a qualitative coding analysis. The most frequent participants showed a higher likelihood of participation in public environmental behaviors, whereas participants at all frequency levels were also likely to participate in private environmental behaviors, such as removing invasive plants in one's yard. Volunteers across all frequencies of participation were motivated to engage in stewardship events by a desire to help the environment. By understanding volunteers' motivations and linked behaviors, park managers may gain insights about the recruitment, retention, and messaging of volunteers upon whom they may depend to achieve restoration goals. We recommend considering volunteers' motivations and benefits derived from participation in messaging to recruit and retain volunteers. Additionally, park managers should take advantage of educational opportunities linked to stewardship events, such as training programs and chances for volunteer mentorship.

Moore, Judith Ellen 1949. "The public-trust doctrine and environmental stewardship in coastal New Hampshire." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2000. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/9271.

Patzke, Karin Lynn. "Valuing Constituency| Property Assessments, Land Management and Environmental Stewardship in Central Texas." Thesis, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 2017. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10606146.

This dissertation examines the recent history of environmental conservation in Texas from three perspectives, and provides an analytic framework for evaluating how political actors and constituents participate in the rule of law. The centerpiece of this analysis examines the use of legal fictions as genres of social action in which evidence and expertise are used to adhere to the rule of law by creating legitimacy through the negotiation of practice. Preliminarily, I examine state environmental politics in the 1990s to understand how wildlife management was construed as a conservation policy for private landowners. I then explore the states legal codes and practices that establish land management practice characterized by property tax law. Finally, I turn to the contemporary practices of Central Texas landowners to understand the consequences of the policy. The focus of this dissertation is the examination of bureaucratic participation and the resulting documents for property tax assessment. Evaluating these different scales of action reveal how landowners, biologists, and state administrators use the bureaucratic policies of tax law to create conservation practices. This work adds to the growing body of literature investigating “actually existing neoliberalism” (Brenner and Theodor 2002; Hilgers 2011; Ong 2007; Wacquant 2012) to reveal how contradictions between legality and practice are mediated across social relationships. As a component of neoliberal governance, conservation on private lands presents a set of contradictions in which the productive and economic value of land diverges from its historical and cultural value. In conclusion I posit a new legal fiction of property, the inherited value, to understand these contradictions.

Mitchell, Patricia Anne. "A normative framework for environmental policy, stewardship and the ethic of care." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1999. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape9/PQDD_0001/MQ43316.pdf.

Roberts, Susan Maria. "Targeting agri environmental stewardship, based on the value of farmers' local knowledge." Thesis, Bangor University, 2008. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.506168.

Beemer, Chloe. "Our Common Sea : Global Environmental Governance and The Marine Stewardship Council Story." Thesis, Linköpings universitet, Institutionen för ekonomisk och industriell utveckling, 2019. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-160783.

Xu, Tian Yang Kevin. "Building Ecotheology: Nature Veneration in Architecture and its Contributions to Environmental Stewardship." University of Cincinnati / OhioLINK, 2020. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1592171201279149.

Bennett, Sophie Louisa. "The invertebrate biodiversity of differently aged arable farmland hedgerows under environmental stewardship." Thesis, University of Lincoln, 2016. http://eprints.lincoln.ac.uk/23690/.

Mitchell, Patricia Anne Carleton University Dissertation Law. "A Normative framework for environmental policy; stewardship and the ethic of care." Ottawa, 1999.

Morgan, Erin E. "Fostering Stewardship and Citizenship| Action Research in Place-Based Education." Thesis, Prescott College, 2015. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=1573451.

This paper describes a teacher's action research within the place-based education (PBE) program at Forest Grove Community School (FGCS), a first through eighth grade public charter school in Forest Grove, Oregon. It seeks to evaluate the effectiveness of the program in delivering the skills, knowledge, values and internal locus of control necessary to promote stewardship and citizenship among students. A review of literature discusses the factors that contribute to the development of stewardship and citizenship, and how the philosophy of place-based education supports these factors. The researcher uses mixed methodology to gather diverse data regarding the school's program and its impact on the student body, and a collaborative action research approach to examine the program's strengths and identify areas for development. Instruments utilized for data collection include a survey administered to students and parents, teacher reflections, student work samples, and records of professional development meetings. An evaluation of the PBE program details the strengths and potential areas of development revealed through research. The conclusion presents several recommendations to the school for enhancing stewardship and citizenship development among students.

Cone, Christopher. "Redacted Dominionism: An Evangelical, Environmentally Sympathetic Reading of the Early Genesis Narrative." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2011. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc84193/.

Hatch, Daniel Augustin. "Educational architecture catalyzing environmental stewardship through a participatory relationship with ecologically responsible design /." Cincinnati, Ohio : University of Cincinnati, 2006. http://www.ohiolink.edu/etd/view.cgi?acc%5Fnum=ucin1148319485.

Rosenfeld, Mathias. "Power to the people : a framework for enhancing environmental stewardship through community design." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/39949.

HATCH, DANIEL AUGUSTIN. "EDUCATIONAL ARCHITECTURE: CATALYZING ENVIRONMENTAL STEWARDSHIP THROUGH A PARTICIPATORY RELATIONSHIP WITH ECOLOGICALLY RESPONSIBLE DESIGN." University of Cincinnati / OhioLINK, 2006. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1148319485.

Feldman, Alicia. "Environmental equifinality: (Re)Examining predictors of specific responsible environmental behaviours in Australian recreational fishing environments." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2021. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/208423/1/Alicia_Feldman_Thesis.pdf.

Smith, Stephanie A. "Evaluating Consumer Response to Environmental Labels on Packaging Using Eye-Tracking." Thesis, Virginia Tech, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/54579.

Olmsted, Paige. "For love or money : harnessing environmental values and financial incentives to promote conservation stewardship." Thesis, University of British Columbia, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/61369.

Shute, Jeremy J. Carleton University Dissertation Geography. "Co-management under the Wendaban Stewardship Authority; an inquiry into cross-cultural environmental values." Ottawa, 1993.

Markowitz, Ezra, and Ezra Markowitz. "Affective and Moral Roots of Environmental Stewardship: The Role of Obligation, Gratitude and Compassion." Thesis, University of Oregon, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/1794/12530.

Morris, Vincent E. "Eighth-day creators a Christian environmental stewardship ethic based on the "image of God" in the doctrine of creation /." Theological Research Exchange Network (TREN), access this title online, 2006. http://dx.doi.org/10.2986/tren.088-0149.

Enqvist, Johan. "Urban environmental stewardship : Roles and reasons for civic engagements in governance of social-ecological systems." Licentiate thesis, Stockholms universitet, Stockholm Resilience Centre, 2015. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-116582.

Golly, Krystle M. "Assessing the distribution of environmental stewardship organizations and their relationship to the demographics of Los Angeles County." Digital Commons at Loyola Marymount University and Loyola Law School, 2017. https://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/etd/319.

Robles, Diaz de Leon Luisa Fernanda. "A memetic/participatory approach for changing social behaviors and promoting environmental stewardship in Jalisco, Mexico." College Park, Md., 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/1903/26.

Baird, Laura Eaton. "Tools Tested for Outdoor Recreation, Environmental Education and Stewardship: Allowing Children to Make the Rules." OpenSIUC, 2014. https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/theses/1478.

Aliyu, Abdullahi A. "Product stewardship as a novel sustainability pathway for the UK precast concrete industry." Thesis, Loughborough University, 2014. https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/2134/16049.

Quillerou, Emmanuelle. "Adverse selection and Agri-Environmental Policy Design : The Higher Level Stewardship Scheme as a Case Study." Thesis, University of Kent, 2009. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.527581.

Do, Monte Karyna. "Environmental stewardship and the fate of the Brazilian Amazon : a case study of the Madeira Complex." FIU Digital Commons, 2009. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/3067.

DeAngelo, Matthew Thomas. "Watershed Management and Private Lands: Moving Beyond Financial Incentives to Encourage Land Stewardship." PDXScholar, 2016. http://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/3034.

Lindeque, Roelof Cornelius. "Integrated environmental management (IEM) in South Africa : a critical asses[s]ment / Roelof Cornelius Lindeque." Thesis, North-West University, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/10394/344.

Sehannie, Paoula. "FAITH BASED ENVIRONMENTAL STEWARDSHIP: PRACTICES AND ATTITUDES OF CHRISTIAN CHURCHES ON VIRGINIA’S NORTHERN NECK AND EASTERN SHORE." VCU Scholars Compass, 2010. http://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/2325.

Dhakal, Subas Prasad. "Strengthening environmental stewardship in Perth, Western Australia: An investigation of linkages between organisational social capital and Information and Communication Technologies in Environmental Community Organisations." Thesis, Dhakal, Subas Prasad (2010) Strengthening environmental stewardship in Perth, Western Australia: An investigation of linkages between organisational social capital and Information and Communication Technologies in Environmental Community Organisations. PhD thesis, Murdoch University, 2010. https://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/id/eprint/3012/.

Willcocks, Ann. "Factors affecting participation in group agri-environment schemes : a case study of the Dartmoor Commons." Thesis, University of Plymouth, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/10026.1/8549.

Lawrence, Andrea Nicole. "Sustainability Education as a Framework for Enhancing Environmental Stewardship in Young Leaders: An Intervention at Tryon Creek Nature Day Camp." PDXScholar, 2012. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/555.

Cochrane, David Alan, and david cochrane@au ey com. "Maintaining Environmental Values in a Commercial Environment - a Framework for Commercial Development in Victoria's National Parks." RMIT University. Graduate School of Business, 2007. http://adt.lib.rmit.edu.au/adt/public/adt-VIT20080220.163331.

Hyde, Charlotte. "The Mark of the Japanese Murrelet (Synthliboramphus wumizusume): A study of song and stewardship in Japan’s Inland Sea." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2019. https://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_theses/201.

Plitt, Sophia. "Digital tools for urban green infrastructure: : Investigating the potential of e-tools to inform and engage stewards." Thesis, Stockholms universitet, Stockholm Resilience Centre, 2019. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-170269.

Zacks, Cindy Lee Falsken. "Desert Solitaire: Using literature to develop a sense of place and stewardship of wilderness in high school students." CSUSB ScholarWorks, 2000. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd-project/1753.

Enqvist, Johan. "Stewardship in an urban world : Civic engagement and human–nature relations in the Anthropocene." Doctoral thesis, Stockholms universitet, Stockholm Resilience Centre, 2017. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-146193.

At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 3: Manuscript. Paper 4: Manuscript. Paper 5: Manuscript.

Sweeney, Julia. "Societal Value Change and Change inProduct Portfolio : A Case Study of Henkel AG & Co. KGaA with Special Considerationof ‘Green’ Product Innovations in Germany 1970-2010." Thesis, Linköpings universitet, Företagsekonomi, 2011. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-71157.

Luginbuhl, Mather April Marie. "The Final Nail in the Coffin of Small-Scale Farming in the United States: Stewardship and Greenhouse Gas Markets in the United States." The Ohio State University, 2010. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1275393945.

Bo-Jacob, Enquist. "Can stakeholder partnerships in a civil regulated environmental practice, create sustainability? : The phenomenon of Forest Stewardship Council meets practice in Sveaskog and IKEA." Thesis, Karlstad University, Faculty of Social and Life Sciences, 2007. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kau:diva-820.

Forest Stewardship council (FSC) is a good example of a civil regulated environmental labelling-initiative. It is also an arena for different organisations interesting in sustainable forestry to work and handle forestry issues. FSC has allowed many private initiatives to move ahead of poor national and international environmental legislation. Instead they have turned towards the market with consumer pressure and in co-operation with companies. The sustainable forestry initiative has become a part of organisations’ ‘Environmental Responsibility’ which is a part of their ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’ (CSR) work. The aim of my thesis is to describe the phenomenon of FSC, both practically and theoretically, from a stakeholder approach. I have picked out two companies which are heavily involved in the FSC practice, IKEA and Sveaskog. The two companies are important players in shaping and developing FSC. The different practices are handled as two separate case-studies. A third case-study explores FSC both on national and international basis. The following research question will be answered: From a stakeholder view, how does FSC works in practice? To describe these three forestry practices is a contribution in itself. I will also use an analysing tool inspired by stakeholder theory to make the studies’ stakeholder partnerships as clear as possible. With the knowledge exposed in answering the first question I will further ask: Can stakeholder partnerships in a civil regulated environmental practice, create sustainability? Kemp’s (2005) five dimensions for sustainability improve the understanding. Every dimension will be followed by an interpretation from my forestry practice in the previous chapter. Both IKEA and Sveaskog drives an ambitious work to create sustainable business, which will be analysed through an ethical-, social-, nature-philosophic-, economic- and legal perspective of the sustainability concept.

The thesis is analysed by an explorative methodological approach with qualitative data, since it best can encapsulate the essence of the complexity which constitutes the answers to the research questions. Each case study will be described in separate texts which make up multiple realities mentally constructed by ourselves.

The analysis shows, both for Sveaskog and IKEA, that stakeholder partnerships generate a number of things. The partnerships generate constructive interaction where new and experienced ideas are born; obligations, processes and responsibilities for their stakeholder engagement; and environmental and social benefits in terms of FSC and other civil regulations and what environmental and social benefits the work leads to. But my description and analysis of the practice and the stakeholder analysis do not answer the general question of the thesis: Can stakeholder partnerships create sustainability?

When going through the critical voices from the five dimensions of sustainability, the task of creating sustainability seems to be impossible. I have confronted the five dimensions with environmental and social responsibility practice in Sveaskog and IKEA, and found substantial efforts in each and every dimension of sustainability. This practical work seems hopeful, whether there is sustainability or not, a serious ambition and extensive goals sometimes makes a difference.

Enquist, Bo-Jacob. "Can stakeholder partnerships in a civil regulated environmental practice, create sustainability? : The phenomenon of Forest Stewardship Council meets practice in Sveaskog and IKEA." Thesis, Karlstad University, Division for Environmental Sciences, 2007. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kau:diva-835.

Greely, Teresa. "Ocean Literacy and Reasoning About Ocean Issues: The Influence of Content, Experience and Morality." [Tampa, Fla] : University of South Florida, 2008. http://purl.fcla.edu/usf/dc/et/SFE0002696.

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Related links, south african journal of science, on-line version issn 1996-7489 print version issn 0038-2353, s. afr. j. sci. vol.115 n.5-6 pretoria may./jun. 2019, http://dx.doi.org/10.17159/sajs.2019/5339 .

RESEARCH ARTICLES

The meaning and practice of stewardship in South Africa

Jessica Cockburn I , II ; Georgina Cundill III ; Sheona Shackleton II ; Mathieu Rouget IV

I Environmental Learning Research Centre, Department of Education, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa II Department of Environmental Science, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa III International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada IV Plant Populations and Bio-aggressors in Tropical Ecosystems Joint Research Unit (UMR PVBMT), Centre for International Cooperation in Development-Oriented Agronomical Research (CIRAD), St Pierre, La Réunion, France

Correspondence

Stewardship offers a means of addressing social-ecological sustainability challenges, from the local to the global level. The concept of stewardship has had various meanings attached to it over time, and the links between the theory and practice of stewardship are not well understood. We sought to characterise the practice of stewardship in South Africa, to better understand the relationship between theory and practice. We found that practitioners' understandings of stewardship coalesce around two core notions: the idea of stewardship as 'responsible use and care' of nature, and stewardship as a 'balancing act' between stewards' use of natural resources for agricultural production and their responsibility to protect and manage the wider ecosystem. Stewardship practice in South Africa is strongly influenced by the biodiversity stewardship tool; however, many practitioners are integrating biodiversity stewardship with other approaches. These emerging social-ecological stewardship initiatives operate at landscape-level and work towards integrated social and ecological stewardship outcomes, by facilitating collaboration among diverse stakeholders. Further research is needed to better understand what is required to support these integrated, collaborative and cross-sectoral initiatives. Policy mechanisms that facilitate integrated place-based stewardship practice can contribute to expanding the practice of biodiversity stewardship in South Africa. SIGNIFICANCE : • Our findings contribute to a growing understanding of what stewardship looks like in South Africa and how it is put into practice. • We show that biodiversity stewardship is a prevalent understanding of stewardship practice in South Africa and is often combined with other approaches for sustainable landscape management. • A broader understanding of stewardship, for example through the concept of social-ecological stewardship, can enable more integrated, collaborative approaches to landscape management, addressing the wide range of environmental and social development challenges faced in rural landscapes across South Africa.

Keywords : biodiversity stewardship; collaboration; ecosystem services; multifunctional landscapes; practice-based knowledge; social-ecological systems; sustainability

Introduction

Stewardship has been put forward as a means of minimising human impacts on ecosystems and calls for stewardship abound in the literature. 1-4 If stewardship is considered a significant part of the solution to ecosystem degradation, and key to sustainability of social-ecological systems, how can it be achieved in practice? A challenge in answering this question is that the links between the theory (knowing) and practice (doing) of stewardship are underdeveloped. 4,5 Moreover, heightening this challenge, there is a variety of interpretations of the concept.

Recent research in South Africa indicates that while the practice of stewardship in the country is dominated by a fairly narrow biodiversity conservation focus through the 'biodiversity stewardship' tool (described below) 6,7 , there is also evidence of a diversity of more holistic, integrated practices emerging 8 . The diversity of meanings attached to stewardship, the specific local practices, and on-the-ground stewardship practitioners' perspectives have, however, not been explored. In this study, we respond to the need to bridge the knowing-doing gap by investigating how stewardship practitioners apply theoretical ideals of stewardship in practice in South Africa. We do this by investigating the meaning and practice of stewardship, and by exploring the links between how stewardship is understood in theory and the ways in which it is actually put into practice.

A review of the theory of stewardship in the literature reveals stewardship as a complex, ever-changing concept with a diversity of understandings which have emerged over time 9,10 ( Figure 1 ). The changing meanings of stewardship mirror shifts in environmental ideologies 5,11,12 and do not have distinct start and finish points in time. Consequently, a variety of meanings still persist, to a greater or lesser extent, in the present day. In all these conceptualisations, stewardship is a metaphor which describes a distinct kind of human-nature relationship. 13 Over time understanding of stewardship has largely shifted towards one which incorporates concerns for social justice, democracy and pluralism, and which provides a broad and deep ethical basis from which human responsibility and care for nature arises. 14-16 The more recent interpretations indicate a shift in discourses and ideologies towards more integrated, systemic understandings of the relationship between humans and nature (for example through the metaphor of social-ecological systems) - different from previous interpretations based on a more dualistic relationship ( Figure 1 ). Of course, a plethora of understandings of stewardship also exist among diverse indigenous groups across the world. 17,18 However, these indigenous understandings are poorly documented and not well represented in English-language academic literature. Therefore, while recognising the importance of exploring these, for the purpose of this study we focus on recent definitions from the literature to capture the essence of recent stewardship theory.

We acknowledge and make use of several recent definitions of stewardship to provide the conceptual framing for this study. An important distinction that sets these selected definitions apart from other interpretations of stewardship, is that stewardship is largely a collaborative endeavour, bringing together multiple, diverse stakeholders. 8,19,20 As such, and with its applicability to a broad range of environmental concerns, the concept has appealed to the sustainability sciences and social-ecological systems fields 3,4,9,21 , despite widely debated critiques of the concept 11,14,17 .

Firstly, as a starting point we recognise the term 'environmental stewardship' proposed by Welchman 14 which captures the classical moral-ethical root of stewardship, whilst remaining relevant in the contemporary context. Welchman defines environmental stewardship as the

responsible management of human activity affecting the natural environment to ensure the conservation and preservation of natural resources and values for the sake of future generations of human and other life on the planet, together with the acceptance of significant answerability for one's conduct to society. 16(p.303)

Secondly, we use the concept of ecosystem stewardship , along with key principles which set it apart from other definitions and illustrate its roots in resilience thinking and social-ecological systems research. 21,22 Ecosystem stewardship is a specific management-oriented example of the most recent understandings of stewardship, and is defined as

a strategy to respond to and shape social-ecological systems under conditions of uncertainty and change to sustain the supply and opportunities for use of ecosystem services to support human well-being. 2(p.241)

Key principles of ecosystem stewardship include 2,17 : a management approach underpinned by resilience thinking 22 ; recognition of ecosystems which provide diverse ecosystem services rather than single resources; stewardship which recognises stewards as an integral part of the system they manage and the inherent responsibility they hold; the need for stewards to work collaboratively with multiple stakeholders; and the need for stewards to anticipate and respond to social-ecological change and shape it for sustainability to avoid loss of future options for the system.

