Earth Stewardship: An Initiative by the Ecological Society of America to Foster Engagement to Sustain Planet Earth - Earth Stewardship: Linking Ecology and Ethics in Theory and Practice - page 170

approaches: (1) articulation of the stewardship concept in ESA publications and
Website, (2) selection of meeting themes and symposia, (3) engagement of ESA
sections in implementing the initiative, and (4) outreach beyond ecology through
collaborations and demonstration projects. Collaborations include societies and
groups of Earth and social scientists, practitioners and policy makers, religious and
business leaders, federal agencies, and artists and writers. The Earth Stewardship
Initiative is a work in progress, so next steps likely include continued nurturing of
these emerging collaborations, advancing the development of sustainability and
stewardship theory, improving communication of stewardship science, and iden-
tifying opportunities for scientists and civil society to take actions that move the
Earth toward a more sustainable trajectory.

Keywords Earth Stewardship Initiative • Ecological Society of America •

Interdisciplinary integration • Practitioner Engagement • Sustainability

12.1 Introduction

Societies around the world are anxious to meet the needs of their growing human
populations and to satisfy their rising aspirations. Human desires for high quality of
life, material comfort, and consumption-based lifestyles are now shared around the
world. Response to these pressures relies on industrial processes and global trade,
which together are greatly expanding the human capacity to disrupt the biosphere.
Growth in these human capacities has led to the global decline in biodiversity and
other benefi ts that society receives from ecosystems (MEA 2005 ). These impacts
have accelerated over the last 60 years (Steffen et al. 2004 ) and may now be
approaching or exceeding the limits of ecologically tolerable environmental change
(Ellis and Ramankutty 2008 ; Foley et al. 2005 ; Rockström et al. 2009 ).
Although the serious degradation of the Earth System is widely recognized by
the scientifi c community, governments are frequently reluctant to adopt policies that
would radically reduce the rates of change and degradation, for fear of economic
repercussions. Aggressive actions that are taken now, however, are likely to be much
less costly than the price of failing to act promptly (NRC 2010 ; Stern 2007 ).
However, it is not only governments that seem constrained from acting. Individuals
may not see the relevance of the status of the Earth's ecological processes to their
lives and may therefore be tone deaf to their own responsibilities for the health of
the Earth System (Hargrove 2015 in this volume [Chap. 20 ]).
Given the pace of environmental deterioration and the increased recognition that
this path is unsustainable, society in all its aspects must seize the opportunity to
reorient its relationship to the biosphere (DeFries et al. 2012 ) and ask what do
humans owe to nature and to future generations? The scientifi c community has
worked to develop the science needed for a more sustainable relationship between
society and the planet (Lubchenco et al. 1991 ; MEA 2005 ) and to assess the rates,
causes, and consequences of human pressure on the environment (IPCC 2014 ;