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 173

education. An ad-hoc committee was formed by ESA to assess the scientifi c
underpinnings of ecosystem management, which took a holistic approach toward
managing ecosystems and strongly emphasized sustainability (Christensen et al.
1996 ). In 2003, some 15 years after the SBI was launched, the ESA Ecological
Visions Committee engaged in a second visioning exercise to assess the fi t of ESA's
activities to its goals and mission (Palmer et al. 2004 ; Palmer et al. 2005 ). Key
points derived from this exercise were the need to acknowledge the extent of the
human footprint globally and to use ecological knowledge as a solution-based sci-
ence to improve ecosystem services and human well-being.
This more recent visioning process led to two signifi cant outcomes. One recom-
mendation was for the establishment in 2005 of Rapid Response Teams, a group of
ecologists who are knowledgeable about ecological issues of societal relevance and
are committed to respond rapidly when this knowledge is needed to inform govern-
ment actions or issue media statements. This team of about 50 experts serves as
panelists in briefi ngs for congressional staff, provides expert testimony to Congress,
analyzes the likely ecological consequences of proposed changes to environmental
regulations, and provides scientifi c feedback for news stories. A second recommen-
dation from the Visioning Committee was the establishment of a center that would
link ecologists, other researchers, managers and policy makers for communicating
and implementing ecological science for solutions. The National Socio-
Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC; http://www.sesync.org/ ), funded by the
National Science Foundation, directly addresses this recommendation. Projects at
SESYNC focus on actionable science that can inform decisions within government,
business, and households to improve the implementation of public policies and
inform environmental planning.
ESA's commitment to stewardship is also refl ected in the history of its journals.
In 1991 it undertook publication of a new journal, Ecological Applications , which
is concerned broadly with the applications of ecological science to environmental
problems. It publishes papers that develop scientifi c principles to support environ-
mental decision-making, as well as papers that discuss the application of ecological
concepts to environmental issues, policy, and management. Ecological Applications
is intended to be accessible to both scholars and practitioners. More recent ESA
journals show an increasing commitment to societal issues: Frontiers in Ecology
and the Environment (started in 2003), Ecosphere (started in 2010), and Ecosystem
Health and Sustainability published jointly with the Ecological Society of China
(started in 2015). All demonstrate this commitment. The series Issues in Ecology
(started in 1997) report the consensus of scientifi c experts on specifi c issues related
to the environment, using commonly understood language. Its intended audience
includes decision-makers at all levels for whom an objective presentation of the
underlying science will increase the likelihood of ecologically-informed decisions.
Many of the numbers of the series Issues in Ecology are available not only in
English, but also in Spanish.
Parallel to ESA's efforts, the National Academy of Sciences brought together
scholars from a variety of natural and social sciences to advance societally relevant
“sustainability science” (Clark and Dickson 2003 ; Kates et al. 2001 ; Matson 2009 ;