Thirdly, we use the term 'social-ecological stewardship' as a broad umbrella term to refer to the most recent understandings of stewardship, to encapsulate the classical interpretations of stewardship and recent links to the social-ecological systems concept. 23

What about the practice of stewardship? We use the term 'practice' as it is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary: 'The actual application or use of an idea, belief, or method, as opposed to theories relating to it' 24 . Thus, the practice of stewardship is the actual, practical application of the concept of stewardship in a particular place or context. Worldwide, the concept of stewardship is put into practice in a diversity of ways. 4,5,9 One of the key features that stewardship practices have in common, despite the diversity of understandings, is volunteerism, and a focus on the actions and participation of local people in natural resource management. 4,25 Stewardship initiatives focus on engaging the efforts, time and resources of local people who utilise natural resources, and on facilitating their ability to steward, or to take care of, natural resources at the local level. 4,16,25 Such locally oriented stewardship activities have emerged across a variety of sectors, including fisheries, agriculture, forestry, protected areas, wildlife, ecosystem services and water management, and span rural and urban environments. 4 Thus, putting stewardship into practice is both about the practical application of the theory or ideals of stewardship, and about moving from the ethic of stewardship held by individuals, to tangible actions based on that ethic. 4,5

In this study we focus on stewardship initiatives practised in rural landscapes in which agriculture is one of multiple land use activities, i.e. in multifunctional landscapes. 26 Such landscapes face particular challenges and opportunities for integrating social-ecological stewardship outcomes and are a commonly practised form of stewardship in South Africa. 27 Globally, stewardship practice in landscapes includes policy-driven private land conservation tools such as conservation easements and land trusts in the United States of America 28 , and the biodiversity stewardship programme in South Africa 7,19 . This particular approach to stewardship in policy and practice in South Africa, is defined as follows:

Biodiversity stewardship is an approach to securing land in biodiversity priority areas through entering into agreements with private and communal landowners, led by conservation authorities. 7

Agri-environmental tools are also forms of stewardship practice and are similar to private land conservation initiatives. They include Agri-environmental and Countryside Stewardship Schemes in Europe and the United Kingdom 29,30 , the Environmental Farm Plan Programme in Canada 20 and Land Care initiatives in Australia 31 . Stewardship is also put into practice in landscapes through watershed or catchment management initiatives focused on improved land use management for catchment health 32,33 , and through integrated landscape approaches 34,35 which vary across the spectrum from formal to informal. Another means of realising stewardship in practice in landscapes, which varies from policy-driven to informal bottom-up initiatives, is through a variety of informal community-based, common pool resource management initiatives in a diversity of contexts. 25,36,37

These stewardship-in-practice initiatives vary according to a number of features (comparable to conceptual frameworks of stewardship recently proposed by Bennett et al. 4 and Peçanha Enqvist et al. 38 ) which include their approach, objectives and stewardship actions. We use these features as a means of exploring stewardship practice in South Africa. These initiatives also vary in their alignment with the notion of social-ecological stewardship. We adopt this term here as an umbrella term for the most recent understandings of stewardship, using it as a lens to investigate how recent stewardship theory is put into practice in the South African context.

Working in the context of these landscapes, our study builds on recent global literature 4,9,16,23,38 , and specifically extends Barendse et al.'s 8 study of South African stewardship initiatives that contribute toward sustainability and conservation outcomes by offering detailed, localised, practice-based understandings and insights from stewardship practitioners working in rural multifunctional landscapes. We explore three key areas: (1) the meanings of stewardship held by stewardship practitioners who are implementing stewardship at the local level; (2) how they are putting stewardship into practice; and (3) whether there is evidence of the more recent concept of social-ecological stewardship being applied in practice in the context of multifunctional landscapes.

Data collection

We collected data through a countrywide survey of stewardship practitioners. 39 We define stewardship practitioners as professionals from a variety of organisations working with local land owners and land users (or stewards) to bring about improved stewardship, 4 i.e. they facilitate stewardship in rural landscapes. We drew participants from the stewardship practitioner community across South Africa working in rural landscapes, making a concerted effort to reach out to people working in relevant sectors other than conservation (which is a well-represented sector in the biodiversity stewardship community), such as agriculture, rural development and water management. Almost half the sample worked with approaches other than biodiversity stewardship (see 'Respondents' stewardship context' below). To do this we employed a purposive snowball sampling approach. 40 Participants were recruited at workshops and conferences, and by email and telephone. Barendse et al.'s 8 list of stewardship initiatives provided a useful benchmark for sample completeness.

The survey questionnaire was fully structured and included 27 questions, both open- and closed-ended questions 39 (see Appendix 1 in the supplementary material). The survey was divided into three parts: (1) the context of the participants' project or initiative; (2) what environmental stewardship meant to them (open-ended questions); and (3) environmental stewardship practices in their projects. The following questions were used to generate insights on 'stewardship practices': (1) What kind of approach or model is employed in your project? (2) What is the primary objective of your project? (3) What kind of stewardship actions are expected from stewards? We use these categories to structure the results section on stewardship practice.

To increase the response rate, we administered the survey through a variety of avenues 39 including survey interviews (in person or telephonically) and self-administered survey questionnaires (hand written and web-based, using Google Forms). To reduce potential variability across means of administration, an identical form was used across all media. We piloted the survey questionnaire with five practitioners and refined the questions based on this experience. The survey ran for 11 months from August 2015 until June 2016; 95 practitioners from across South Africa participated.

Data analysis

We analysed the quantitative data using descriptive statistics. 39 We coded qualitative data from open-ended questions using inductive, open coding through a two-step coding process. 41 The first step was to identify themes of similar responses per question from the data, resulting in a long list of themes (about 15-20 per question). In the second step, we narrowed this list of themes down to a shorter list of overarching categories based on similarity in meaning. 42 We labelled the categories as much as possible using 'in vivo' codes (i.e. using respondents' wording) to stay true to the meanings expressed in responses. 41 For most questions, we also quantified the number of responses per category coded from qualitative data.

We coded the practical application of the concept of 'social-ecological stewardship' in the initiatives (Objective 3) out of the qualitative data according to a pre-determined coding framework, using the following three criteria 23 : The initiative had to: (1) be working at landscape-level (i.e. beyond the individual farm or village level); (2) be working towards multifunctionality, i.e. towards multiple, integrated social-ecological stewardship outcomes; and (3) have an explicit focus on collaboration among multiple stakeholders and stewards (or farmers) must be active participants in a collaborative multi-stakeholder process. These criteria characterise initiatives which are putting the concept of social-ecological stewardship into practice in landscapes. 23

Respondents' answers to the question about what kind of stewardship actions they expected from stewards generated a large number and variety of responses, and we therefore treated them as free-list data. 43 We quantified the 'stewardship actions' data by counting the frequency of mention of each action across all respondents. We used word frequency counting (a form of content analysis 44 ) on the textual survey data (full data set) to identify and quantify instances of key terms from the recent theoretical stewardship literature (drawing on the principles of ecosystem stewardship described above 21 ). To avoid reductionist interpretations of counts, we interpreted these in the context of their usage, by analysing them together with the qualitative results. 44

Ethical considerations

We adhered to the guidelines of the Rhodes University Ethical Standards Committee Handbook 45 which include the following key principles: respect and dignity of research participants (including obtaining free and informed consent and ensuring anonymity); transparency and honesty in all aspects of research; accountability and responsibility of researchers; and integrity and academic professionalism of researchers. Research feedback was provided to participants via email, in a magazine article 46 , and through presentations at relevant events. The study was given ethical clearance by the Department of Environmental Science Ethics Sub-committee in August 2015.

Respondents' stewardship context

Participants represented all nine provinces of South Africa and worked in a variety of organisations. The largest proportion of respondents (44%) worked for national non-governmental organisations (NGOs). The next biggest group worked for provincial government agencies (23%), followed by local NGOs (14%), private sector organisations (8%), national government (4%), research institutes (4%), and local government (2%). Considering the importance of the biodiversity stewardship tool in South Africa 8 , we also categorised participants by their involvement with this approach: 33% worked solely with the biodiversity stewardship tool, 27% combined it with other approaches, and 40% exclusively used other approaches. We also asked participants whether they would characterise the work or purpose of their project as 'stewardship': 82% said 'Yes', 16% said 'Maybe or Partly', and 2% said 'No', confirming that a large proportion of the sample self-identify as stewardship practitioners.

Meanings of stewardship in practice

Practitioners held diverse understandings of the meaning of stewardship, yet these coalesced around the ideas of 'taking care of nature' and 'stewards performing a balancing act between protecting nature and supporting their own agricultural livelihoods' ( Table 1 ). Just under half of the respondents understood stewardship to mean 'responsible use and care'; for example, stewardship is the 'responsible use of natural resources for the benefit of current and future generations'. A total of 20% of respondents conflated stewardship in general with the biodiversity stewardship tool specifically ( Table 1 : 'Stewardship = Biodiversity stewardship'). For example, one respondent expressed confusion regarding what they understood about the term:

… for me the word 'stewardship' is confusing due to what the word actually means and what is happening in reality. For me the word means taking responsibility for managing one's own natural resources. In reality it seems more like a process to extend protected areas status onto private lands.

Another 20% of respondents described stewardship as 'sustainable use and management' ( Table 1 ), for example: 'Looking after or managing your natural resources in a sustainable manner - protecting and improving natural resources while you produce'. This meaning is distinguished from 'responsible use and care' by its explicit use of the term 'sustainability' ( Table 1 ). The remaining 18% of respondents' understandings of stewardship included notions of 'preserving and conserving nature', an 'ethical or moral imperative', and 'holism and human-nature connectedness'.

The different terms used by respondents to define stewardship and describe how they put it into practice also give insight into what stewardship means to them, and what discourse is dominant in stewardship practice. For example, the terms 'conservation', 'environment' and 'biodiversity' were the three most frequently used terms in definitions given by participants and also in the entire data set ( Table 2 ). Terms from the more recent literature on stewardship in social-ecological systems such as 'ecosystem services', 'resilience' and 'social-ecological systems' were used far less frequently by respondents in their answers ( Table 2 ).

Practice of stewardship

Stewardship approach

A diversity of approaches to facilitating and implementing stewardship are being practised in South Africa ( Table 3 ), with similar approaches, objectives and activities as described for stewardship initiatives worldwide (see Introduction). The most dominant approach is the biodiversity stewardship tool; however, a similar proportion of respondents are involved either in approaches which combine biodiversity stewardship with other approaches, or in integrated landscape or catchment approaches to stewardship. Overall, 60% of respondents are involved to a greater or lesser extent in implementation of the biodiversity stewardship tool ( Table 3 ). The combination of the biodiversity stewardship tool with other approaches indicates its applicability in a variety of contexts, beyond the narrow focus of achieving biodiversity conservation targets. Practitioners are integrating this tool within broader sustainable land management initiatives. For example:

My project is quite varied with a habitat rehabilitation aspect, a more scientific based monitoring aspect and then a stewardship aspect. The monitoring functions to track the progress of rehabilitation work and to identify new threats that need to be addressed and biodiversity stewardship is used as a tool to secure high priority habitats for conservation.

The combined use of the biodiversity stewardship tool with other approaches (often those focused on sustainable utilisation or production) ( Table 3 ) also illustrates that for many practitioners, stewardship is about balancing protection and use of multiple ecosystem services. For example, balancing the protection and management of biodiversity, or regulating and supporting ecosystem services such as water, with the production-oriented use of land for commercial or subsistence agriculture, livestock grazing or other natural resources (provisioning ecosystem services). Seeking to strike the balance can bring sectors into conflict with one another but can also lead to new partnerships. For example, one respondent commented that:

For stewardship to work it is important that we are able to 'align with our enemies' e.g. I am working for a conservation agency, but I sit in the agriculture office.

The characterisation of stewardship practice according to these different approaches ( Table 3 ) reveals that sectoral focus areas seem to drive approaches to stewardship. The biodiversity conservation sector currently dominates stewardship practice through the biodiversity stewardship tool; however, catchment management and sustainable land management, which are represented for example by the Departments of Water, Agriculture and Land Affairs/Rural Development, are also important sectors for stewardship.

Objectives of stewardship

Despite focused biodiversity stewardship approaches only accounting for 33% of the sample ( Table 3 ), biodiversity conservation was the primary objective identified most frequently by respondents (57%, Figure 2 ). Ecological objectives were by far the most cited primary objective, followed by sustainable agriculture and catchment management ( Figure 2 ).

The quotes below illustrate some of the more multifaceted objectives expressed by many respondents, illustrating that practitioners are working with farmers towards balancing the needs of production activities (or provisioning ecosystem services), with management and protection of regulating or supporting ecosystem services in the landscape:

Sustainable land use, continual provision of ecosystem services, biodiversity conservation, ecosystem-based adaptation, improved access to markets for produce. Ensuring an ecologically functional environment where people can farm, live and thrive happily alongside biodiversity assets for multiple generations.

Stewardship actions expected from stewards

The stewardship actions expected from stewards ( Figure 3 ) align with the primary objectives identified by practitioners ( Figure 2 ), confirming that stewardship practice in South Africa is primarily about engaging with ecological concerns. The most frequently expressed categories of stewardship actions focus on dealing with ecological aspects such as species, ecosystems, habitats, natural resources and biodiversity ( Figure 3 ). However, several categories also illustrate the role of stewardship as balancing both ecological protection or management (e.g. for regulating and supporting ecosystem services), and production or livelihood outcomes (e.g. for provisioning ecosystem services). This role is reflected in statements such as: 'utilise resources sustainably' and 'implement agricultural best management practices'. Actions relating to social learning and collaborative processes were also mentioned, including 'participate in knowledge-sharing and education', 'participate in research and monitoring' and 'participate in collaborative initiatives', although these were reported far less frequently ( Figure 3 ).

Evidence of 'social-ecological stewardship' in practice

Further insights into the nature of stewardship practice and the alignment of initiatives with the most recent meanings of stewardship in theory (i.e. social-ecological stewardship) are revealed through the following key features: 65% of initiatives operate at landscape-level and therefore involve multiple stakeholders; 47% of initiatives are working towards multiple, integrated social-ecological outcomes; and 67% of initiatives have an explicit focus on building collaboration among stakeholders. Of the initiatives, 41% showed all three of these features of social-ecological stewardship, suggesting that, in many initiatives, putting stewardship into practice is about more than simply working towards ecological objectives ( Figure 2 ) and implementing ecological management actions ( Figure 3 ).

Although 60% of initiatives are implementing the biodiversity stewardship tool (33% solely, and 27% in combination with other approaches ( Table 3 ), our findings show that in many cases the tool is being implemented within a more integrated overall approach in which biodiversity conservation is one of many potential outcomes of improved stewardship.

We also investigated whether any initiatives were explicitly applying the resilience-based principles of ecosystem stewardship. 2,21 In defining the meaning of stewardship, none of the respondents used the term 'resilience', only 6 of 95 respondents mentioned the term 'ecosystem services' in their definition of stewardship ( Table 2 ), and the term 'social-ecological' was used only a total of eight times ( Table 2 ). These three terms are core to the principles of ecosystem stewardship described in the introduction. In contrast, the word root 'sustain-' (i.e. sustain, sustainable, sustainability) was used by 13 respondents in their definitions of stewardship and was mentioned overall in the full data set by 56 respondents ( Table 2 ). The lack of uptake by practitioners of the most recent jargon from the stewardship literature is not surprising, especially considering that these are also recent concepts in the literature, and that there is a well-known gap between theory and practice in this field. What is striking, however, is that when one looks beyond the language, meanings and discourse to the actual practice of stewardship, there is evidence of social-ecological stewardship, as described above.

Our study provides insights into the practice of stewardship in South Africa, revealing how local practitioners are working towards achieving stewardship outcomes on the ground, thus shedding light on the links between theory and practice. We begin by discussing concerns and opportunities raised by the prevalence of the biodiversity stewardship tool in the practice of stewardship in South Africa. We then turn to two new perspectives on stewardship in practice revealed through this study. Firstly, the findings on the meanings and practice reveal insights into the contemporary role of local stewards working in multifunctional landscapes, where they are expected to care and share. Secondly, despite the dominance of the biodiversity stewardship tool in South Africa, the practice of stewardship appears to be shifting to align with the most recent social-ecological understandings of stewardship in the literature - practitioners may not be 'talking the walk' (aligned with stewardship theory), but they do seem to be 'walking the walk' (putting stewardship into practice).

Concerns and opportunities for stewardship practice

There are concerns about the dominance of stewardship practice by one sector through the biodiversity stewardship tool. The prevalence of biodiversity stewardship is perhaps to be expected given the institutionalisation of the approach in South African policy 8 , and its relative success within the conservation sector 6,47 . This institutionalisation demonstrates that both local and global policy play a strong role in shaping the understanding, discourse and practice of stewardship in South Africa - possibly more so than global theory ( Figure 1 ) and practice. For example, the Protected Areas Expansion Strategy from which the biodiversity stewardship tool emerged, is a response to South Africa's commitments for protected area expansion to the international Convention on Biodiversity. 48

The strong focus of biodiversity stewardship on conservation outcomes may hinder opportunities for other diverse forms of stewardship ( Figure 1 ), and the narrow focus on 'high-value' biodiversity priority areas within the biodiversity stewardship approach means large areas of the country are excluded from the potential positive impacts of stewardship. 8 Possibly in response to such concerns, some national NGOs in South Africa have adopted more holistic and integrated interpretations of stewardship 8 aligned with the notion of social-ecological stewardship or 'Earth Stewardship' 1 . This adoption indicates recognition among the practitioner community that more integrated, holistic approaches to stewardship may be more suitable to addressing the complex social-ecological challenges faced in South Africa.

Another concern relates to associations between biodiversity stewardship and the problematic history of biodiversity conservation in the country. Because of its strong ties with biodiversity conservation in South Africa, there is a risk that stewardship is associated with the social injustices which were historically enacted in the interests of conservation. 49 Tellingly, a respondent in our survey commented that 'there is a perception that stewardship is for rich white people'. Policymakers and practitioners of biodiversity stewardship in South Africa would do well to continue working on ensuring that implementation of the biodiversity stewardship tool in no way infringes on local people's voice, rights to equal access of benefits of ecosystem services, and other social justice concerns. This consideration is especially relevant considering critique in the literature about the concept of stewardship and its historical association with paradigms that have perpetuated exclusive religious and chauvinist ways of engaging with nature. 14,15,17 Moreover, recent debates in South Africa around land reform and expropriation without compensation 50 and resulting land tenure uncertainty among private landowners, raise important questions about the long-term sustainability of the current model of biodiversity stewardship as the primary tool for conservation outside of state-owned protected areas. The conservation community needs to earnestly engage in the realities of land redistribution. Stewardship policies and practices need to be agile and flexible enough to accommodate changing land tenure arrangements.

The strong position of biodiversity stewardship is also positive in many ways. Certainly, within the conservation sector in South Africa, this approach is considered a success story for biodiversity conservation and protected area expansion. 6,47 It is viewed as a cost-effective tool for securing protected areas on non-state land, and is considered a valuable means of securing commitment and investment from private and communal land users into long-term stewardship. 6 Through binding contractual agreements with landowners, practitioners can also potentially secure fiscal benefits for farmers (for example through tax rebates), supporting stewards to off-set the costs of voluntary stewardship actions on their land. 51 There is also recognition that integrating the biodiversity stewardship tool with other approaches to sustainable natural resource management could help South Africa to work towards its National Development Plan and the Sustainable Development Goals. 19,47 Examples of these include the integrated landscape-level initiatives identified here, but also market-based incentive schemes, and rural development and environmental education initiatives, which were not identified in our findings but have been recognised as important forms of stewardship. 8

There is an opportunity to leverage the effectiveness and success of the biodiversity stewardship tool to achieve more integrated outcomes 47 , as practitioners are already beginning to do ( Table 3 ). To successfully implement the ideals of stewardship informed by a social-ecological view, a cross-sectoral policy framework which supports or mandates cooperative governance and creates an enabling environment for multistakeholder collaboration is necessary. Existing landscape-level stewardship initiatives such as, for example, the Man and the Biosphere Reserve Programme and Catchment Management Forums, are promising candidates for such a framework, and require more support to realise their potential in South Africa 52 .

