Introduction: Linking Ecology and Ethics for an Interregional and Intercultural Earth Stewardship - Earth Stewardship: Linking Ecology and Ethics in Theory and Practice - page 4

>99 % of all ILTER publications in the arts and the humanities are generated by
researchers working in the Southern Hemisphere. This volume calls attention to the
opportunities for stronger partnership and complementarity in long-term socio-
ecological research and stewardship initiatives across the planet. The southern
regions can demonstrably add to the integration of social, ethical, and artistic
dimensions to transdisciplinary socio-ecological research at ILTER and other
networks, providing a broader intercultural and participatory foundation for Earth
Stewardship.
This publication has its origin in the 14th Cary Conference held at the Cary
Institute of Ecosystem Studies, Millbrook, New York, in 2011. 3 During the confer-
ence we acknowledged utmost the importance of global scale and interregional dia-
logue integrating ecology and ethics. As a follow up, we created the Ecology and
Ethics topic series with the publishing house Springer. This volume is the second in
the series. It is conceived as a companion to the fi rst one, Linking Ecology and
Ethics for a Changing World (Rozzi et al. 2013 ), which placed greater emphasis on
core concepts of ecological sciences and environmental philosophy. It was orga-
nized using conceptual frameworks provided by the notion of worldview and by a
biocultural approach to environmental ethics. 4 This second volume places stronger
emphasis on the practice of ecology and ethics. It was stimulated by the challenges
and opportunities raised by the Earth Stewardship Initiative of the Ecological
Society of America (ESA). Indeed, this topic elaborates a conceptual framework at
the planetary scale for continuing to build Earth Stewardship as part of the centen-
nial celebration of the ESA.
More fully understanding and respecting biocultural diversity, with the multiple
forms of land stewardship it implies, will allow us more effectively and justly to
confront local and global socio-environmental challenges. Through dialogical pro-
cesses and partnerships it will be possible to achieve novel forms of stewardship.
Both scientifi c and traditional ecological knowledge are dynamic. The integration
of biocultural diversity is not an integration of a collection of biological, physical,
or cultural objects. Rather, it is the incorporation of dynamic, often confl icting,
processes of intercultural dialogue, negotiation, and poetic creativity. These
3 The 14th Cary Conference was jointly organized by three institutions: the Cary Institute of
Ecosystem Studies (New York), the Institute of Ecology and Biodiversity (IEB-Chile), and the
University of North Texas (UNT). The Cary Institute has a tradition of frontier research on ecosys-
tem science and coupled human-nature systems. IEB is a leading Latin American research center
that coordinates and supports the Long-Term Socio-Ecological Research network (LTSER-Chile)
in southwestern South America. The UNT Department of Philosophy and Religion Studies and its
Center for Environmental Philosophy represent a world-leading center for environmental ethics.
With the joint coordination of the Sub-Antarctic Biocultural Conservation Program ( www.chile.
unt.edu ), these three institutions are supporting this Ecology and Ethics topic series (see Rozzi
et al. 2013 ).
4 The formal proposal of the biocultural ethic interrelates the habits and habitats with the identities
and wellbeing of the co-inhabitants, human and other-than-human beings. Consequently, the con-
servation of habitats and access to them by communities of co-inhabitants becomes an ethical
imperative. The biocultural ethic's proposal demands to incorporate this imperative into develop-
ment policies as a matter of socio-environmental justice (see Rozzi 2013 ).