Earth Stewardship

This book advances Earth Stewardship toward a planetary scale, presenting a range of ecological worldviews, practices, and institutions in different parts of the world and to use them as the basis for considering what we could learn from one another, and what we could do together. Today, inter-hemispheric, intercultural, and transdisciplinary collaborations for Earth Stewardship are an imperative. Chapters document pathways that are being forged by socio-ecological research networks, religious alliances, policy actions, environmental citizenship and participation, and new forms of conservation, based on both traditional and contemporary ecological knowledge and values. “The Earth Stewardship Initiative of the Ecological Society of America fosters practices to provide a stable basis for civilization in the future. Biocultural ethic emphasizes that we are co-inhabitants in the natural world; no matter how complex our inventions may become” (Peter Raven).

• Ecology
• Environment
• Ethics
• Interdisciplinarity
• Stewardship

“‘Earth stewardship calls ecologists to engage not only in the production of knowledge, but also in public discourse, as well as in decision making, education and governance’ … . I cannot imagine that any serious research library will want to be without access to this collection.” (Paul B. Thompson, Environmental Values, Vol. 26 (4), 2017)

“This book provides important interdisciplinary insights into emerging forms of environmental advocacy and social justice. … Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through professionals and practitioners.” (R. V. Labaree, Choice, Vol. 53 (2), October, 2015)

“It is highly rewarding to read this book with its multiple facets from ecology and ethics to religion. It provides rich food for thought, describing many fresh and unconventional (also ‘non-western’)approaches to conservation, especially in a time where the arguments for biological conservation are dominated more and more by a utilitarian perspective on nature, as expressed by the increasing prominence of the ecosystem services concept. I thus highly recommend it.” (Kurt Jax, Basic and Applied Ecology, August, 2015)

• Department of Philosophy and Religion Studies, University of North Texas, Denton, USA

  Ricardo Rozzi, J. Baird Callicott

• Institute of Arctic Biology, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, USA

  F. Stuart Chapin III

• Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, Millbrook, USA

  S.T.A. Pickett

• Department of Integrative Biology, University of California, Berkley, California, USA

  Mary E. Power

• Departamento de Ecología, Pontificia Universidad Católica, Santiago, Chile

  Juan J. Armesto

• Departamento Ecuménico de Investigaciones (DEI), San Jose, Costa Rica

  Roy H. May Jr.

Policies and ethics