In practice, stewards are expected to care and share

Our findings on the meanings of stewardship in practice reported here clarify what kind of role local stewards are expected to play by practitioners. Despite a diversity of understandings of stewardship in practice which mirror to some extent the diversity in understandings represented in the theory 38 ( Figure 1 ), the meanings attached to stewardship coalesce around two core themes: (1) 'responsible use and care of nature and natural resources' and (2) the idea of 'stewardship as a balancing act' between utilisation of natural resources for agricultural production and protection of nature ( Table 1 ). Therefore, according to practitioners, the role of the steward is to use natural resources responsibly and carefully by balancing the use of natural resources for their own agricultural production needs and objectives (e.g. crop or livestock production) with a responsibility to manage and protect natural resources for the good of the ecosystem, and for the greater good of society. This aligns with the more classical definition of stewardship proposed by Welchman 14 , and with the sustainability-informed conceptualisations of stewardship in theory ( Figure 1 ). Furthermore, in the literature 'care' has been identified as a fundamental concept underpinning many diverse stewardship understandings, and our findings from practitioners support this relationship. 16,38

Although practitioners in this research did not mention the concept of ecosystem services much (despite its prominence in the literature on ecosystem stewardship 21 ), interpreting the role of the steward through the lens of ecosystem services reveals an interesting feature of their role. The role of stewards could hence be re-formulated as: to interact with ecosystems responsibly and carefully by balancing the use of provisioning ecosystem services for their own direct needs, with the societal and ecological needs of a broader, more diverse suite of ecosystem services, such as regulating, supporting, and spiritual and cultural ecosystem services . This means that they are in effect stewards of the multifunctionality of the landscape and are expected to act as stewards of an interlinked social-ecological system, reinforcing the notion of stewardship as a relational concept. 16 Consequently, stewardship, even at the individual farmer level, is about balancing or managing trade-offs among multiple types of ecosystem services. 53 If a steward is to be responsible in their interactions with nature and to take care, then they have an obligation to collaborate with others, i.e. to share, across the landscape, to negotiate ecosystem services trade-offs. 54 A competent steward is expected to care, and to share. Collaboration therefore becomes an imperative of stewardship practice 23 , and a relational approach to understanding and practising stewardship is necessary 16 .

In seeking to achieve the 'balancing act' of the benefits of diverse ecosystem services from multifunctional landscapes, stewardship initiatives hold the potential to address the long-standing conflicts between agriculture and conservation. 55 According to the practitioners in our study, successful stewards are expected to be able to manage species, habitats and ecosystems, whilst also utilising ecosystem services sustainably ( Figure 3 ). Managing this balance is similar to the role expected of stewards in other countries, for example in the Australian Land Care programmes 25,31 and in agri-environmental schemes in Britain and Europe 30 . Land-use conflicts between agriculture and conservation are of increasing concern 56 , and approaches like stewardship, which seek to address conservation, agricultural and social concerns on a single piece of land - or even at landscape-level - are necessary 57 . Given that most stewards (at least in South Africa) are practising stewardship in a voluntary capacity with minimal or no financial incentives or subsidies (which are provided elsewhere, for example, through agri-environmental schemes in Europe 58 ), these would be high expectations. Incentivising policies and funding mechanisms, as well as platforms for collaboration and negotiation, which create enabling conditions for stewards to fulfil this important role in society, are needed. At present, different land uses, or beneficiaries of different types of ecosystem services, are represented by different, often competing, sectors (e.g. water vs conservation vs agriculture) which brings them into conflict with one another and makes it difficult for stewards to become competent in this important role.

Practitioners 'walking the walk, not talking the talk'

Many stewardship initiatives in South Africa conform to some extent to the contemporary theoretical ideas of social-ecological stewardship ( Table 3 ), confirming that this is being applied in practice. Whilst the meanings of stewardship ( Table 1 ) and the language used by practitioners ( Table 2 ) align with less recent understandings of stewardship in the literature ( Figure 1 ), the practice is shifting towards more integrated approaches. This seems to indicate that the language and discourse may in fact be obscuring the more contemporary and innovative practice, i.e. that practitioners are 'walking the walk', even if they are not 'talking the talk'. Although these social-ecological stewardship practices are similar to many approaches elsewhere in the world (see description of global stewardship practice in the Introduction), we consider their emergence in the South African context to be an institutional and practical innovation in the face of traditionally siloed approaches to conservation and natural resource management. 8 Practitioners appear to be responding to the complex challenges they face in multifunctional landscapes by implementing more integrated, social-ecological stewardship initiatives.

The practice of social-ecological stewardship in South Africa signals an opening for greater dialogue between practice and theory, to counter the usual underlying assumption that theory should inform practice. 59 For example, whilst stewardship practitioners may not have adopted the most recent language of stewardship theory in their discourse, they are putting social-ecological stewardship into practice, as concluded by Barendse et al. 8 Practice-based environmental knowledge is gaining increasing recognition 60 , and researchers in the social-ecological systems field are calling for place-based research and comparative case studies of local stewardship initiatives 23,61 . South African stewardship practice is therefore an opportunity to conduct this kind of grounded research, whereby practice can inform theory.

Practitioners' understandings of the meaning of stewardship vary, mirroring to some extent the diversity of understandings prevalent in stewardship theory. However, the themes of responsibility, care for nature and balancing multiple demands on ecosystems were common threads. Hence, the primary role of the steward is to interact with ecosystems responsibly and carefully by balancing the use of provisioning ecosystem services for their own direct needs, with the societal and ecological needs of a broader, more diverse suite of ecosystem services. In the context of multifunctional landscapes, stewards therefore have an obligation to collaborate with other stakeholders across the landscape to negotiate trade-offs around a diverse suite of ecosystem services. Recognising collaboration as a key process for stewardship highlights that stewardship is fundamentally a relational concept. Investigating the stewards' perspective on their role and responsibilities would be valuable follow-up research, as they are likely to experience challenges in this balancing act, and in working collaboratively with others across landscapes.

The policy-driven biodiversity stewardship tool is a prevalent feature of stewardship practice in South Africa, and many practitioners are integrating this tool with other approaches. Practitioners' understandings of stewardship are strongly influenced by the sustainability discourse, and there is limited evidence in the language of practitioners of the most recent conceptualisations of stewardship in the social-ecological systems literature. However, despite this slow uptake of the recent theory, there is evidence of social-ecological stewardship emerging in practice. Practitioners' use of more classic stewardship language to talk about their work appears to be masking more innovative, contemporary practice which is responding to complex, multifaceted realities on the ground. These innovative social-ecological stewardship initiatives work at landscape-level and work towards integrated social and ecological stewardship outcomes by facilitating collaboration among diverse stakeholders. Innovative policy mechanisms and further research are needed to support these integrated, collaborative cross-sectoral initiatives.

Acknowledgements

We extend our sincere thanks to the 95 anonymous stewardship practitioners who participated in this research and generously shared their knowledge and experiences with us. Special thanks to the National Biodiversity Stewardship Technical Working Group, the Western Cape Protected Area Expansion and Stewardship Reference Group, the South African National Committee for the UNESCO Man and Biosphere Programme, the Umzimvubu Catchment Partnership Programme, and to BirdLife South Africa (a branch of BirdLife International) for supporting this research and facilitating communication with the broader stewardship practitioner community. J.C. acknowledges an NRF-DST Innovation Doctoral Research Scholarship, and the Department of Environmental Affairs: Chief Directorate Natural Resource Management for operational funding through the Thicket programme. G.C. acknowledges support from the National Research Foundation of South Africa (NRF) through grants 93446 and 90694. M.R. acknowledges the South African Research Chairs Initiative of the Department of Science and Technology and the NRF. We also acknowledge Rhodes University for the Henderson Scholarship and for research funds for S.S. The financial assistance of the NRF towards this research is hereby acknowledged.

Authors' contributions

All four authors jointly conceptualised and developed the methodology for the study. J.C. was the lead researcher of the study, collected and analysed the data and wrote the initial draft of the article. G.C., S.S. and M.R. assisted with data analysis and revisions of the written draft. Significant conceptual and editorial input into writing of the article was provided by G.C. and S.S. G.C., S.S. and M.R. supervised the research as part of J.C.'s PhD research. G.C., S.S. and M.R. assisted in acquiring funding to support the study.

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Received: 18 July 2018 Revised: 15 Nov. 2018 Accepted: 20 Jan. 2019 Published: 29 May 2019

EDITORS: Nicolas Beukes, Yali Woyessa FUNDING: South African Department of Science and Technology; National Research Foundation (South Africa)

Supplementary Material

The supplementary file is available here: [ Supplementary file ]

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Stories We Tell, Stories We Eat: Mexican Foodways, Cultural Identity, and Ideological Struggle in Netflix’s Taco Chronicles Sanchez, Bela ( University of Oregon , 2022-10-26 ) Food is a biological necessity imbued with numerous social, cultural, and economic implications for identity production and everyday meaning-making. Food television is a unique medium for the meanings of food and foodways ...
Soil Nutrient Additions Shift Orthopteran Herbivory and Invertebrate Community Composition Altmire, Gabriella ( University of Oregon , 2022-10-26 ) Anthropogenic alterations to global pools of nitrogen and phosphorus are driving declines in plant diversity across grasslands. As such, concern over biodiversity loss has precipitated a host of studies investigating how ...
Multispecies Memoir: Self, Genre, and Species Justice in Contemporary Culture Otjen, Nathaniel ( University of Oregon , 2022-10-04 ) Liberal humanism articulates an individual, rational, autonomous, universal, and singularly human subject that possesses various rights and freedoms. Although the imagined subject at the heart of liberal humanist philosophy ...
Understanding How Changes in Disturbance Regimes and Long-Term Climate Shape Ecosystem and Landscape Structure and Function Wright, Jamie ( University of Oregon , 2022-10-04 ) Long-term and anthropic climatic change intersecting with disturbances alters ecosystem structure and function across spatiotemporal scales. Quantifying ecosystem responses can be convoluted, therefore utilizing multiproxy ...
Ikpíkyav (To Fix Again): Drawing From Karuk World Renewal To Contest Settler Discourses Of Vulnerability Vinyeta, Kirsten ( University of Oregon , 2022-10-04 ) The Klamath River Basin of Northern California has historically been replete with fire-adapted ecosystems and Indigenous communities. For the Karuk Tribe, fire has been an indispensable tool for both spiritual practice and ...
Grassland Restoration in Heterogeneous, Changing, and Human Dominated Systems Brambila, Alejandro ( University of Oregon , 2022-10-04 ) Ecological restoration is a powerful tool to promote biodiversity and ecosystem function. Understanding underlying system variability and directional change can help predict outcomes of restoration interventions. Spatial ...
Restoring What? And for Whom? Listening to Karuk Ecocultural Revitalization Practitioners and Uncovering Settler Logics in Ecological Restoration. Worl, Sara ( University of Oregon , 2022-05-10 ) What does it mean to restore a landscape degraded by settler colonialism? How might a well intentionedprocess like ecological restoration end up causing harm from underlying settler colonial logics? This thesis explores ...
Instigating Communities of Solidarity: An Exploration of Participatory, Informal, Temporary Urbanisms Meier, Briana ( University of Oregon , 2021-11-23 ) This dissertationexamines the potential for participatory, informal urbanisms to buildcollaborative relations across ontological, cultural, and political difference. This research contributes to thefield of urban, environmental ...
The Holy Oak School of Art and Ecology: A Proposal for Arts-Based Environmental Education Programming Best, Krysta ( University of Oregon , 2021-11-23 ) The following is a proposal for arts-based environmental education programming in elementary schools, after-school programs, and day-camp programs, entitled the Holy School of Art and Ecology. Ecophenomenological, arts-based ...
Settler Colonial Listening and the Silence of Wilderness in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Hilgren, Bailey ( University of Oregon , 2021-11-23 ) The Boundary Waters Canoe Area soundscape in northern Minnesota has a long and contested history but is most often characterized today as a pristine and distinctly silent wilderness. This thesis traces the construction and ...
Species Dynamics and Restoration in Rare Serpentine Grasslands under Global Change Hernandez, Eliza ( University of Oregon , 2021-11-23 ) Conserving rare serpentine grasslands is a challenge with ongoing nitrogen deposition. Nutrient-poor patches are fertilized by nitrogen-rich smog and exotic grasses can rapidly spread. Water resources are also being altered ...
Place-making and Place-taking: An Analysis of Green Gentrification in Atlanta Georgia Okotie-Oyekan, Aimée ( University of Oregon , 2021-11-23 ) Despite the benefits of urban greenspace, Atlanta’s Westside Park is causing gentrification and displacement pressures in Grove Park, a low-income African-American community in northwest Atlanta, Georgia. This study used ...
Prairie Plant Responses to Climate Change in the Pacific Northwest Reed, Paul ( University of Oregon , 2021-09-13 ) Understanding how plants respond to climate change is of paramount importance since their responses can affect ecosystem functions and patterns of biodiversity. At the population level, climate change may alter phenology ...

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Achieving environmental stewardship in iron and steel sector through application of life cycle assessment

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Public Policy: Environmental Stewardship in the Judeo-Christian Tradition: Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant Wisdom on the Environment

A biblical perspective on environmental stewardship.

E. Calvin Beisner, Associate Professor of Historical Theology and Social Ethics, Knox Theological Seminary Michael Cromartie, Vice President & Director of Evangelical Studies, Ethics and Public Policy Center Dr. Thomas Sieger Derr, Professor of Religion, Smith College Diane Knippers, President, Institute for Religion and Democracy Dr. P.J. Hill, President, Association of Christian Economists and Professor of Economics, Wheaton College Dr. Timothy Terrell, Professor of Economics, Liberty University

In the last three centuries, life expectancy in advanced economies has risen from about thirty years to nearly eighty. Cures have been found to once-fatal diseases, and some diseases have been eliminated entirely. Famine, which once occurred, on average, seven times per century in Western Europe and lasted a cumulative ten years per century, is now unheard of there. While the average Western European family in A.D. 1700 lived in a hovel with little or no furniture, no change of clothing, and barely enough food to sustain a few hours’ agricultural labor per day 1 –and, of course, they also lacked electricity, plumbing, water and sewage treatment, and all the appliances we often take for granted–today the average family lives in a well-built home with all those amenities, along with enough food to make obesity, not hunger, the most common nutritional problem even among the "poor." 2 Such advances in the West have been the fruits of freedom, knowledge, and hard work–all resting substantially on the foundation of biblical Christianity’s worldview and ethic of service to God and neighbor. 3 These advances have also given rise to a laudable expansion in people’s focus on the need for environmental stewardship. For as people come to feel more secure about their basic needs, they begin to allocate more of their scarce time, energy, and resources to attaining formerly less urgent ends. Consequently, the movement for environmental protection has grown as Western wealth has grown, giving rise to a strong environmental consciousness and to protective environmental legislation.

The world’s less developed countries, where material progress began much later, have been catching up in the past century, as shown especially by rapidly rising life expectancy (from about thirty years in 1900 to about sixty-three years today). 4 Nonetheless, in many developing countries, the basics of sufficient and pure water and food, along with clothing, shelter, transportation, health care, communication, and so forth, still remain elusive for many people. For them, continued economic advance is crucial for health and even for life itself: It is small wonder that their attention focuses more on immediate consumption needs than on environmental protection. Tragically, however, people with a strong environmental consciousness who live predominantly in Western countries sometimes seek to impose their own environmental sensibilities on people still struggling to survive. In fact, further advances in human welfare for the poor are now often threatened by a belief in the West that human enterprise and development are fundamentally incompatible with environmental protection, which is seen by some as the quintessential value in evaluating progress. This false choice not only threatens to prolong widespread poverty, disease, and early death in the developing world, but also undermines the very conditions essential to achieving genuine environmental stewardship.

In this essay, we shall present theological and ethical foundations we believe are essential to sound environmental stewardship; briefly review the human progress erected on those foundations; and discuss some of the more important environmental concerns–some quite serious, others less so–that require attention from this Christian perspective. We shall also set forth a vision for environmental stewardship that is wiser and more biblical than that of mainstream environmentalism, one that puts faith and reason to work simultaneously for people and ecology, that attends to the demands of human well-being and the integrity of creation.

Such an approach to environmental stewardship will, we believe, promote human justice and shalom, as well as the well-being of the rest of God’s creation, which his image-bearers have been entrusted to steward for his glory.

I. Theological and Ethical Foundations of Stewardship God, the Creator of all things, rules over all and deserves our worship and adoration (Ps. 103:19—22). The earth, and, with it, all the cosmos, reveals its Creator’s wisdom and goodness (Ps. 19:1—6) and is sustained and governed by his power and lovingkindness (Ps. 102:25—27; Ps. 104; Col. 1:17; Heb. 1:3, 10—12). Men and women were created in the image of God, given a privileged place among creatures, and commanded to exercise stewardship over the earth (Gen. 1:26—28; Ps. 8:5). Fundamental to a properly Christian environmental ethic, then, are the Creator/creature distinction and the doctrine of humankind’s creation in the image of God. Some environmentalists, especially those in the "Deep Ecology" movement, divinize the earth and insist on "biological egalitarianism," the equal value and rights of all life forms, in the mistaken notion that this will raise human respect for the earth. Instead, this philosophy negates the biblical affirmation of the human person’s unique role as steward and eliminates the very rationale for human care for creation. The quest for the humane treatment of beasts by lowering people to the level of animals leads only to the beastly treatment of humans.5

The image of God consists of knowledge and righteousness, and expresses itself in creative human stewardship and dominion over the earth (Gen. 1:26—28; 2:8—20; 9:6; Eph. 4:24; Col. 3:10). Our stewardship under God implies that we are morally accountable to him for treating creation in a manner that best serves the objectives of the kingdom of God; but both moral accountability and dominion over the earth depend on the freedom to choose. The exercise of these virtues and this calling, therefore, require that we act in an arena of considerable freedom–not unrestricted license, but freedom exercised within the boundaries of God’s moral law revealed in Scripture and in the human conscience (Exod. 20:1—17; Deut. 5:6—21; Rom. 2:14—15). These facts are not vitiated by the fact that humankind fell into sin (Gen. 3). Rather, our sinfulness has brought God’s responses, first in judgment, subjecting humankind to death and separation from God (Gen. 2:17; 3:22—24; Rom. 5:12—14; 6:23) and subjecting creation to the curse of futility and corruption (Gen. 3:17—19; Rom. 8:20—21); and then in restoration, through Christ’s atoning, redeeming death for his people, reconciling them to God (Rom. 5:10—11, 15—21; 2 Cor. 5:17—21; Eph. 2:14—17; Col. 1:19—22), and through his wider work of delivering the earthly creation from its bondage to corruption (Rom. 8:19—23). Indeed, Christ even involves fallen humans in this work of restoring creation (Rom. 8:21). As Francis Bacon put it in Novum Organum Scientiarum ( New Method of Science ), "Man by the Fall fell at the same time from his state of innocence and from his dominion over creation. Both of these losses, however, can even in this life be in some parts repaired; the former by religion and faith, the latter by the arts and sciences." 6 Sin, then, makes it difficult for humans to exercise godly stewardship, but the work of Christ in, on, and through his people and the creation makes it possible nonetheless.

When he created the world, God set aside a unique place, the Garden of Eden, and placed in it the first man, Adam (Gen. 2:8—15). God instructed Adam to cultivate and guard the Garden (Gen. 2:15)–to enhance its already great fruitfulness and to protect it against the encroachment of the surrounding wilderness that made up the rest of the earth. Having also created the first woman and having joined her to Adam (Gen. 2:18—25), God commanded them and their descendants to multiply, to spread out beyond the boundaries of the Garden of Eden, and to fill, subdue, and rule the whole earth and everything in it (Gen. 1:26, 28). Both by endowing them with his image and by placing them in authority over the earth, God gave men and women superiority and priority over all other earthly creatures. This implies that proper environmental stewardship, while it seeks to harmonize the fulfillment of the needs of all creatures, nonetheless puts human needs above non-human needs when the two are in conflict.

