Introduction: Linking Ecology and Ethics for an Interregional and Intercultural Earth Stewardship - Earth Stewardship: Linking Ecology and Ethics in Theory and Practice - page 8

that are actually responsible for an infection. As Aldo Leopold ( 1949 , p. 258) stated,
“health is the capacity of the land for self-renewal. Conservation is our effort to
understand and preserve this capacity.” A biocultural approach to Earth stewardship
helps to achieve a better diagnosis of specifi c threats and opportunities for conserv-
ing the health of the land and people.

1.2 Part II: Integrating Stewardship Across Disciplines

and Scales

The chapters in Part I lay out a broad range of topics that form the threads of a
stewardship tapestry. These threads are diverse, both conceptually and culturally,
suggesting that the formulation of effective approaches to Earth Stewardship will
vary with time, place, scale, and audience. It is unlikely that a single formula or
strategy of stewardship will be universally effective, but rather that different con-
ceptual threads of stewardship will vary in their importance depending on context.
The chapters in Part II explore stewardship across scales, disciplines including the
humanities and ecological sciences, and the timely relationship between stewardship
and the Long-Term Socio-Ecological Research (LTER) networks.
Paradigm shifts, such as that implied by Earth Stewardship, often require exam-
ining the past in order to transform the present and project into the future. J. Baird
Callicott traces the history of tension between ecological science and advocacy in
the Ecological Society of America (ESA) from its birth nearly a century ago to the
present. Callicott examines the work of the fi rst president of the ESA, Victor
Shelford. Today, we can learn from Shelford by understanding how he combined
theory and practice in his proposal to create the Committee for the Preservation of
Natural Conditions for Ecological Study in 1917. In today's terminology, Shelford
developed a pioneer transdisciplinary approach by working closely with federal and
state governmental agencies to implement “nature sanctuaries” as “research
reserves” that were protected from impacts by people. However, as Callicott points
out, in contrast to Shelford's early aim to preserve natural reserves free of human
infl uence, stewardship efforts now recognize the importance of integrating humans
as essential components of ecosystems.
Chapin et al. describe how renewed concern about human impacts on the bio-
sphere led to the Earth Stewardship Initiative of the Ecological Society of America
(ESA). This chapter, coauthored by current and past presidents of the ESA, dis-
cusses multiple approaches that were used to develop a platform for stewardship
action, as illustrated in four case studies. Approaches included clarifi cation of the
stewardship concept through articles and a website, open discussion and elaboration
of the stewardship concept at ESA's annual meetings, engagement of ESA members
in activities organized by ESA sections, and outreach beyond ecology through col-
laborations and demonstration projects with academics and practitioners from other
disciplines as well as with other groups in civil society.
The following chapters describe the application of diverse stewardship approaches