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initiative, led by AGU in collaboration with several academic societies, explores the
challenge of communicating climate change (AGU
2013
). ESA organized a series
of informal meetings with leaders of (1) various social-science societies, (2) various
societies representing practitioners (e.g., planners and engineers), (3) various fed-
eral agencies, and (4) various religious groups in the hopes that ESA might collabo-
rate with these groups to develop jointly the concept of Earth Stewardship or a suite
of compatible concepts that would engage a range of disciplines and practices in
shifting the planet toward a more sustainable trajectory.
These conversations led to a workshop of natural and social scientists,
practitioners, and religious scholars in 2012. The workshop brought together repre-
sentatives from academia, federal agencies, religious organizations, business, and
planning/design organizations to discuss building strategic interdisciplinary part-
nerships to foster sustainability. During the workshop participants identifi ed chal-
lenges to implementing Earth Stewardship, along with possible solutions and novel
ways to collaborate across sectors and disciplines. The special issue of
Frontiers in
Ecology and the Environment
resulting from the workshop (2013, Vol 11, issue 7)
contained a series of papers about diverse stewardship issues, each co-authored by
scholars and practitioners from multiple disciplines and led by a non-ecologist. The
goal of the workshop was to develop a more inclusive integrated framework for
Earth Stewardship that would facilitate collaborative engagement across multiple
disciplines and practices.
The participation of urban designers and engineers in the 2012 workshop and the
issue of
Frontiers
described above symbolized the importance of interacting with
professions that are engaged in the front lines of shaping the world in which we live.
Sustainable or ecological approaches are becoming increasingly important to urban
designers, regional planners, civil engineers, and those interested in restoring eco-
systems that are embedded in urban territories. The fact that most of the world's
human residents already live in cities or other places classifi ed as urban suggests
that the various practitioners of urban design and planning will play important roles
in promoting Earth Stewardship. Consequently, ecologists must engage with these
professions in order to: (1) help shape the urban designs, rather than study the out-
comes after the fact; and (2) learn how to engage better with the real estate industry,
the developer community, and those who write and enforce zoning and building
regulations. Working with urban designers can help insert ecological principles and
knowledge into the process of urban, suburban, and rural “place making,” and may
help formulate new procedures and regulations that are more attuned to the ecologi-
cal processes that must be maintained or restored in sustainable urban areas (Felson
et al.
2013
; Felson and Pickett
2005
; Pickett et al.
2013
; Steiner et al.
2013
).
Professional societies such as the American Planning Association, the American
Society of Landscape Architects, the Associated Collegiate Schools of Planning,
and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture are examples of practitio-
ner organizations through which mutually benefi cial pursuit of Earth stewardship
may exist. In 2013 and 2014, ecologists engaged with landscape architects in sym-
posia at the American Society for Landscape Architecture annual meeting to offer
examples of how to incorporate ecological science in landscape and urban design,
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