Some environmentalists reject this vision as "anthropocentric" or "speciesist," and instead promote a "biocentric" alternative. But the alternative, however attractively humble it might sound, is really untenable. People, alone among creatures on earth, have both the rationality and the moral capacity to exercise stewardship, to be accountable for their choices, to take responsibility for caring not only for themselves but also for other creatures. To reject human stewardship is to embrace, by default, no stewardship. The only proper alternative to selfish anthropocentrism is not biocentrism but theocentrism: a vision of earth care with God and his perfect moral law at the center and human beings acting as his accountable stewards.7

Two groups of interrelated conditions are necessary for responsible stewardship. In one group are conditions related to the freedom that allows people to use and exchange the fruits of their labor for mutual benefit (Matt. 20:13—15). These conditions–knowledge, righteousness, and dominion–provide an arena for the working out of the image of God in the human person. In another group are conditions related to responsibility, especially to the existence of a legal framework that holds people accountable for harm they may cause to others (Rom. 13:1—7; Exod. 21:28—36; 22:5—6). These two sets of conditions provide the safeguards necessitated by human sinfulness. Both sets are essential to responsible stewardship; neither may be permitted to crowd out the other, and each must be understood in light of both the image of God and the sinfulness of man.

Freedom, the expression of the image of God, may be abused by sin and, therefore, needs restrictions (1 Pet. 2:16); but governmental power, necessary to subdue sin and reduce its harm, must be exercised by sinful humans, who may also abuse it (Ps. 94:20; 1 Sam. 8). This means that it, too, needs restrictions (Acts 4:19—20; 5:29). Such restrictions are reflected not only in specific limits on governmental powers (Deut. 17:14—20), but also in the division of powers into judicial, legislative, and executive (reflecting God as Judge, Lawgiver, and King [Isa. 33:22]); the separation of powers into local and central (exemplified in the distinct rulers in the tribes of Israel and the prophets or kings over all Israel [Deut. 1:15—16]); the gradation of powers from lesser to greater (Exod. 18; Deut. 16:8—11); and the vesting of power in a people to elect their rulers (Deut. 1:9—15; 17:15). All of these principles are reflected in the Constitution of the United States. Also crucial to the Christian understanding of government is the fact that God has ordained government to do justice by punishing those who do wrong and praising those who do right (Rom. 13:1—4; 1 Pet. 2:13—14). 8

These principles indicate that a biblically sound environmental stewardship is fully compatible with private-property rights and a free economy, as long as people are held accountable for their actions. Stewardship can best be accomplished, we believe, by a carefully limited government (in which collective action takes place at the most local level possible so as to minimize the breadth of harm done in case of government failure) and through a rigorous commitment to virtuous human action in the marketplace and in government.

These principles, when applied, promote both economic growth and environmental quality. On the one hand, there is a direct and positive correlation between the degree of political and economic freedom and both the level of economic attainment and the rapidity of economic growth in countries around the world. The 20 percent of the world’s countries with the greatest economic freedom produce, on average, over ten times as much wealth per capita as the 20 percent with the least economic freedom, and while the freest countries enjoyed an average 2.27 percent annual rate of growth in real gross national product per capita through the 1990s, the least-free countries experienced a decline of 1.32 percent per year. 9 On the other hand, there is also a direct and positive correlation between economic advance and environmental quality. 10 The freer, wealthier countries have experienced consistent reductions in pollution and improvements in their environments, while the less free, poorer countries have experienced either increasing environmental degradation or much slower environmental improvement. We shall return to this correlation shortly; first, however, it behooves us to know something of the changes in our material condition over the last few centuries.

II. The Marvels of Human Achievement Until about 250 years ago, everywhere in the world, the death rate was normally so close to the birth rate that population grew at only about 0.17 percent per year, 11 doubling approximately every 425 years, instead of every forty-two years at the world’s average growth rate in the 1980s, or every fifty-one years at the average rate for the 1990s. 12 Infant and child mortality rates (around 40 percent overall) were little better for the very rich–royalty and nobility–than they were for farmers and peasants, even into the eighteenth century. Britain’s Queen Anne (1665—1714), for instance, was pregnant eighteen times; five of her children survived birth; none survived childhood.

Eighteenth-century French farming–the best in Europe–produced only about 345 pounds of wheat per acre; modern American farmers produce 2,150 pounds per acre, about 6.2 times as much. 13 Early-fifteenth-century French farmers produced about 2.75 to 3.7 pounds of wheat per man-hour, and the rate fell by about half over the next two centuries; 14 modern American farmers produce about 857 pounds per man-hour 15 –about 230 to 310 times as much as their French counterparts around 1400, and 460 to 620 times as much as French farmers around 1600. (This means that modern farmers also manage to farm from 37 to 100 times as many acres, thanks largely to mechanized equipment and advanced farming techniques.) As the great French historian Fernand Braudel pointed out, it became very difficult to sustain life when productivity in wheat fell below 2.2 pounds per man-hour. But for most of the 350 years from 1540 to 1890, productivity in France (which, as was fairly typical of Western Europe, suffered a serious decline in productivity at the start of that period) was well below that.16

Such facts help to explain why earlier generations spent a major part of each day working to earn enough income just to pay for food (excluding its preparation, packaging, transport, and serving), while we spend far less today (under 6 percent of total consumer expenditures in the United States in the 1980s went to food). These developments–along with the advent of glass window panes (to admit light and heat but exclude cold and pests) and screens (to admit fresh air and exclude disease-bearing insects); treatment of drinking water and sewage; mechanical refrigeration (to prevent food spoilage and consequent waste and disease); adoption of safer methods of work, travel, and recreation; and the advent of sanitary medical practices, to say nothing of antibiotics and modern surgical techniques–also help to explain why people live about three times as long now. While "man is destined to die once" (Heb. 9:27), the Bible recognizes death as punishment for sin and, consequently, as man’s enemy (1 Cor. 15:26), and it associates long life with the blessing of God (Exod. 20:12; Deut. 11:8—9; Eph. 6:1—3) and with the reign of the Messiah (Isa. 65:20).

Economic development is a good to be sought not as an end in itself but as a means toward genuine human benefit. For instance, consider a few of the things absolutely no one–not even royalty–could enjoy before the last two centuries of economic advance:

Electricity and all that it powers: lights, telephones, radios, televisions, refrigerators, air conditioners, fans, video cassette recorders, x-rays, mris, computers, the Internet, high-speed printing presses, and all other industrial automation.
Internal combustion engines and all that they power: cars, trucks, planes, farm and construction equipment, and most trains and ships.
Hundreds of synthetic materials such as plastic, nylon, orlon, rayon, vinyl, and the thousands of products–from grocery bags and pantyhose to compact discs and artificial body joints and organ parts–made from them.

No matter how rich people might have been a millennium–or even 150 years–ago, if they contracted a bacterial disease, they could not have been treated with antibiotics. This development was prompted by the work of the French Christian and scientist, Louis Pasteur, only in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Also, there were no more effective anesthetics than alcohol and cloves. So when limbs gone gangrenous from infections that today could be cured or, more likely, easily prevented, had to be amputated, patients gritted their teeth and hoped they would pass out from the pain of the crude saw. The germ theory of disease did not become current until the late eighteenth century, and the use of antiseptics did not begin until half a century later, with the work of the British Christian and chemist, Joseph Lister. Someone with a fever was likely to be bled to death by a doctor trying to cure it.17

Education was the province of the rich. Before the Reformation, few countries had widespread education, and even afterward, schooling was available principally to the rich. Two major exceptions were Germany and Scotland. In Germany, Martin Luther insisted that widespread schooling was important so that people could read the Scripture–which he had translated into the vernacular–for themselves. Similarly, in Scotland, John Knox’s followers, convinced that personal knowledge of God and his Word was essential to the maintenance of civil as well as religious liberty (Ps. 119:45; Isa. 61:1; Jer. 34:15; Luke 4:18; 2 Cor. 3:17; Gal. 5:1,13; James 1:25; 1 Pet. 2:16), 18 arranged a parish-by-parish system of church-run grammar schools that ensured that practically every child could at least become literate. Scotland’s high literacy rate and its Calvinist ethics of work and saving were important factors in its making contributions to the Industrial Revolution far out of proportion to its small population and earlier economic disadvantages. But even there, few were schooled for more than five or six years, and only a tiny percentage attended college, let alone graduated. Today, by contrast, in the United States, 81 percent of people twenty-five years old and over are high school graduates, and 23 percent are college graduates, and the growth in availability of education is worldwide. That is a particularly crucial factor in predicting the world’s material future, because both the creation of wealth and the protection of the environment depend primarily not on brawn but on brain. 19

The most effective measures of material welfare are mortality rates and life expectancy, because they take into account every conceivable variable that can add to or detract from a long and healthy life. A thousand years ago, human life expectancy everywhere was well under thirty years–perhaps even as low as twenty-four; today, worldwide, it is over sixty-five years, and in high-income economies, it is over seventy-six years. The under-five mortality rate has plummeted from about 40 percent everywhere as late as the nineteenth century to under 7 percent worldwide today and under 1 percent in high-income countries. And improved life expectancy comes not just from declining child mortality but from declining mortality rates at every stage of life.20

Materially, the world is a far, far better place today than it was not only one millennium ago, but even one century ago. Every raw material–mineral, plant, and vegetable–that plays a significant role in the human economy is more affordable (which economists recognize as meaning more abundant), in terms of labor costs, today than at any time in the past. Every manufactured product is more affordable than it has ever been. 21 And in producing all this great abundance, we have also reduced much health-threatening pollution, especially in the developed world. 22 Put simply, the world is both a wealthier and a healthier place today than ever before.

This rosy picture, however, must not generate uncritical applause for economic development, per se. Development can be positive or negative. While the fact that life expectancy keeps rising suggests that the net effect of development on human life has been positive, this does not imply that every instance of development is unmixedly beneficial, either to people or to creation. A biblical worldview and an institutional framework for prudent decision making, which we shall set forth below, are essential to ensuring that positive, rather than negative, development takes place.

We support appropriate development not for its own sake but, for example, because it uplifts the human person through work and the fruits of that labor, empowering us to serve the poor better, to uphold human dignity more, and to promote values (environmental, aesthetic, etc.) that we otherwise could not afford to promote.

The Christian tradition clearly affirms that the accumulation of material wealth should not be the central aim of life; yet people are to use wisely the gifts of creation to yield ample food, clothing, health, and other benefits. It is obvious that the great advance in wealth over the past century has taken place only in a small proportion of countries, namely, the liberal democracies and free economies of the West. Enough is now known about the administration of national economies to conclude safely that free-market systems minimize the waste of resources, and allow humans to be free and to flourish. All other systems that humans have tried lead to endless and unnecessary poverty, hunger, and oppression. For this reason, the religious communities of the Protestant tradition must take very seriously the claim that free markets and liberal democracy are essential to human welfare and therefore have a moral priority on our thinking about how society ought to be ordered.

But an ideological difficulty at present is that Western Protestant churches take too much of the present affluence for granted, misunderstand its origins, and overstate the value of the environmental amenities that have been given up to attain it. Today, this is leading many to embrace policy platforms that are explicitly against economic growth, and that give undue privilege to the preservation of the environmental status quo. This agenda threatens to deny those outside the West the very benefits that we ourselves have attained, and, ironically, it may burden the developing world with even worse environmental problems down the road. This essay challenges the arguments behind the anti-growth environmentalist agenda that is ubiquitous in today’s mainstream churches, and argues that a biblical stance is entirely coherent with free-market democracy oriented toward sustainable economic growth.

III. How Economic and Environmental Trends Relate We noted earlier that there is a direct and positive correlation between freedom and economic development and between economic development and environmental improvement. Necessarily, then, there is also a positive correlation between freedom and environmental quality. Economists find that free economies outperform planned and controlled economies not only in the production and distribution of wealth but also in environmental protection. Freer economies use fewer resources and emit less pollution while producing more goods per man-hour than less free economies. Economic demographer Mikhail Bernstam explains:

Trends in pollution basically derive from trends in resource use and, more broadly, trends in production practices under different economic systems. In market economies, competition encourages minimization of production costs and thus reduces the use of resources per unit of output. Over time, resource use per capita and the total amounts of resource inputs also decline and this, in turn, reduces pollution…. By contrast, regulated state monopolies in socialist economies maximize the use of resources and other production costs. This is because under a regulated monopoly setting, prices are cost-based, and profits are proportional to costs. Accordingly, the higher costs justify higher prices and higher profits. This high and ever-growing use of resources per unit of output explains the high extent of environmental disruption in socialist countries.23

It is not only competition in free economies that encourages better stewardship of natural resources, it is also the incentive people have to protect property in which they have a financial stake. On the one hand, people naturally want their own homes and workplaces, and, by extension, their neighborhoods, to be clean and healthful, so they seek to minimize pollution. On the other hand, in a legal framework in which polluters are made liable for damage done to others’ person or property, people also seek to minimize pollution that falls upon others. Moreover, a dynamic economy works to reduce pollution by finding the most efficient means of doing so. This contrasts with a command-and-control approach, in which regulators are likely to mandate particular technologies and methods for pollution control with little regard for overall social efficiency.

What we can infer from all these considerations–and what we find confirmed in empirical studies of the real world–is that free economies improve human health, raise living standards and life expectancy, and positively affect environmental conditions, doing all these things better than less free economies do. Further, the wealthier that economies become, the better they foster environmental protection. "If pollution is the brother of affluence," it has been written, then "concern about pollution is affluence’s child." 24 Even if some pollution emissions rise during early economic development, the beneficial effects to human life of increased production far outweigh the harmful effects of the resulting pollution, as demonstrated in declining disease and mortality rates and in rising health and life expectancy, even during that early stage. But soon, increasing wealth enables citizens to invest more resources on environmental protection, and emission rates fall. The result has been termed the "environmental transition," which mirrors the more widely known "demographic transition."

The demographic transition is demographers’ way of depicting the tendency for population growth rates to rise dramatically during early stages of economic growth and then decline back to little or no growth later. It occurs because initial increases in wealth rapidly force death rates downward in every age group, especially for infants and children, but fertility habits change only very slowly. Consequently, for a generation or two, couples continue having as many children as their forebears did, both because they expect one or two out of four children to die before maturity and also because in a primitive agricultural economy they rely upon having many young children to boost production. Then, when they become accustomed to the higher survival rates, and when the cost of raising children rises and the delay before those children become net producers rather than consumers grows, couples begin having fewer children. The result is a short-term high population growth rate preceded and followed by a long-term low (or zero) population growth rate.

Similarly, the environmental transition is a way of depicting the tendency for some pollution emissions to rise in early economic growth and then decline. Environmental economist Indur Goklany notes,

The level of affluence at which a pollutant level peaks (or environmental transition occurs) varies. A World Bank analysis concluded that urban [particulate matter] and [sulphur dioxide] concentrations peaked at per capita incomes of $3,280 and $3,670, respectively. Fecal coliform in river water increased with affluence until income reached $1,375 per capita. Other environmental quality indicators (e.g., access to safe water and the availability of sanitation services) improve almost immediately as the level of affluence increases above subsistence. For these indicators the environmental transition is at, or close to, zero. In effect, the environmental transition has already occurred in most countries with respect to these environmental amenities because most people and governments are convinced of the public health benefits stemming from investments for safe water and sanitation. In fact, the vast majority of the three million to five million deaths each year due to poor sanitation and unsafe drinking water occur in the developing world. Other indicators apparently continue to increase, regardless of gross domestic product (gdp) per capita. Carbon dioxide and no x emissions and perhaps dissolved oxygen levels in rivers are in this third category. On the surface, these indicators seem not to improve at higher levels of affluence, but their behavior is quite consistent with the notion of an environmental transition. The transition is delayed in these cases because decision makers have only recently realized the importance of these indicators, or the social and economic consequences of controlling them are inordinately high relative to the known benefits, or both. All the evidence indicates that, ultimately, richer is cleaner, and affluence and knowledge are the best antidotes to pollution.25

Understanding the environmental transition, we should not be surprised to find that air, water, and solid waste pollution emissions and concentrations have been falling across the board in advanced economies around the world for the last thirty to forty years. Thus, for example, in the United States, national ambient airborne particulate emissions fell by about 80 percent from 1940 to 1994, and total suspended particulates fell by about 84 percent from 1957 to 1996; sulfur dioxide (so 2 ) emissions fell by about 34 percent from 1973 to 1994, and so 2 concentrations fell by about 80 percent from 1962 to 1996; carbon monoxide emissions fell by about 24 percent from 1970 to 1994; nitrogen oxide emissions peaked around 1972 and have declined slightly since then, while concentrations have fallen by about a third since 1974; volatile organic compounds emissions peaked in the late 1960s and by 1994 had fallen by about 30 percent; ozone concentrations fell by about 30 percent from the early 1970s to 1996; lead emissions (probably the most hazardous air pollutant) fell over 98 percent from 1970 to 1994, and concentrations also fell by about 98 percent. 26

It is tempting to object, "This may be the case for advanced economies, but just look at the horrendous pollution in the world’s poor countries!" Pollution in many of these countries is indeed horrendous. But there is no reason to think this must continue to be the case. As developing countries become wealthier–which they will do if their economic growth is not stifled by excessive government planning and by unreasonable environmental policies that suppress energy use and agricultural and industrial productivity–they have the opportunity to develop in a similar way. The environmental transition, as a concept, simply generalizes a common-sense insight: People tend to prioritize their spending in terms of their most urgent needs. Generally speaking, the most urgent material needs of the poor are for basic water, food, clothing, and shelter; in a second tier come basic health care, education, transportation, and communication; and in successive tiers come other, less urgent needs. People worried about putting food on the table today understandably consider that to be more urgent than reducing smog next year or minimizing global warming one hundred years from now. But when people are confident that their most urgent needs will be met, they begin allocating more of their resources to needs deemed by them less urgent–including increasingly rigorous environmental protection.

The rapid decline in pollution in advanced economies over the last thirty to fifty years–a decline that is continuing today–is not matched in very poor countries in early stages of economic development. But there is reason to be confident that the environmental transition not only will occur in the latter countries as surely as it has in the former, but also that it can and will occur more rapidly, with lower pollution peaks and more rapid improvements following them. Why? Because today’s developing countries can cheaply import ready-made environmental protection technologies and technical know-how developed by others elsewhere at a much higher cost. That is, pollution abatement will become affordable in developing countries at much lower levels of economic development than it did in countries that progressed earlier. This is one reason trade and open dialogue between peoples are so important; they allow for the diffusion of environmentally friendly technologies and methods. The result, as illustrated in Figure 1, is a series of pollution transitions. Just as some countries went through the demographic transition long ago and others more recently, while some are in the midst of it now and others have yet to begin it, so some countries are long past the peak in the pollution transition, while others are at or just approaching it, and still others are just beginning the uptrend in pollution.

While we celebrate the decline in pollution as economies advance, however, we must not be distracted from the need to accelerate that decline in presently developing countries. Some three to five million children under the age of five die each year from diseases contracted from impure drinking water. Perhaps another three to five million die from diseases related to the widespread use of dried dung and wood for cooking and heating in the hovels of the poor, causing toxic indoor air pollution. Urban smog, largely defeated in the advanced countries of the West, remains a serious problem in many poorer cities of the world. We know how to solve these problems, as we have already done so ourselves. What the poor lack is sufficient income to afford the solutions; that is part of why economic growth in developing countries and trade between nations (which can speed the adoption of environmentally friendly technologies, management techniques, and regulatory regimes in developing countries) are so critically important–and why it is so tragic that many environmentalists embrace policies inimical to these ends. Such policies not only delay the achievement of the affluence that makes environmental protection affordable but also condemn millions of people to more years in poverty.

Thinking, for instance, that reducing carbon dioxide (co 2 ) emissions will prevent destructive global warming, some Western environmentalists are lobbying for severe restrictions on energy use, and are opposing the introduction of modern sources of energy into less developed nations. 27 But because human enterprise is largely dependent upon access to energy, restrictions on energy use are likely to further prolong the time it takes for people to achieve the wealth that makes possible the longer, healthier lives that we in the West sometimes take for granted. Similarly, opposition to "unsustainable" agricultural practices used in the developing world–practices that serve as a take-off point for substantially more productive and environmentally sound agricultural methods down the road–threatens to condemn large numbers in the developing world to perpetual poverty and hunger.

One clear implication of all of this is that an important assumption among many in the environmental movement is simply false. The assumption is that as people grow in numbers, wealth, and technology, the environment is always negatively affected. This idea has been given formulaic expression in Paul Ehrlich’s famous equation, i = pat, where i is environmental damage, p is population, a is affluence, and t is technology. According to this formula, every increase in population, affluence, or technology must result in increased damage to the environment–and even more so when two or all three of these factors increase together. The damage to the environment affirmed in this vision is twofold: depletion of resources and emission of pollution. The trouble with the assumption–even though it seems intuitively sensible and certainly is a widespread belief–is that it ignores the stewardship role of the human person, and, consequently, is falsified by hard empirical data.

That pollution declines when economies grow wealthier has already been seen. The fact is illustrated well by the situation in the United States. While population grew by 19 percent from 1976 to 1994, the index of air pollution fell by 53 percent. During the same time, affluence tripled, and technology also increased dramatically, with more and more computerization and automation not only in industry and commerce but even in private homes. This is precisely the opposite of what Ehrlich’s formula predicts. (See Figure 2.)

That we are not running out of resources is also clear. Since rising prices reflect increasing scarcity and falling prices reflect decreasing scarcity, we can learn long-term resource supply trends from long-term price trends. And the long-term, inflation-adjusted price trend of every significant resource we extract from the earth–mineral, vegetable, and animal–is downward. Even more significant, the price of resources divided by wages is even more sharply downward, because while resource prices have been falling, wages have been rising. Together, these things mean that all resources are far more affordable, because they are far more abundant today than at any time in the past. 28

Why have people so often been mistaken about the impact of growing human population and growing economies? Fundamentally, it is because they have not understood the full potential of the human person. They have considered people basically as consumers and polluters. They have not seen them–as they are presented in Scripture–as made in God’s image, to be creative and productive, as he is (Gen. 1:26—28; 2:15), and as given a role in the restoration of earth from the effects of God’s curse because of human sin (Rom. 8:15—25). But that biblical understanding of human nature leads Christians to expect precisely what we have seen: that, particularly when accompanied by properly formed human institutions and scientific understanding built on a biblical worldview, people can produce more than they consume and can actually improve the natural world around them.

IV. Some Human and Environmental Concerns for Present and Future Despite the reassuring picture painted by all these general observations, many people continue to fear that we face serious threats to human well-being and to the environment as a whole. How realistic are these fears, and, to the extent that there are real dangers, what can we do about them? Let’s look at three important examples: population growth, global warming, and rampant species extinction.

Population Growth "The population crisis," writes cultural historian and evolutionary theorist Riane Eisler,

lies at the heart of the seemingly insoluble complex of problems futurists call the world problematique. For behind soil erosion, desertification, air and water pollution, and all the other ecological, social, and political stresses of our time lies the pressure of more and more people on finite land and other resources, of increasing numbers of factories, cars, trucks, and other sources of pollution required to provide all these people with goods, and the worsening tensions that their needs and aspirations fuel.29

Eisler’s words represent a common understanding of population growth among environmentalists: It threatens the earth with resource depletion and pollution. As we have seen, however, empirical observation, as well as biblical understanding of the implications of the image of God in the human person, suggests the opposite conclusion.

Nonetheless, many people still fear population growth because they believe it leads to overpopulation. When asked what they mean by overpopulation, they usually speak of crowding and poverty. Yet the assumption that high population density begets those things is mistaken. Some of the most desirable places to live in the world are also among the most densely populated. Manhattan, for instance, with its density of over 55,000 people per square mile, also has very high rents–a sure sign that plenty of people really want to live there, despite its high density. Or maybe, instead, they want to live there precisely because of its high density. The teeming population of Manhattan brings together a magnificent mix of human talent that makes life there fascinating, challenging, and rewarding for its millions. Similar things are true of all the world’s great cities. With all their problems, they clearly attract more people than they drive away. Why should we question people’s judgments about where they choose to live?

Some people think high population density lies at the root of poverty in developing nations such as China and those in sub-Saharan Africa. Yet China’s population density is less than one-fifth of Taiwan’s, and, aside from their forms of government, the two countries have very similar cultures. Taiwan, however, produces about five times as much wealth per capita as China. And the Netherlands, with population density nearly four times China’s, produces more than ten times as much wealth per capita. And sub-Saharan Africa? Despite the common belief that it is overpopulated, it actually suffers instead from such low population density (just over half that of the world as a whole and lower than the average densities of the high-, middle-, and low-income economies of the world) that it cannot afford to build the infrastructure needed to support a strong economy. 30

In reality, overpopulation is an empty word. As demographer Nicholas Eberstadt puts it, "the concept cannot be described consistently and unambiguously by demographic indicators." Eberstadt asks,

What are the criteria by which to judge a country "overpopulated"? Population density is one possibility that comes to mind. By this measure, Bangladesh would be one of the contemporary world’s most "overpopulated" countries–but it would not be as "overpopulated" as Bermuda. By the same token, the United States would be more "overpopulated" than the continent of Africa, West Germany would be every bit as "overpopulated" as India, Italy would be more "overpopulated" than Pakistan, and virtually the most "overpopulated" spot on the globe would be the kingdom of Monaco. Rates of population growth offer scarcely more reliable guidance for the concept of "overpopulation." In the contemporary world, Africa’s rates of increase are the very highest, yet rates of population growth were even higher in North America in the second half of the eighteenth century. Would anyone seriously suggest that frontier America suffered from "overpopulation"? What holds for density and rates of growth obtains for other demographic variables as well: birthrates, "dependency ratios" (the proportion of children and elderly in relation to working age groups), and the like. If "overpopulation" is a demographic problem, why can’t it be described unambiguously in terms of population characteristics? The reason is that "overpopulation" is a problem that has been misidentified and misdefined. The images evoked by the term overpopulation–hungry families; squalid, overcrowded living conditions; early death–are real enough in the modern world, but these are properly described as problems of poverty.31

Despite all this, some people still fear population growth. Their fears, however, lack both biblical and empirical bases. First, the Bible presents human multiplication as a blessing, not a curse (Gen. 1:28; 8:17; 9:1, 6—7; 12:2; 15:5; 17:1—6; 26:4, 24; Deut. 7:13—14, cf. 30:5; 10:22, cf. 1:10; Ps. 127:3—5; 128:1, 3; Prov. 14:28); in contrast, a decline in population was one form of curse God might bring on a rebellious people (Lev. 26:22; Deut. 28:62—63). Second, although some people continue to believe projections made thirty and forty years ago of the world population topping twenty, thirty, or even forty billion in the next century or so, demographic trends indicate that the reality will be quite otherwise. Those projections were made based on the highest population growth rate the world has ever seen–about 2.2 percent per year in the 1960s, the peak of the global demographic transition. But by the year 2000, the worldwide population growth rate had dropped to about 1.3 percent per year, and it is expected to drop even further as the demographic transition plays itself out. Eberstadt explains:

Today, almost one-half of the world’s population lives in 79 countries where the total fertility rates [trfs] are below replacement (an average of 2.1 children per woman over her lifetime).... The trfs in countries with above-replacement rates are beginning to fall. For all Asia, trfs have dropped by over one-half from 5.7 children per woman in the 1960s to 2.8 today. Similarly, Latin America’s average trfs fell from 5.6 in the 1960s to 2.7 today. If U.N. median-variant projections of world population turn out to be correct, world population will be 7.5 billion in 2025 and 8.9 billion in 2050.

But even that might be overstating likely future population. "If present global demographic trends continue, the U.N. low-variant projections are likely. That would mean that world population would top out at 7.5 billion in 2040 and begin to decline." 32

There is no good reason to believe that overpopulation will become a serious problem for the world. On the contrary, the more likely problem is that an aging world population will put greater stress on younger workers to provide for older, disabled persons. 33 Such a prospect, coupled with the sanctity of human life, makes all the more tragic the support in many quarters for morally illicit means of population control. Only genuine barriers to human flourishing create the problems associated with "overpopulation"; attacking problems such as poverty head-on is a far better way of improving human welfare and upholding human dignity than simply deeming certain lives unworthy of living and so, in the name of fighting "overpopulation," embracing abortion, euthanasia, and other actions that undermine the sanctity and dignity of human life.

Global Warming Global warming is the biggest of all environmental dangers at present, maintain many environmentalists. Ironically, the great fear thirty years ago was of global cooling, for scientists recognized then that the earth is nearing a downward turn in its millennia-long cycle of rising and falling temperatures, correlated with cycles in solar energy output. But no more. Now people fear that rising atmospheric carbon dioxide, called a "greenhouse gas" because it traps solar heat in the atmosphere rather than allowing it to radiate back into space, will cause global average temperatures to rise. The rising temperatures, they fear, will melt polar ice caps, raise sea levels, cause deserts to expand, and generate more and stronger hurricanes and other storms. Are there good reasons for these fears?

While atmospheric carbon dioxide (co 2 ) is certainly on the rise, and global average temperature has almost certainly risen slightly in the last 120 years or so, it is by no means certain that the rising temperature stems from the rising co 2 . The most important contrary indicator is that the sequence is the reverse of what the theory would predict. Almost all of the approximately 0.45 o C increase in global average temperature from 1880 to 1990 occurred before 1940, but about 70 percent of the increase in co 2 occurred after 1940. If the rising co 2 was responsible for the rising average temperature, the reverse should have been the case. In addition, roughly two-thirds of the overall increase is attributable to natural, not manmade, causes (primarily changes in solar energy output). 34

Highly speculative computer climate models drove the great fears of global warming that arose in the 1980s and endured through the 1990s. Early versions of those models predicted that a doubling of atmospheric co 2 would cause global average temperature to increase by 5 o C or more (nearly 10 o F). As the models have been refined through the years, however, their warming predictions have moderated considerably. In 1990, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (ipcc) predicted, on the basis of the computer models, global average temperature increase of 3.3 o C by a.d. 2100; by 1992, it had lowered its prediction to 2.6 o C, and, by 1995, to 2.2 o C (less than half the amount of warming predicted by the early computer models). Even that latest prediction is likely to turn out much too high, for it still is based on models that, had they been applied to the past century, would have predicted twice as much warming as actually occurred. As Roy W. Spencer, senior scientist at nasa’s Marshall Space Flight Center, points out:

All measurement systems agree that 1998 was the warmest year on record. The most recent satellite measurements, through 1998, give an average warming trend of +0.06 o C/decade for the 20-year period 1979 through 1998. Even though this period ends with a very warm El Niño event [which would exaggerate its high-temperature end], the resulting trend is still only one-fourth of model-predicted average global warming for the next 100 years for the layer measured by the satellite.35

Additional uncertainties arise from significant discrepancies between temperature measurements obtained from instruments at the earth’s surface and those obtained from instruments on satellites (which are substantially confirmed by instruments on weather balloons), which measure atmospheric temperature not at the surface but in the lower troposphere. These discrepancies were reported in a study prepared by the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences and published in January 2000. 36 For the period 1979 through 1998, the surface data appear to indicate an average warming trend per decade of about 0.196 o C (or about 1.96 o C per century), while the satellite data 37 indicate a trend of only 0.057 o C per decade (or about 0.57 o C per century). After correcting the surface data for a variety of contaminating factors, a team of researchers produced new estimates of surface temperatures that yielded apparent decadal trends that were 0.097 o C to 0.106 o C larger than the satellite data trends for the lower troposphere. The differences, however, are still highly significant, since the corrected surface data trends are still 170 percent to 185 percent higher than the satellite-recorded lower troposphere trends. 38 The trouble does not end there, however. By making 1998 the final year of the study, the researchers chose a year in which global average temperatures were pushed markedly higher by an unusually strong El Niño; had the series ended with 1997 instead, the satellite data would have shown no statistically significant decadal trend, and the differential between them and the surface data would have been larger. Also, while the researchers corrected the surface data in part by accounting for the cooling effect of the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991, they chose to ignore the cooling effect (about half that of Mount Pinatubo’s eruption) of the eruption of Mount Chichon in 1982, further exaggerating the apparent uptrend in the satellite data. 39 The most significant problem for global warming theorists is that the computer models predicted that greenhouse warming would be faster in the lower troposphere than at the surface. But the data–to the extent that both sets are to be trusted–now show the opposite to be true. The significance of this is that the computer models clearly remain far from accurate enough in their depiction of atmospheric temperatures, which suggests that policy makers should be very slow to base their decisions on model predictions.

Not only is the actual global warming that is to be expected far from what the ipcc and other climate modelers originally predicted, but it is also questionable whether global warming is likely to bring many harmful effects. There are several reasons for this. Most important, increasingly refined models now indicate–and empirical observation has confirmed–that the majority of the warming will occur in the winter, at night, and in polar latitudes. 40 This warming is far from sufficient to cause the polar ice caps to melt, which means it is also unlikely to result in significant rises in sea level–one of the most feared results of global warming because it was thought likely to inundate many coastal cities in which millions of the world’s poorest people live. Instead, nighttime warming during the winter, to the extent that it affects populated areas at all, should result in a slight decrease in energy consumption for heating (and, therefore, some reduction in future emissions) and a slight lengthening of the growing season in spring and autumn.

Further, whatever rise in global average temperature occurs will likely result not in expanding but in contracting deserts, and not in contracting but in expanding polar ice caps. Why? More water evaporates in warmer temperatures. While one might think this is bad news for deserts, the opposite is true, for deserts make up only a tiny fraction of the earth’s surface; over three-fourths of it is water, and most of the remainder is moist land. But air circulates over all of it. This means that enhanced evaporation everywhere will result in enhanced rainfall, even on desert areas, which, because those areas are so dwarfed by the rest of the earth’s surface, will likely receive more water by enhanced precipitation than they lose by enhanced evaporation. But the enhanced precipitation at the poles is likely to enlarge polar ice caps, offsetting a long-term natural rise in sea level. As environmental scientist S. Fred Singer points out in reviewing a variety of studies of sea level trends,

Global sea level (sl) has undergone a rising trend for at least a century; its cause is believed to be unrelated to climate change [1]. We observe, however, that fluctuations (anomalies) from a linear sl rise show a pronounced anti-correlation with global average temperature–and even more so with tropical average sea surface temperature. We also find a suggestive correlation between negative sea-level rise anomalies and the occurrence of El Niño events. These findings suggest that–under current conditions–evaporation from the ocean with subsequent deposition on the ice caps, principally in the Antarctic, is more important in determining sea-level changes than the melting of glaciers and thermal expansion of ocean water. It also suggests that any future moderate warming, from whatever cause, will slow down the ongoing sea-level rise, rather than speed it up. Support for this conclusion comes from theoretical studies of precipitation increases [2] and from results of General Circulation Models (gcms) [3,4]. Further support comes from the (albeit limited) record of annual ice accumulation in polar ice sheets [5].41

While only mild harm is to be anticipated from the small temperature increases that are most likely to come, some benefit is to be expected–indeed, has already occurred–because of enhanced atmospheric co 2 . Carbon dioxide is crucial to plant growth, and recent studies show that a doubling of atmospheric co 2 results in an average 35 percent increase in plant growth efficiency. 42 Plants of all kinds grown in doubled-co 2 settings become more efficient in water use, more efficient in taking up minerals from the soil, and more resistant to disease, pests, excessive heat and cold, and both floods and droughts. 43 Consequently, a portion of the great gains in agricultural productivity in the past century has been due not to intentional improvements in farming techniques but to enhanced atmospheric co 2 caused by the burning of fossil fuels for energy to drive modern human economic activity. 44 This means that rising co 2 has made it easier to feed the world’s growing population. In addition, greater plant growth efficiency should mean–and empirical observations confirm–that plants’ growth ranges will increase to higher and lower altitudes, into warmer and colder climates, and into drier and wetter climates. 45

Some people have asserted that global warming poses a serious threat to human health through increased incidence of tropical diseases and heat-related ailments. However, the Program on Health Effects of Global Environmental Change at Johns Hopkins University, in a congressionally mandated study, "found no conclusive evidence to justify such fears" 46 but instead concluded that "the levels of uncertainty preclude any definitive statement on the direction of potential future change for each of [five categories of] health outcomes," adding, "Although we mainly addressed adverse health outcomes, we identified some positive health outcomes, notably reduced cold-weather mortality…." 47 As the report exemplifies, it is easy for researchers to focus only on anticipated negative health effects from changes in global atmospheric chemistry and climate. However, not only must such anticipated effects be carefully justified and quantified in themselves, but they must also be studied in balance with anticipated benefits. For example, the reduction in hunger and malnutrition attributable to rising agricultural yields from increased atmospheric carbon dioxide, however difficult to quantify, must certainly be considered. Thomas Gale Moore concluded his careful evaluation of various studies of anticipated health effects of global warming by writing, "… a warmer climate should improve health and extend life, at least for Americans and probably for Europeans, the Japanese, and people living in high latitudes. High death rates in the tropics appear to be more a function of poverty than of climate. Thus global warming is likely to prove positive for human health." 48 What is clear is the need for added study before long-term, difficult-to-change policies are adopted.

Despite all this, some people still want to greatly curtail fossil fuel use to reduce co 2 emissions. They are promoting a number of measures to do so, such as the Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty to force reductions in energy consumption. But since every form of economic production requires energy, reducing energy use entails reducing economic production. Some will reply that the losses in production can be offset by improved energy efficiency. To some extent they might be, but it is very unlikely that the reductions in emissions could be achieved through government-mandated efficiency measures alone; almost certainly, some actual loss of production would result. Because individuals seek to reduce their cost of living and businesses seek to maximize their profits in a free and competitive economy, they have a natural incentive to minimize waste, that is, to eliminate inefficient behavior and adopt the most economically efficient technologies they can (though these are not always the most technically efficient). The apparent need for government to mandate further emission reductions therefore suggests that these reductions must cause a net loss in production and, ultimately, diminish human welfare.

The independent economic forecasting firm wefa, even after accounting for likely improvements in energy efficiency, estimates that meeting the United States targets under the Kyoto accords would cut annual economic output by about $300 billion (or about 3.5 percent of the roughly $8.4 trillion in 1998 gross domestic product [gdp]) and, by 2010, destroy more than 2.4 million jobs and reduce average annual family income by about $2,700. Another economic forecasting firm, Charles River Associates, projects lower costs–about 2.3 percent (or, currently, about $193 billion) of gdp per year. Whether higher or lower, these economic costs translate into very human costs. Specialists in risk assessment estimate that in the United States, every $5 to $10 million drop in economic output results in one additional statistical death per year. 49 At that rate, the loss of $193 to $300 billion in annual economic output entails at least 19,300 to 30,000 additional premature deaths per year in the United States alone.

But the United States is a rich country, far better able to cope with the costs of Kyoto than the vast majority of the world. The lost economic growth in any developing countries that are forced to comply with Kyoto emission restrictions spells added decades of suffering and premature deaths for their people, for whom the affordability of basic water and sewage sanitation, health care, and safe transportation will be long postponed.

Thus, says Frederic Seitz, past president of the National Academy of Sciences, in a letter accompanying a petition against the treaty signed by over seventeen thousand scientists,50

This treaty is, in our opinion, based upon flawed ideas. Research data on climate change do not show that human use of hydrocarbons is harmful. To the contrary, there is good evidence that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is environmentally helpful. The proposed agreement would have very negative effects upon the technology of nations throughout the world, especially those that are currently attempting to lift from poverty and provide opportunities to the over 4 billion people in technologically underdeveloped countries.51

Even assuming that the popular global warming scenario were true, what benefit would come from all the costs–not just in the United States but all over the world–of complying with the Kyoto accords? Proponents of the accords estimate that without the Kyoto limits, hydrocarbon emissions will increase at about 0.7 percent per year and that this will raise effective atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration from the present level of about 470 parts per million (ppm) to about 655 ppm in the year 2047. The Kyoto Protocol calls for reduction of emissions to 7 percent below 1990 levels during the years 2008 to 2012 and no increase thereafter, with effective carbon dioxide concentration in 2047 of 602 ppm. How much warming would be prevented by then? About 0.19 o C out of a potential 0.5 o C. 52 At a cost to the United States alone of about $200 billion per year (slightly above the Charles River Associates estimate but only two-thirds of the wefa estimate), this would mean a total cost of roughly ten trillion dollars and one million premature deaths. Such a price is too much to pay for so small and doubtful a benefit.

Not only the highly uncertain nature of both the theory and the evidence of global warming but also the unresolved question of whether global warming’s net effects will be negative or positive point to one sure policy for the present: to delay action–especially highly costly action such as mandatory reductions in energy consumption–until the matter is much better understood.

It is tempting to say that we must not politicize this (or any other) environmental issue, and we do not intend to do so; our focus is on sound science rooted in a value structure that emphasizes honesty and openness to debate and evidence. But the issue has already been heavily politicized. Starting in the early 1990s, advocates of the Kyoto Protocol frequently spoke of a "scientific consensus" about global warming and derided the motives of scientists and others who questioned that conclusion. More recently, Rev. Dr. Joan Brown Campbell, general secretary of the National Council of Churches, went so far as to say that belief in global warming and support for the Kyoto Protocol should be "a litmus test for the faith community." 53 Clearly, as a result of such thinking, the quality of public knowledge and, hence, the ability to make wise public policy decisions, have been badly compromised with regard to global warming. Massachusetts Institute of Technology meteorology professor Richard Lindzen, one of the leading researchers in greenhouse effect and climate change science, pointed out in the early 1990s that "the existence of large cadres of professional planners looking for work, the existence of advocacy groups looking for profitable causes, the existence of agendas in search of saleable rationales, and the ability of many industries to profit from regulation, coupled with an effective neutralization of opposition" have undermined the quality of debate over both science and public policy, and that

the dangers and costs of those economic and social consequences may be far greater than the original environmental danger. That becomes especially true when the benefits of additional knowledge are rejected and when it is forgotten that improved technology and increased societal wealth are what allow society to deal with environmental threats most effectively. The control of societal instability [brought on by the politicization of science in the global warming debate] may very well be the real challenge facing us.54

Contrary to earlier claims, it turned out that there was no consensus in favor of the popular global warming scenario. Even in the early 1990s, when the National Research Council appointed a panel dominated by environmental advocates–a panel that included Stephen Schneider, who is an ardent proponent of the catastrophic hypothesis–the panel concluded that there was no scientific basis for any costly action. 55 If any scientific consensus has grown since then, it has been critical of the catastrophic vision and the policies based on it. First, like a warning shot across the bow, came the Statement by Atmospheric Scientists on Greenhouse Warming, released February 27, 1992. Signed by forty-seven atmospheric scientists, many of whom specialized in global climate studies, it warned that plans to promote a carbon emissions reduction treaty to fight global warming at the upcoming Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992 were "based on the unsupported assumption that catastrophic global warming follows from the burning of fossil fuels and requires immediate action," adding, "We do not agree." It cited a 1992 survey of United States atmospheric scientists, conducted by the Gallup organization, demonstrating that "there is no consensus about the cause of the slight warming observed during the past century." Further, the statement cited "a recently published paper [that] suggests that sunspot variability, rather than a rise in greenhouse gases, is responsible for the global temperature increases and decreases recorded since about 1880." It continued, "Furthermore, the majority of scientific participants in the [Gallup] survey agreed that the theoretical climate models used to predict a future warming cannot be relied upon and are not validated by the existing climate record," and it pointed out that "agriculturalists generally agree that any increase in carbon dioxide levels from fossil fuel burning has beneficial effects on most crops and on world food supply." 56 This was followed by the Heidelberg Appeal, released at the Earth Summit. Although it did not specifically name global warming, the Heidelberg Appeal warned against "the emergence of an irrational ideology which is opposed to scientific and industrial progress and impedes economic and social development." Over three thousand scientists, including seventy-two Nobel Prize winners, signed it. 57

Three years later came the Leipzig Declaration on Global Climate Change, developed at the International Symposium on the Greenhouse Controversy held in Leipzig, Germany, in November 1995, and revised and updated after a second symposium there in November 1997. Signed by eighty leading scientists in the field of global climate research and twenty-five meteorologists, the document declared "the scientific basis of the 1992 Global Climate Treaty to be flawed and its goal to be unrealistic," saying it was "based solely on unproven scientific theories, imperfect climate models–and the unsupported assumption that catastrophic global warming follows from an increase in greenhouse gases." It added, "As the debate unfolds, it has become increasingly clear that–contrary to conventional wisdom–there does not exist today a general scientific consensus about the importance of greenhouse warming from rising levels of carbon dioxide. In fact, most climate specialists now agree that actual observations from both satellite and balloon-borne radiosondes show no current warming whatsoever–in direct contradiction to computer model results." And it concluded, "based on all the evidence available to us, we cannot subscribe to the politically inspired world view that envisages climate catastrophes and calls for hasty actions. For this reason, we consider the drastic emission control policies deriving from the Kyoto conference–lacking credible support from the underlying science–to be ill-advised and premature." 58

But those early signs of consensus against the popular vision were dwarfed by the release in 1997 of a Global Warming Petition developed by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine and accompanied by a thoroughly documented review monograph on global warming science. The petition urged the rejection of the Kyoto Protocol "and any other similar proposals," saying boldly, "The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind." It added,

There is no convincing evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.59

The Global Warming Petition was signed by more than 17,000 basic and applied American scientists, including over 2,500 physicists, geophysicists, climatologists, meteorologists, oceanographers, and environmental scientists well qualified to evaluate the effects of carbon dioxide on the earth’s atmosphere and climate, and over 5,000 chemists, biochemists, biologists, and other life scientists well qualified to evaluate the effects of carbon dioxide on plant and animal life. The consensus of scientists on global warming has turned out to be quite the opposite of what the apocalyptic vision proponents claimed.

Species Extinction The Bible clearly indicates that God takes delight in his many creatures (Job 38:39—39:30; 40:15—41:34; Ps. 104:14—23). This entails the importance of stewardship of life itself. Confronted with claims that anywhere from 1,000 to 100,000 species are going extinct per year and that many or most of the extinction is caused by human action, 60 Christians must wonder whether they have failed in their stewardship obligation. However, in the spirit of 1 Thessalonians 5:21 ("Test all things; hold fast to what is good"), we can insist that claims of species extinction rates be tested empirically and that the significance of these numbers be carefully evaluated in the proper context.

When the claims are tested, they are found to be highly dubious. When two eminent statisticians challenged the claims, asserting that no empirical field data existed to support them, 61 the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (iucn) responded by commissioning a major worldwide field study. The result was a book 62 in which author after author admits that, despite expectations to the contrary based on theoretical models, field research yields little or no evidence of species extinction, even in locales–such as heavily depleted rain forests–in which the highest rates were anticipated. In that volume, V. H. Heywood, former director of the scientific team that produced the Flora Europea, the definitive taxonomic compilation of European plants, and S. N. Stuart, executive officer of the Species Survival Commission at the iucn, wrote, "iucn, together with the World Conservation Monitoring Centre, has amassed large volumes of data from specialists around the world relating to species decline [worldwide], and it would seem sensible to compare these more empirical data with the global extinction estimates. In fact, these and other data indicate that the number of recorded extinctions for both plants and animals is very small." They add,

Known extinction rates [worldwide] are very low. Reasonably good data exist only for mammals and birds, and the current rate of extinction is about one species per year.... If other taxa were to exhibit the same liability to extinction as mammals and birds (as some authors suggest, although others would dispute this), then, if the total number of species in the world is, say, 30 million, the annual rate of extinction would be some 2,300 species per year. This is a very significant and disturbing number, but it is much less than most estimates given over the last decade.63

Note, however, that this hypothesis of 2,300 extinctions per year is not based on empirical evidence; it is instead derived from a theoretical model of extinctions as a percentage of total species and a high guess of total species. A more likely estimate of total species might be five to ten million, which, inserted into the model, would yield about 380 to 770 extinctions per year. If those numbers still sound alarming, keep in mind, first, that they represent only about 0.008 percent of species per year and, second, that they are probably significantly exaggerated. Even at that rate, it would take over five hundred years to eliminate 4 percent of all species on earth. What is more, as already noted, the same book contains repeated admissions that the model predictions of high extinction rates were repeatedly falsified by field investigation.

That is not surprising to those familiar with the serious weaknesses in the species-area curve and island biogeography theories from which the hypothetical extinction rates are derived. Subjected to careful critique, they turn out to vastly overestimate real extinction rates. In part, this is because they fail to describe ecosystems as they really are, and they unrealistically attribute to large, connected regions (e.g., the Amazon rain forest) the characteristics of isolated islands. 64 This means it is likely that the real extinction rate is much lower than 0.008 percent of species lost per year.

In short, the lack of sound data to support claims of species extinction rates continues. 65 Instead, the observational data indicate very low rates of extinction. A World Conservation Union report in 1994 found extinctions since 1600 to include 258 animal species, 368 insect species, and 384 vascular plants–about 2.5 species lost per year. 66 Consider the loss of species in the United States:

Of the first group of species listed in 1973 under the Endangered Species Act, today [1995] 44 are stable or improving, 20 are in decline, and only seven, including the ivory-billed woodpecker and dusky seaside sparrow, are gone. This adds up to seven species lost over 20 years from the very group considered most sharply imperiled…. Under [conservation biologist E. O.] Wilson’s loss estimate of 137 species per day, about 1.1 million extinctions should have occurred globally since 1973. As America contains six percent of the world’s landmass, a rough proration would assign six percent of that loss, or 60,000 extinctions, to the United States. Yet in the period only seven actual U.S. extinctions have been logged…. And the United States is the most carefully studied biosphere in the world, making U.S. extinctions likely to be detected. If plants and insects are included in the calculation, 34 organisms fell extinct in the United States during the 1980s, according to a study by the Department of the Interior. This is clearly worrisome, but at an average of 3.4 extinctions per year, nothing like the rate of loss claimed by pessimists.67

The significance even of these small numbers is open to debate because, while most people think of a species as genetically defined, the Endangered Species Act (esa) defines species very differently. The Act says, "The term ‘species’ includes any subspecies of fish or wildlife or plant, and any distinct population segment of any species of vertebrate fish or wildlife which interbreeds when mature" (emphasis added). 68 The trouble with this definition is that when most people unfamiliar with the esa think of a species as being in danger of becoming extinct, they think this means no individual organism of that genetic definition will be left anywhere–or, since the esa applies to the United States, at least there. (This popular perception certainly lies behind the fear that "species" extinction forever removes elements from the global gene pool.) But in reality, it may only mean that a given population segment of that genetically defined species is endangered; it is entirely possible that plenty of other specimens may thrive in other locations. Many citizens who support expensive policies to prevent species extinctions might reconsider if they knew that rather than preventing real extinctions, they were only preventing the removal of a geographically defined segment of an otherwise thriving species.

None of this means that there are not particular species that are, in fact, endangered and that can benefit from careful conservation efforts. But as field ecologist Rowan B. Martin points out, when monetary values are more fully aligned with other human values, the institutional arrangement allows for the maximization of both values:

Western scientists, activists, and agencies favor the creation of reserves in developing nations to preserve biological diversity. However, this strategy is often an unworkable form of "eco-imperialism." Recent studies show that the majority of reserves are failing to conserve biodiversity, are financially unsustainable, and were irrelevant to 95 percent of the people in the countries where they were located. An alternative strategy, which has had considerable success, is empowering local people to control the wildlife resources in their area. In many parts of Southern Africa, where full rights of access and control over wildlife have been granted to landholders (of both private and communal land), biodiversity is better conserved in the areas surrounding national parks than in the parks themselves. Additionally, the areas surrounding the parks are economically more productive than the state-protected areas. In Southern Africa and other parts of the world, conservation of biological resources would be a profitable activity and not a cost if the correct institutional arrangements were developed, including a stronger reliance on private property and communal tenure systems.69

V. Environmental Market Virtues 70 We have already argued that economic growth itself is an important step toward environmental protection. It makes good stewardship affordable and technically possible. Nonetheless, economic growth by itself is not enough. Human initiative needs to take place within an institutional framework that promotes environmental stewardship. Therefore, we need to examine more closely what is institutionally necessary to help further the goal of environmental protection.

While some concerns about the environment are overstated, others are quite real and need our attention. The fact that the world is not experiencing overpopulation or destructive, manmade global warming or rampant species loss does not mean that a change in policies or practices is not needed to address other issues.

Christians have every reason to embrace an appropriate environmental ethic, one that honors creation but distinguishes it from the Creator. However, simply recommending reformation of our worldview is not sufficient. Our ability to act responsibly toward nature has been hindered by our alienation from God. The original Fall and our continued rebellion mean that we act selfishly, that we have limited knowledge, and that we often fail to recognize the full potential in the created order. In view of these failings, we must not rely on worldview alone to lead us to good decisions about creation but must also examine the other influences of decision making, namely, information and incentives.

Environmental problems are traditionally seen as a result of market failure and as ample justification for the government to involve itself in the economy much more directly and forcefully to solve these problems. But it is an error to assume that, just because the market does not presently solve certain problems, government can effectively intercede to do so. Information and incentives are very much affected by the institutional order of a society. The social institutions pertinent to environmental and resource issues are the rules that assign responsibility–that is, property rights that determine who can take what actions and who gets a hearing with regard to those actions. These rules are crucial determinants of what information is generated and what incentives the decision makers face.

Property rights generate appropriate information and incentives to the extent that they embody three characteristics: exclusivity, liability, and transferability. Exclusivity means that the owner of a resource is able to capture a return from using the property in a way that is advantageous to other people, and it also means that an owner can exclude others from benefiting from the use of the property unless they have secured the owner’s permission. If exclusivity does not exist, a resource will be overused. For instance, on the American frontier there were no exclusive rights to North American buffalo. If a buffalo hunter decided to postpone the shooting of any particular animal, he had no assurance that he would have the option to exercise that right in the future. The only way he could be assured of an exclusive right to a buffalo was to shoot it. Live buffalo were owned by everyone; dead ones belonged to the person who killed them. Is it any wonder that such a property rights system led to the near-extinction of the species? 71

Liability forces a resource owner to bear the costs of actions that harm others. If property rights fully embody liability, costs are not imposed on others without their willing consent. For instance, if a person allows another person to impose harm on him–that is, to use up some of the grass on his cattle ranch to feed his livestock–that person must receive what he believes to be adequate compensation for the harm. If liability were not fully attached to one’s property–that is, one’s cattle–a person could drive cattle across someone else’s land, allowing them to remove some of the grass without providing compensation. Pollution is a notable example of an incomplete property right, of liability not being present. It is exactly analogous to the cattle example; individuals can use up some of another’s resource–clean air–without appropriate compensation.

Transferability encourages owners to look for ways of using property that benefit others, a central obligation of the Christian faith. The fact that a piece of property can be bought or sold means that a resource owner who ignores the wishes of other people does so at a cost to himself, a reduction of wealth. If rights are not transferable, no such wealth loss is associated with ignoring the wishes of others. In other words, transferability encourages people to seek out and engage in the most mutually beneficial property arrangements possible.

Thus, the attributes of exclusivity, liability, and transferability are essential for a well-functioning property rights system, one that fulfills the biblical mandate of holding individuals accountable for their decisions. If any one of those attributes is missing, people can act irresponsibly with regard to creation, at least in part because they do not have adequate information or appropriate incentives to make sound decisions. 72

The information available to a decision maker is very much a function of property rights because people, in the process of trading, generate indexes of value for various uses of property. For instance, a landowner who knows there is coal on his land can readily obtain information through the price system about how others in society value that coal. If that individual also holds rights to the coal, that same information contains incentives for the owner to take actions that satisfy other people, namely, to make coal available to them. Since part of the biblical mandate with regard to creation is to use it for humankind, it would seem to be appropriate to be aware of and respond to people who desire to use coal as a fuel source.

But is mining the coal the only use for that land? What if mining leaves ugly scars on the earth’s surface, permanently reducing certain individuals’ aesthetic enjoyment of that land? How does a price system take those desires into account? Will coal be mined while aesthetics are ignored? The price system does not adequately represent all desires, and its failure to do so is caused by a lack of appropriate property rights. If the landowner had exclusive control over view rights to her land, she could charge an appropriate fee, and the price system would communicate to her whether the land was more valuable left in its pristine state or mined for coal.

The fact that property rights are sometimes not well defined and enforced is at the heart of environmental despoilment. The lack of a full rights structure means decision makers do not have appropriate incentives and information. Therefore, it is not surprising that resource misuse occurs when property rights are incomplete. Of course, simply pointing out the lack of adequate property rights is not a solution to the environmental problem, but it provides some general guidance. We do not necessarily want to fully define rights to all resources; in some cases, the transaction costs of doing so are too high. But many property rights problems are not intractable, and the property rights framework is a useful way of looking at environmental issues.

For instance, air and water are the major resources suffering from pollution in certain places because they are usually treated as common property, that is, property where no one has exclusivity. Any individual who uses a particular airshed or watershed to dispose of waste does not face the full cost of his action; instead, the costs are spread over all the potential users of that resource, resulting in what has been called the "tragedy of the commons." 73 The answer to this problem is to attempt to restructure property rights so that exclusivity, liability, and transferability exist. Sometimes there are legal barriers to property rights’ definition and transfer, as in the case of water law in many states, and those barriers can be removed. In others, the government must take positive steps to force decision makers to bear the full costs of their actions. For instance, a tax per unit of air or water pollution increases the costs of using the air or water as a waste disposal mechanism. If the tax is set at the correct level (if it accurately represents the cost of pollution–a difficult proposition when set outside of a market framework), the decision maker faces the correct incentive structure. He can continue to pollute if he is willing to pay the cost, and, if he does, the additional benefits to society from the polluting activity exceed the additional costs. In all likelihood, under such a tax the polluter will decide to reduce emissions–but not to zero.

Another way of altering property rights in air is through "the bubble concept." Under such a structure, people residing in a particular airshed, through some government entity, would decide how much pollution they are willing to tolerate. Rights to the pollution would then be available to producers in the area. The rights could be either handed out on the basis of historical production or auctioned off to the highest bidder. An important element of such a system would be transferability; for the rights to result in the greatest production at the lowest cost, each pollution right would need to be fully transferable within the airshed. Then each producer would face an appropriate incentive structure and could decide if it would be cheaper to purchase pollution rights and continue polluting at the company’s historical rate, or to adopt pollutant-reducing technology, or to shut down.

Each of these proposals involves government action of some sort. Because the definition and the enforcement of property rights are at least, in part, a function of government, an alteration of those rights will probably involve government. However, one must carefully specify the type of action appropriate when suggesting that government is the answer to environmental problems. Seeing the problem as one of inadequate property rights gives positive guidance about how government can be most effective–through the clear specification of rights and the fuller defense of them. Unfortunately, too often, government’s involvement in resource issues has not been framed in a property rights context and hence has not been as effective as possible.

For instance, in terms of air and water pollution, the common governmental response has been through a command-and-control approach. Under such a system, government specifies the amount of pollution that can occur from each source and, in many cases, also specifies the technology to be used in reducing emissions. Numerous studies have shown that for any goal achieved through command-and-control, a bubble concept with transferable rights could achieve the same level of pollution reduction much more cheaply. 74

The oft-repeated suggestion that government ownership and management of resources are solutions to environmental problems might seem to be appropriate when private property rights and markets have failed to lead to sound resource management. However, this suggestion ignores the fact that under government ownership, it is very difficult to construct property rights so that decision makers face appropriate incentives and receive correct information.

An excellent example of how governmental attempts at stewardship can create perverse incentives involves the Endangered Species Act (esa). This legislation, rather than creating incentives for people to act as good stewards of their own land and of its plant and animal inhabitants, often has exactly the opposite effect by making people fearful of losing use of that land. Richard Stroup, one of the originators of the New Resource Economics, describes the incentives of the esa in this way:

Under the Endangered Species Act, the owner must sacrifice any use of the property that federal agents believe might impair the habitat of the species–at the owner’s expense. Furthermore, if the owner either harms the species or impairs its habitat, severe penalties are imposed. The perverse incentives created by the law may well lead an owner to surreptitiously destroy that animal or plant–or any habitat that might attract it.75

Utah State University political science professor Randy Simmons observes that "the Supreme Court declared in its Tellico Dam decision that the act defines ‘the value of endangered species as incalculable,’ that endangered species must ‘be afforded the highest of priority,’ and that ‘whatever the cost’ species loss must be stopped ( tva v. Hill, 437 U.S. 187, 174, 184 [1978])." 76 Such a zealous legislative commitment ignores the full scale of human values that a free economy otherwise allows to show through in the pricing system. But such a commitment by government turns the real value of a species from an asset into a liability–for instance, from the satisfaction one feels from having a rare species live on one’s land to the fear of losing the use of land essential to one’s livelihood. As field ecologist Rowan Martin argued earlier about wildlife resource preserves in southern Africa, empirical observation confirms that, when monetary values are more fully aligned with other (such as environmental) values, the institutional arrangement allows for the maximization of both values.

How do we know that the desires represented through property rights and the markets are truly scriptural? Is it not possible to have a well-functioning market system and still have resources put to ungodly uses? At this point, the biblical environmental ethic must inform the private-property system. An institutional structure that embodies exclusivity, liability, and transferability in its property rights will accurately represent the desires of members of society and will also encourage resource owners to respond to those desires. Full accountability–a biblical concept–will be in place. However, one must remember that Scripture most often discusses accountability in the context of responsibility to God, and the accountability being discussed here is accountability to other people, which is an entirely different concept.

All of this reaffirms the need for a biblically based view of nature and of man so that the desires represented in the marketplace will come closer to God’s desires. At the same time, however, it is not clear that any alternative democratic institutional structure would lead to a more godly environmental policy. The biblical mandate of valuing nature but making use of it does not offer much guidance as to the particulars of resource use. Evidently, God has allowed man to work out those details on the basis of his own perceptions of needs–with those needs appropriately informed by an awareness of God and his principles.

We are limited by human desires, as imperfect as they might be, as our standard to measure how resources should be used. God has given us the opportunity and responsibility to manage his creation, and it therefore seems appropriate to have an institutional structure that reflects human desires and holds individuals accountable as to whether they use their resources according to those desires. Such a structure is the system of property rights described earlier. If this seems a weak defense of property rights, that may be because it is. One can conceive of many cases where a system of well-defined and enforced property rights results in resource use that seems to violate God’s standards. However, it is difficult to conceive of another property rights structure that does better at making sure God’s standards are not violated. The two most obvious alternatives–common property and government ownership–both suffer from such obvious faults, such as the tragedy of the commons, that they are clearly inferior choices.

Despite this rather lukewarm endorsement of private-property rights as the correct mechanism for controlling resource use, several facets of such a system deserve some approbation. Such a rights structure allows for expression of certain aspects of the biblical principles outlined in the first section of this paper.

First, a private-property system will not produce zero pollution in the sense of stopping all alteration of the environment; but neither will it allow economic growth at all costs with material desires superseding all others. If property rights are fully defined and enforced, some emissions will still foul our air, not all water will be of pristine quality, and the use of nonrenewable resources will not drop to zero. However, the significant difference between this potential system of private-property rights and the the one that currently exists is that actions altering the environment would take place only if all users of the environment were convinced that those actions were to everybody’s mutual advantage. In other words, there would be no uncompensated losers. A person who valued an unspoiled view more than someone else valued a factory smokestack in the middle of that view would win out. The factory smokestack would not exist, at least not at that location. Such a property rights system would not stop economic growth but would allow it to occur only if the benefits were valued more highly than what was given up to get that growth. Such an approach to resource use seems appropriate, as we are to appreciate and value God’s creation, but also see it as usable for human purposes.

Another component of a private-property rights system is that it does not depend on complete social agreement for action to take place. Diversity is permitted by virtue of the fact that a person who has strong feelings about resource use that differ from the group consensus can, under such a system, express those feelings through prices and markets. This can be of particular importance to Christians or environmentalists who find themselves at odds with prevailing wisdom about the environment. If such beliefs represent a minority position, they are much more likely to find expression in a system of private-property rights than under alternative rights arrangements.

Finally, a private-property rights system permits the fullest realization of the image of God in the human person. Genuine problems require genuinely creative solutions, and property harnesses human creativity to the realization of human needs. As history has repeatedly shown, it is the creative spirit of the human person that permits wise stewardship, and institutions that encourage this spirit are more likely to also facilitate environmentally sound ends.

But can we be assured that future generations will have a place in a free economy? What of God’s concern for all people of all times? Is there not a chance that a system based on private-property rights will cater exclusively to the desires of the present generation compared to the needs of future ones? Again, the appropriate question to ask is, Compared to what? What alternative institutional arrangement will do a better job than one that embodies transferable property rights? It would be nice to posit a theocracy headed by an omniscient saint, and if that were a realistic alternative, markets would come out second-best. However, if we stick to real-world possibilities, well-defined rights that can be bought and sold look quite good indeed.

Contrast, for a moment, a resource being managed under two alternative regimes. Let us say that a resource is exhaustible; hence, it is important to give future generations some voice in the choice about the appropriate rate of use. Under the first regime, a pure democracy controls the use of the resource. With different expectations by members of the population about the resource’s future value, the average perception will dominate. In other words, if the present generation thinks that, on average, the resource has a future value (discounted to the present) greater than its value in present consumption, it will be preserved. On the other hand, if the average expectation of the resource’s future value is less than its value in present consumption, it will be consumed.

Now take the same resource, and the same population with the same set of preferences and expectations, but make the present/future allocation on the basis of transferable property rights. In this case, the resource is more likely to be preserved for the future because it is not the average perception about the future value of the resource that counts, but instead the perception of those most optimistic about its future value who express themselves in the marketplace. These individuals will purchase the resource in the expectation of a high future value, hold it out of consumption, and, in the process, preserve it for future generations. In fact, for any resource to be used in the present, all who believe it has some value in the future must be outbid.

All of this is not to say that altruistic feelings for future generations are unimportant. Under either system, such sentiments can result in greater preservation for future generations. Notice, however, that the political approach depends entirely on altruism, or people caring for future generations, while the market order allows those preferences to be expressed but also rewards individuals who, for selfish reasons, decide to withhold resources from present consumption.

Giving future generations a voice is a bit awkward. Their preferences will be expressed only in people who exist presently, so it is useful to have someone stand in for them today; they need agents to represent them. These agents cannot know perfectly the desires of people not yet born, but they can make educated guesses about these desires. In the market arena, these agents are either unselfish contributors to the future or speculators acting on their perception of future demands for resources. If their perceptions are correct, their wealth increases; if they guess incorrectly, they suffer a wealth loss. Thus, these agents have strong incentives to be well informed and to predict correctly the needs of future generations.

In a world where Christian charity and concern for others are sometimes in short supply, it is useful to have a mechanism that allows for future needs to be met, by those acting charitably and those pursuing profit. Again, institutional design is a fundamental component of a system that satisfies God’s desire that we think not only of this generation.

Thus, freedom, property rights, and a legal framework that ensures that accountability attaches to freedom and property, work together to minimize pollution and improve human welfare. As Carl Pope, president of the Sierra Club, has noted, this sort of approach "would yield restrictions on pollution more stringent than those embodied in any current federal and state pollution laws," 77 without necessarily sacrificing human welfare in the process.

The more fully, then, a society embodies a Christian worldview, and the more its decision makers–private and public–embrace that value framework and operate with the information and incentives provided by a private-property legal regime with exclusivity, liability, and transferability, the more decisions with environmental impact are likely to be responsible and to minimize harm to people and the larger environment. The Christian worldview can be promoted by preaching, teaching, writing, and the like. But the information and incentives essential to proper decision making, even assuming a Christian worldview, are best generated by the price system of the free economy.

Conclusion Patrick Moore, one of the founders of Greenpeace International, said in an interview in the New Scientist in December 1999, "The environmental movement abandoned science and logic somewhere in the mid-1980s ... political activists were using environmental rhetoric to cover up agendas that had more to do with class warfare and anti-corporatism than with the actual science...." What we have said above indicates that Moore was right in his critique of the movement to which he made such an important early contribution. Too often, modern environmentalism has become anti-human, anti-freedom, anti-economic development, and anti-reason. It is time to reverse this trend.

On the basis of a biblical worldview and ethics, as well as of sound science, economics, and public policy principles, we believe sound environmental stewardship celebrates and promotes human life, freedom, and economic development as compatible with, even essential for, the good of the whole environment. While we do not rule out all collective action, we believe market mechanisms are frequently better means, in both principle and practice, to environmental protection. They are less likely to erode important human freedoms and more likely to be cost-effective and successful in achieving their aims. While we understand that passions may energize in the pursuit of sound environmental policy, we also believe that reason, coupled with a commitment to "do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with … God" (Mic. 6:8), must ultimately guide environmental policy.

Editorial Board E. Calvin Beisner, Associate Professor of Historical Theology and Social Ethics, Knox Theological Seminary, and Adjunct Fellow, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow Michael Cromartie, Vice President and Director of Evangelical Studies, Ethics and Public Policy Center Dr. Thomas Sieger Derr, Professor of Religion, Smith College Dr. Peter J. Hill, President, Association of Christian Economists, and Professor of Economics, Wheaton College Diane Knippers, President, Institute for Religion and Democracy Dr. Timothy Terrell, Professor of Economics, Liberty University

Notes 1. Robert William Fogel, "The Contribution of Improved Nutrition to the Decline in Mortality Rates in Europe and America," in The State of Humanity, ed. Julian L. Simon (New York: Blackwell, 1995), 61—71. 2. E. Calvin Beisner, "Sixpence None the Richer: Economics–A Millennium of Human Progress," World 14 (July 31, 1999): 20—25. For voluminous statistics and able discussions on these and dozens of other elements of material progress, see Julian L. Simon, ed., The State of Humanity (New York: Blackwell, 1995). 3. See E. Calvin Beisner, Prosperity and Poverty: The Compassionate Use of Resources in a World of Scarcity (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 1988), and Prospects for Growth: A Biblical View of Population, Resources, and the Future (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 1990); and Nathan Rosenberg and L. E. Birdzell, Jr., How the West Grew Rich: The Economic Transformation of the Industrial World (New York: Basic Books, 1986). 4. Nicholas Eberstadt, "World Depopulation: Last One Out Turn Off the Lights," Milken Institute Review 2 (first quarter 2000): 38. 5. The classic work leading to biological egalitarianism is Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals (New York: Random House/New York Review of Books, 1975). See also John Harris, Stanley Godlovitch, and Roslind Godlovitch, Animals, Men, and Morals (New York: Taplinger Publishing, 1972); and Arne Naess, Ecology, Community, and Lifestyle: Outline of an Ecosophy, trans. and rev. David Rothenberg (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989). For critique, see E. Calvin Beisner, Where Garden Meets Wilderness: Evangelical Entry into the Environmental Debate (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans Publishing/Acton Institute, 1997), appendix 2; Thomas Sieger Derr, Environmental Ethics and Christian Humanism (Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon Press, 1996), chapter 1, and "Human Rights and the Rights of Nature," Journal of Markets and Morality (forthcoming); Robert Royal, The Virgin and the Dynamo: Use and Abuse of Religion in Environmental Debates (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans Publishing, 1999), chapter 4; and Charles T. Rubin, The Green Crusade: Rethinking the Roots of Environmentalism (New York: Free Press, 1994), chapter 4. 6. Quoted in Francis A. Schaeffer, "How Should We Then Live?" in The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer: A Christian Worldview (Westchester, Ill.: Crossway Books, 1982), 5:159. 7. See Michael B. Barkey, "A Framework for Translating Environmental Ethics into Public Policy," Journal of Markets and Morality (forthcoming); E. Calvin Beisner, "Stewardship in a Free Market," in The Christian Vision: Morality and the Marketplace, ed. Michael Bauman et al. (Hillsdale, Mich.: Hillsdale College Press, 1994), and Where Garden Meets Wilderness: Evangelical Entry into the Environmental Debate (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans Publishing/Acton Institute, 1997), appendix 2; Thomas Sieger Derr, Environmental Ethics and Christian Humanism (Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon Press, 1996), chapter 1, and "Human Rights and the Rights of Nature," Journal of Markets and Morality (forthcoming); and Peter J. Hill, "Biblical Principles Applied to a Natural Resources/Environment Policy," in Biblical Principles and Public Policy: The Practice, ed. Richard Chewning (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1991), 169—182. 8. Scripture frequently defines justice procedurally as rendering impartially and proportionally to everyone his due in accord with the standards of God’s moral law. Elements of this definition are found throughout Scripture: impartiality (Lev. 19:15; Deut. 16:19; 1 Tim. 5:21; James 2:1—9); moral desert (Prov. 24:12, cf. Matt. 16:27; Rom. 2:6; 13:7; 1 Cor. 3:8; Gal. 6:7—8); proportionality (Exod. 21:35—36; 22:1, 6; Lev. 24:17—21; Deut. 19:4—6); and conformity to a standard (Lev. 19:35—37; Deut. 25:13—16, cf. Job 31:6, Ezek. 45:10, and Mic. 6:8.). For a discussion of recent debates among evangelicals over the meaning and nature of justice and the implications this has for political economy, see Craig M. Gay, With Liberty and Justice for Whom? The Recent Evangelical Debate over Capitalism (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans Publishing, 1991). 9. James Gwartney and Robert Lawson, with Dexter Samida, Economic Freedom of the World, 2000 Annual Report (Vancouver: Fraser Institute, 2000), 15. 10. See, for example, Indur M. Goklany, "Richer Is Cleaner: Long-Term Trends in Global Air Quality," in The True State of the Planet, ed. Ronald Bailey (New York: Free Press, 1995), and "Richer Is More Resilient: Dealing with Climate Change and More Urgent Environmental Problems," in Earth Report 2000: Revisiting the True State of the Planet, ed. Ronald Bailey (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000); Don Coursey, "The Demand for Environmental Quality" (St. Louis: John M. Olin School of Business/Washington University, 1992); Seth W. Norton, "Property Rights, the Environment, and Economic Well-Being," in Who Owns the Environment? ed. Peter J. Hill and Roger E. Meiners (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998), 37—54; Gene M. Grossman and Alan B. Krueger, "Economic Growth and the Environment," Quarterly Journal of Economics 110 (May 1995): 353—377; and John M. Antle and Gregg Heidebrink, "Environment and Development: Theory and International Evidence," Economic Development and Cultural Change 43 (April 1995): 603—625. 11. Fernand Braudel, The Structures of Everyday Life, vol. 1 of Civilization and Capitalism: Fifteenth through Eighteenth Century, trans. Sian Reynolds (New York: Harper and Row, 1985), 41. 12. The rapid population growth is attributable almost entirely to declining death rates (i.e., rising life expectancy), not to rising birth rates. See Nicholas Eberstadt, "World Depopulation: Last One Out Turn Off the Lights," Milken Institute Review 2 (first quarter 2000), 37—48. 13. Computed from Fernand Braudel, The Structures of Everyday Lif e, vol. 1 of Civilization and Capitalism: Fifteenth through Eighteenth Century, trans. Sian Reynolds (New York: Harper and Row, 1985), 121; and Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1996, table 1105. 14. Computed from Braudel, 1:135. 15. Computed from E. Calvin Beisner, Prospects for Growth: A Biblical View of Population, Resources, and the Future (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 1990), 127. 16. Computed from Braudel, 1:135. See also Richard J. Sullivan, "Trends in the Agricultural Labor Force"; George W. Grantham, "Agricultural Productivity Before the Green Revolution"; Dennis Avery, "The World’s Rising Food Productivity"; and Thomas T. Poleman, "Recent Trends in Food Availability and Nutritional Well-Being," in The State of Humanity, ed. Julian L. Simon (New York: Blackwell, 1995). 17. See Michael R. Haines, "Disease and Health through the Ages," in The State of Humanity, ed. Julian L. Simon (New York: Blackwell, 1995). 18. Both religious and civil liberty were important themes in the political thought of the seventeenth-century Scottish Covenanters, who carried on Knox’s tradition. See John Knox, On Rebellion, ed. Roger A. Mason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); George Buchanan, De Jure Regni Apud Scotos (1579); Samuel Rutherford, Lex, Rex (1644); and Sir James Stewart of Goodtrees, Jus Populi Vindicatum, or, The Right of the People to Defend Their Lives, Liberty, and Covenanted Religion, Vindicated (1669). 19. See Julian L. Simon and Rebecca Boggs, "Trends in the Quantities of Education: USA and Elsewhere," in The State of Humanity, ed. Julian L. Simon (New York: Blackwell, 1995). 20. See Samuel H. Preston, "Human Mortality throughout History and Prehistory"; and Kenneth Hill, "The Decline of Childhood Mortality," in The State of Humanity, ed. Julian L. Simon (New York: Blackwell, 1995). 21. See William J. Hausman, "Long-Term Trends in Energy Prices"; Morris A. Adelman, "Trends in the Price and Supply of Oil"; Bernard L. Cohen, "The Costs of Nuclear Power"; John G. Myers, Stephen Moore, and Julian L. Simon, "Trends in Availability of Non-Fuel Minerals"; H. E. Goeller, "Trends in Nonrenewable Resources"; and Roger A. Sedjo and Marion Clawson, "Global Forests Revisited," in The State of Humanity, ed. Julian L. Simon (New York: Blackwell, 1995). 22. See William J. Baumol and Wallace E. Oates, "Long-Run Trends in Environmental Quality"; Derek M. Elsom, "Atmospheric Pollution Trends in the United Kingdom"; and Hugh W. Ellsaesser, "Trends in Air Pollution in the United States," in The State of Humanity, ed. Julian L. Simon (New York: Blackwell, 1995). 23. Mikhail Bernstam, "Comparative Trends in Resource Use and Pollution in Market and Socialist Economies," in The State of Humanity, ed. Julian L. Simon (New York: Blackwell, 1995), 520. 24. See Ronald Bailey, "Earth Day: Then and Now," Reason 31 (May 2000): 23. 25. Indur M. Goklany, "Richer is Cleaner: Long-Term Trends in Global Air Quality," in The True State of the Planet, ed. Ronald Bailey (New York: Free Press, 1995), 342—343. 26. Calculated from statistics in Earth Report 2000: Revisiting the True State of the Planet, ed. Ronald Bailey (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000), 291—310. 27. Gregg Easterbrook, A Moment on the Earth: The Coming Age of Environmental Optimism (New York: Viking, 1995), 582—585. 28. See Stephen Moore, "The Coming Age of Abundance," in The True State of the Planet, ed. Ronald Bailey (New York: Free Press, 1995); Lynn Scarlett, "Doing More with Less: Dematerialization–Unsung Environmental Triumph?" in Earth Report 2000: Revisiting the True State of the Planet, ed. Ronald Bailey (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000); William J. Hausman, "Long-Term Trends in Energy Prices"; Morris A. Adelman, "Trends in the Price and Supply of Oil"; Bernard L. Cohen, "The Costs of Nuclear Power"; John G. Myers, Stephen Moore, and Julian L. Simon, "Trends in Availability of Non-Fuel Minerals"; and H. E. Goeller, "Trends in Nonrenewable Resources," in The State of Humanity, ed. Julian L. Simon (New York: Blackwell, 1995). 29. Riane Eisler, The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future (Cambridge, Mass.: Harper and Row, 1987), 174—175. 30. E. Calvin Beisner, "Anomalies, the Good News, and the Debate over Population and Development: A Review of Susan Power Bratton’s Six Billion and More," Stewardship Journal 3 (summer 1993): 44—53. 31. Nicholas Eberstadt, "Population, Food, and Income: Global Trends in the Twentieth Century," in The True State of the Planet, ed. Ronald Bailey (New York: Free Press, 1995), 14—15. 32. Nicholas Eberstadt, "World Population Prospects for the Twenty-First Century: The Specter of ‘Depopulation’?" in Earth Report 2000: Revisiting the True State of the Planet, ed. Ronald Bailey (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000), 64. See also Nicholas Eberstadt, "World Depopulation: Last One Out Turn Off the Lights," Milken Institute Review 2 (first quarter 2000): 37—48. 33. On population in general, see E. Calvin Beisner, Prospects for Growth: A Biblical View of Population, Resources, and the Future (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 1990), and " Imago Dei and the Population Debate," in Where Garden Meets Wilderness: Evangelical Entry into the Environmental Debate (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans Publishing/Acton Institute, 1997); Julian L. Simon, The Economics of Population Growth (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), Population Matters: People, Resources, Environment, and Immigration (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1990), and The Ultimate Resource 2, rev. ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996); Max Singer, Passage to a Human World: The Dynamics of Creating Global Wealth (Indianapolis: Hudson Institute, 1987); Michael Cromartie, ed., The Nine Lives of Population Control (Washington, D.C., and Grand Rapids, Mich.: Ethics and Public Policy Center/Eerdmans Publishing, 1995); and Michael B. Barkey, Paul Cleveland, and Gregory M. A. Gronbacher, "Population, the Environment, and Human Capital" (forthcoming). 34. Robert C. Balling, The Heated Debate: Greenhouse Predictions Versus Climate Reality (San Francisco: Pacific Research Institute, 1992), 65—69. 35. Roy W. Spencer, "How Do We Know the Temperature of the Earth? Global Warming and Global Temperatures," in Earth Report 2000: Revisiting the True State of the Planet, ed. Ronald Bailey (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000), 25. 36. National Research Council, Reconciling Observations of Global Temperature Change (Panel on Reconciling Temperature Observations: National Academy Press, 2000). 37. Corrected in 1999 for anomalies related to orbital drift and other problems discovered in 1998. 38. B. D. Santer et al., "Interpreting Differential Temperature Trends at the Surface and in the Lower Troposphere," Science 287 (February 18, 2000): 1228. See also Dian J. Gaffen et al., "Multidecadal Changes in the Vertical Temperature Structure of the Tropical Troposphere," Science 287 (February 18, 2000): 1242—1245; and David E. Parker, "Temperatures High and Low," Science 287 (February 18, 2000): 1216—1217. 39. "Global Warming Smokescreen," World Climate Report 5 (March 13, 2000); greeningearthsociety.org/climate/previous_issues/vol5/v5n13/feature.htm. 40. Robert C. Balling, The Heated Debate: Greenhouse Predictions Versus Climate Reality (San Francisco: Pacific Research Institute, 1992), 92, 102—103. 41. S. Fred Singer, presentation to the 1997 fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union; sepp.org/scirsrch/slr-agu.html. Singer’s citations are from: [1] A. Trupin and J. Wahr, "Spectroscopic Analysis of Global Tide-Gauge Sea-Level Data," Geophysical Journal International 100 (March 1990): 441—453. [2] D. Bromwich, "Ice Sheets and Sea Level," Nature 373 (1995): 18. [3] S. L. Thompson and D. Pollard, "A Global Climate Model (Genesis) with a Land-Surface Transfer Scheme," Journal of Climate 8 (April 1995): 732—761. [4] H. C. Ye and J. R. Mather, "Polar Snow Cover Changes and Global Warming," International Journal of Climatology 17 (February 1997): 155—162. [5] D. A. Meese et al., "The Accumulation Record from the gisp 2 Core as an Indicator of Climate Change throughout the Holocene," Science 266 (December 9, 1994): 1680—1682. 42. Sherwood B. Idso, Carbon Dioxide: Friend or Foe? (Tempe, Ariz.: ibr Press/Institute for Biospheric Research, 1982), 73—80, esp. 73—74, and Carbon Dioxide and Global Change: Earth in Transition (Tempe, Ariz.: ibr Press/Institute for Biospheric Research, 1989), 67—107, esp. 68. 43. Sherwood B. Idso, Carbon Dioxide and Global Change: Earth in Transition (Tempe, Ariz.: ibr Press/Institute for Biospheric Research, 1989), 67—107. 44. Sherwood B. Idso, Carbon Dioxide and Global Change: Earth in Transition (Tempe, Ariz.: ibr Press/Institute for Biospheric Research, 1989), 108. See also The Greening of Planet Earth, video and transcript (Arlington, Va.: Western Fuels Association, 1992), 14; and Dennis Avery, "The World’s Rising Food Productivity," in The State of Humanity, ed. Julian L. Simon (New York: Blackwell, 1995), 381. 45. Among the more important studies on the benefits of enhanced atmospheric co 2 to plants and, therefore, to agricultural productivity, see Sherwood B. Idso, Carbon Dioxide and Global Change: Earth in Transition (Tempe, Ariz.: ibr Press/Institute for Biospheric Research, 1989), and Carbon Dioxide: Friend or Foe? (Tempe, Ariz.: ibr Press/Institute for Biospheric Research, 1982). On global warming in general, see Robert C. Balling, The Heated Debate: Greenhouse Predictions Versus Climate Reality (San Francisco: Pacific Research Institute, 1992); Patrick J. Michaels, Sound and Fury: The Science and Politics of Global Warming (Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 1992); Patrick J. Michaels and Robert C. Balling, The Satanic Gases: Clearing the Air about Global Warming (Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 2000); Thomas Gale Moore, Climate of Fear: Why We Shouldn’t Worry About Global Warming (Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 1998); Frederick Seitz, Robert Jastrow, and William A. Nierenberg, Scientific Perspectives on the Greenhouse Problem (Washington, D.C.: George C. Marshall Institute, 1989); and S. Fred Singer, Hot Talk, Cold Science: Global Warming’s Unfinished Debate (Oakland, Calif.: Independent Institute, 1997). 46. "Study Finds No Support for Global Warming Fears," Los Angeles Times, March 16, 2000, metro section. 47. Jonathan A. Patz et al., "The Potential Health Impacts of Climate Variability and Change for the United States: Executive Summary of the Report of the Health Sector of the U.S. National Assessment," Environmental Health Perspectives 108 (April 2000). 48. Thomas Gale Moore, Climate of Fear: Why We Shouldn’t Worry about Global Warming (Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 1998), 88. 49. Frank Cross, "Paradoxical Perils of the Precautionary Principle," Washington and Lee Law Review 53 (1996): 919, and "When Environmental Regulations Kill: The Role of Health/Health Analysis," Ecology Law Quarterly 22 (1995): 729—784. 50. Arthur B. Robinson, Sallie L. Baliunas, Willie Soon, and Zachary W. Robinson, "Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide"; zwr.oism.org/pproject/s33p36.html. 51. See Jonathan H. Adler, ed., The Costs of Kyoto: Climate Change Policy and Its Implications, and a video by the same title (Washington, D.C.: Competitive Enterprise Institute, 1997). 52. Patrick J. Michaels, "The Consequences of Kyoto," Cato Policy Analysis 307 (Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, May 7, 1998), 8, 5. "Even the former chairman of the IPPC, Bert Bolin, says that the present plan would, if fully implemented, cut warming 25 years hence ‘by less that 0.1 degree C, which would not be detectable,’ " Thomas Gale Moore, Climate of Fear: Why We Shouldn’t Worry about Global Warming (Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 1998), 143. 53. John H. Cushman, Jr., "Religious Groups Mount a Campaign to Support Pact on Global Warming," New York Times, August 15, 1998, section A. 54. Richard S. Lindzen, "Global Warming: The Origin and Nature of the Alleged Scientific Consensus," Regulation 15 (spring 1992): 11. 55. Ibid., 8. 56. The Statement by Atmospheric Scientists on Global Warming and a list of signatories can be accessed at sepp.org/statment.html. 57. The Heidelberg Appeal and a partial list of signatories can be accessed at heartland.org. 58. The Leipzig Declaration on Climate Change and a partial list of signatories can be accessed at sepp.org/leipzig.html. 59. The Global Warming Petition developed by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine and a list of signatories can be accessed at oism.org/pprojects/s33p37.htm. 60. Robert M. May, "Conceptual Aspects of the Quantification of the Extent of Biological Diversity," in Biodiversity: Measurement and Estimation, ed. D. L. Hawksworth (London: Royal Society/Chapman and Hall, 1995), 13—20; Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich, Extinction: The Causes and Consequences of the Disappearance of Species (New York: Random House, 1981); John Tuxill and Chris Bright, "Losing Strands in the Web of Life," in The State of the World 1998, ed. Lester R. Brown, Christopher Flavin, and Hilary French (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998); Jessica Hellman et al., Ecofables/Ecoscience (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University/Center for Conservation Biology, 1998); and Mark H. Williamson, Island Populations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981). 61. Julian L. Simon and Aaron Wildavsky, "On Species Loss, the Absence of Data, and Risks to Humanity," in The Resourceful Earth, ed. Julian L. Simon and Herman Kahn (Oxford and New York: Blackwell, 1984), 171—183. 62. Timothy C. Whitmore and Jeffrey A. Sayer, ed., Tropical Deforestation and Species Extinction (London and New York: Chapman and Hall, 1992). 63. Ibid., 93—94. 64. Charles C. Mann and Mark L. Plummer, Noah’s Choice: The Future of Endangered Species (New York: Knopf, 1995), chapter 3. 65. Julian L. Simon and Aaron Wildavsky, "Species Loss Revisited," in The State of Humanity, ed. Julian L. Simon (New York: Blackwell, 1995), 346—361; Rowan B. Martin, "Biological Diversity: Divergent Views on Its Status and Diverging Approaches to Its Conservation," in Earth Report 2000: Revisiting the True State of the Planet, ed. Ronald Bailey (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000), 203—236; E. Calvin Beisner, "A Christian Perspective on Biodiversity: Anthropocentric, Biocentric, and Theocentric Approaches to Bio-Stewardship," in Where Garden Meets Wilderness: Evangelical Entry into the Environmental Debate (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans Publishing/Acton Institute, 1997), 129—146. 66. Ronald Bailey, "Earth Day: Then and Now," Reason 31 (May 2000): 25. 67. Gregg Easterbrook, A Moment on the Earth: The Coming Age of Environmental Optimism (New York: Viking, 1995), 558—559 (adjusted to reflect today’s figures). See also "Issue Brief: Endangered Species Act" at www.cei.org/EBBReader.asp?ID=728, and "Species Removed from the Endangered Species List (Delisted) through February 1997" at www.nwi.org/EndangeredSpecies/Delistings.html. 68. The complete Endangered Species Act may be accessed at nesarc.org/act.htm. 69. Rowan B. Martin, "Biological Diversity: Divergent Views on Its Status and Diverging Approaches to Its Conservation," in Earth Report 2000: Revisiting the True State of the Planet, ed. Ronald Bailey (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000), 205. 70. This section is drawn largely from the work of Peter J. Hill, with his permission, especially from his "Biblical Principles Applied to a Natural Resources/Environment Policy," in Biblical Principles and Public Policy: The Practice, ed. Richard Chewning (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1991), 169—182; "Can Markets or Government Do More for the Environment?" in Creation at Risk? Religion, Science, and Environmentalism, ed. Michael Cromartie (Washington, D.C.: Ethics and Public Policy Center/Eerdmans Publishing, 1995); and "Takings and the Judeo-Christian Land Ethic: A Response," Religion and Liberty 9 (March/April 1999): 5—7. Other studies indicating the importance of private property and free markets to environmental protection include Bernard J. Frieden, The Environmental Protection Hustle (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1979); Terry L. Anderson and Donald R. Leal, Free Market Environmentalism (San Francisco: Pacific Research Institute, 1991); Terry L. Anderson, ed., Multiple Conflicts over Multiple Uses (Bozeman, Mont.: Political Economy Research Center, 1994); Elizabeth Brubaker, Property Rights in the Defense of Nature (London and Toronto: Earthscan/Environment Probe, 1995); John A. Baden and Douglas S. Noonan, ed., Managing the Commons, 2nd ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998); Timothy D. Terrell, "Property Rights and Externality: The Ethics of the Austrian School," Journal of Markets and Morality 2 (fall 1999): 197—207; and Michael B. Barkey, "Translating Environmental Ethics into Public Policy," Journal of Markets and Morality (forthcoming). 71. For a discussion of the American West and how different property rights systems affected stewardship practices, especially as these practices pertained to species preservation, see Terry L. Anderson and Donald R. Leal, Free Market Environmentalism (San Francisco: Pacific Research Institute, 1991), chapter 3. 72. The argument that an adequate information and incentive structure is necessary for good choices to result does not imply that only external incentives and information are all that matter in acting responsibly. As discussed earlier, the value structure of the individual is also crucial, and it is difficult to imagine a well-functioning property rights system without an adequate moral base. 73. In some cases, moral constraints are so strong that they override the badly structured incentives of common property. This usually occurs when the group is small and there is a deep level of commitment to one another and to a shared ideology. For instance, families, local churches, and certain clubs have elements of common property and yet are quite stable over long periods of time. Thus, not all common property arrangements are doomed to failure. 74. See, for instance, Michael Maloney and Bruce Yandle, "Bubbles and Efficiency: Cleaner Air at Lower Cost," Regulation 4 (May/June 1980): 49—52; and Michael Levin, "Statutes and Stopping Points; Building a Better Bubble at EPA," Regulation 9 (March/April 1985): 33—42. 75. Richard L. Stroup, "The Endangered Species Act: A Perverse Way to Protect Biodiversity," PERC Viewpoints, April 1992, page 1. See also Richard L. Stroup, "Endangered Species Act: Making Innocent Species the Enemy," PERC Policy Series, April 1995. 76. Randy T. Simmons, "Fixing the Endangered Species Act," in Breaking the Environmental Policy Gridlock, ed. Terry L. Anderson (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 1997), 82. 77. Excerpt from a speech by Jerry Taylor delivered on February 4, 1997, to the Environmental Grantmakers Association: "Environmentalism in a Market Society: Creative Ideas." Mr. Taylor adds, "That’s certainly true if a pollutant is truly harmful or a significant nuisance, since individuals–not government authorities–would have the final say over how much pollution they were willing to tolerate on their property or person. That approval would also have the benefit of allowing an array of voluntary contractual relationships between polluter and polluted, internalize the cost of pollution (the holy grail of environmental economics), and minimize the transaction costs and inefficiencies caused by politicized rulemaking."

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Environmental Stewardship: A Conceptual Review and Analytical Framework
First, we define local environmental stewardship as the actions taken by individuals, groups or networks of actors, with various motivations and levels of capacity, to protect, care for or ...
21st Century Stewardship: The Role of Educational Equity in School
CENTURY STEWARDSHIP . ii Thesis Advisors' Page This thesis, written under the direction of the candidates thesis advisor and approved ... environmental issues and empower them with opportunities to effect positive change. This research focuses on the problem of inconsistent sustainability programs on school
PDF The emergence of environmental stewardship as a primary institution of
environment itself is the referent object, then Jackson is correct. But if the environment is a means to the sustainability of human life and civilization, that opens a link between environmental stewardship and human rights, in which the right to a liveable environment is constructed as a human right. This has
(PDF) Environmental Stewardship
engaging environmental programs by describing a) our current understanding of. environmental stewardship, and b) the socio-political structures and processes that. mediate broad participation in ...
Examining and Developing Environmental Stewardship Funding Networks in
environmental stewardship organizations are in need of funding for community projects, Los Angeles lacks a clear network of environmental funders that is accessible to all potential actors. This project is a proposal to study existing environmental funder coalitions as well as philanthropic trends in Los Angeles. The findings from this research
Environmental Stewardship: History, Theory, and Practice
Citizen-based environmental stewardship is increasingly seen as an innovative and important approach to improving and conserving landscape health. A new research focus on the stewardship of urban natural resources is being launched by the U.S. Forest Service in the Pacific Northwest region. 2 Early scoping efforts are addressing various scales ...
(PDF) Environmental-Education-and-Its-Effects-on-Environmental
Environmental education (EE) for sustainable dev elopment remains a valuable subject of contemporary. society, which is characterized with environmental issues such as climate change, pollution ...
Conceptualising sustainability through environmental stewardship and
Humans depend on earth's ecosystems and in the Anthropocene, ecosystems are increasingly impacted by human activities. Sustainability—the long-term integrity of social-ecological systems—depends on effective environmental stewardship, yet current conceptual frameworks often lack empirical validation and are limited in their ability to show progress towards sustainability goals. In this ...
Environmental Stewardship: A Conceptual Review and Analytical Framework
Local environmental stewardship is the actions taken by individuals, groups or networks of actors, with various motivations and levels of capacity, to protect, care for or responsibly use the environment in pursuit of environmental and/or social outcomes in diverse social-ecological contexts. 1 ).
PDF Urban Environmental Stewardship in Practice: using the Green Seattle
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science University of Washington 2014 Committee: Kern Ewing, Chair ... Environmental stewardship in these areas can thus take more complex forms as combinations of public, private, non-profit and volunteer groups work either independently or in concert to ...
Environmental stewardship in land development : a case study of Spring
I am submitting herewith a thesis written by Harold Boyd Clark, Jr. entitled "Environmental Stewardship in Land Development: A Case Study of Spring Island, South Carolina." I have examined the final copy of this thesis for form and content and. recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Environmental Stewardship: Critical Perspectives—Past and Present
Stewardship. Only four of the twenty-six essays mention Sallie McFague, and then only in passing. These essays, by contrast, gather twice as many authors to offer perspectives on the topic of Christian stewardship as it applies to the environment—a topic often criticized by those who take the immanentist view present in Theology That Matters.
The Role and Responsibility of the Environmental, Health & Safety
environmental stewardship and workplace safety [as elements of social responsibility] evolves continuously. Objective: The purpose of this thesis is to identify the roles and responsibilities of an effective EHS Manager, and those roles and responsibilities that support an organization achieving environmental stewardship and workplace safety.
Dissertations / Theses: 'Environmental stewardship'
Environmental stewardship is an important attribute for students and populations of all ages to have. This study looked at the effect of middle school students of a teacher who participated in a summer field ecology training program taking part in a long-term ecology project, and the impact of the experience on their environmental stewardship attitude.
The meaning and practice of stewardship in South Africa
Biodiversity stewardship is an approach to securing land in biodiversity priority areas through entering into agreements with private and communal landowners, led by conservation authorities.7. Agri-environmental tools are also forms of stewardship practice and are similar to private land conservation initiatives.
Environmental Studies Theses and Dissertations
Unsettled Ecologies: Alienated Species, Indigenous Restoration, and U.S. Empire in a Time of Climate Chaos. Fink, Lisa (University of Oregon, 2024-01-10) This dissertation traces environmental thinking about invasive species from Western-colonial, diasporic settlers of color, and Indigenous perspectives within U.S. settler colonialism.
Exploring Environmental Stewardship in the Niagara Region
Brooke Kapeller. May 4, 2021. Environmental stewardship is being used as a means to address the ongoing environmental degradation across landscapes. In the Niagara Region, an assessment of current and ongoing environmental stewardship efforts was conducted in 2018. This Story Map will summarize the practical results of this thesis research.
Biblical Environmental Protection: Seven Keys for Christian Leaders
restore the environment in Christian circles. This thesis project will provide a framework for ... environmental stewardship, with the aim of finding a way for these principles to be fanned into flame among Christians through the ministry and influence of Christian leaders. It is the hope of
Achieving environmental stewardship in iron and steel sector through
The aims of this thesis are: (1) To develop improved knowledge and understanding of material flows and life cycle assessments of the iron and steel industries and (2) suggest policy directions based on the knowledge and understandings gained. It is hoped that improved environmental performance and environmental stewardship for the iron and steel material cycles will be outcomes of the work ...
(PDF) Environmental Awareness, Practices, and Attitudes ...
Environmental awareness through education, particularly the youth who bear the future responsibility for the stewardship of the environment and pass on their knowledge to future generations is a ...
A Biblical Perspective on Environmental Stewardship
2 Such advances in the West have been the fruits of freedom, knowledge, and hard work-all resting substantially on the foundation of biblical Christianity's worldview and ethic of service to God and neighbor. 3 These advances have also given rise to a laudable expansion in people's focus on the need for environmental stewardship.
eRepository @ Seton Hall
eRepository @ Seton Hall
Thesis About Environmental Stewardship
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Environmental Stewardship: History, Theory, and Practice

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Environmental Stewardship: A Conceptual Review and Analytical Framework

Tara S. Whitty

Elena Finkbeiner

Jeremy Pittman

Hannah Bassett

Edward H. Allison

Introduction

Towards an Integrative Framework for Local Environmental Stewardship

Actors: Individuals, Groups or Networks of Stewards

The Capacity to Steward: Local Assets and Governance

Motivations: The Rationale and Will for Stewardship

Stewardship Actions: Protection, Care or Sustainable Use

The Social–Ecological Context of Stewardship

The Outcomes of Stewardship

A Definition and Analytical Framework for Environmental Stewardship

Supporting and Researching Local Environmental Stewardship

Interventions and Leverage Points for Stewardship

Future Applications of the Stewardship Framework

Descriptive assessments of stewardship in different contexts

Prescriptive analysis to aid design and decision-making

Evaluating the effectiveness of local stewardship initiatives, external interventions, and associated leverage points

Further research to develop theoretical or practical insights

Acknowledgements

Compliance with Ethical Standards

Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Environmental stewardship'

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