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Church of non-violent and peaceful defense of social justice, and in recent years
also environmental justice. This Latin American tradition began as early as the six-
teenth century, with Bartolome de las Casas—a Dominican who undertook the role
of “Protector of the Indians” in the Maya territories of southern Mexico and Central
America. Today, this tradition of defending the culture and wellbeing of indigenous
and other local communities has acquired a relevant role in Latin America and
worldwide through liberation theology. Theological texts associated with Earth
Stewardship concepts are grounded in peasant communities and indigenous cul-
tures. Advocacy for the human rights of Brazilian peasants and indigenous people,
and the fi ght to preserve the Amazon rainforest, were undertaken by one of the most
important environmental leaders in South American history, Chico Mendes (1944-
1985). Fábio Valenti Possamai and Fernando da Rocha portray the life and work
Francisco “Chico” Alves Mendes Filho—a rubber tapper who became a grassroots
union organizer—in counterpoint to Jose Lutzenberger (1926-2002)—a German-
Brazilian agronomist, politician, and environmentalist who was appointed Minister
for the Environment in Brazil in the early 1990s. Both made endurable contributions
to the concept and implementation of sustainable extractive reserves in Amazonia.
The biographies of Stang, Mendes, and Lutzenberger are important for under-
standing the diffi culties of implementing an Earth-stewardship environmental ethic.
The fi rst two were murdered for defending the poor and the Earth, while the latter
was criticized harshly and fi nally marginalized by the Brazilian political establish-
ment. Their lives teach us much about stewardship and what it may cost to practice
it. They also teach us about the importance of transdisciplinary and international
alliances. Frank Golley (1930-2006), an ecologist who served as president of the
International Association of Ecology, the International Society of Tropical Ecology,
and the Ecological Society of America (ESA), pioneered academic international
networking, and recognized the great value of learning from other cultures and of
involving different kinds of people in ecological research. Alan Covich, also a for-
mer president of the ESA, describes how Golley reached out far beyond the confi nes
of his Georgia-based university. His academic interest integrated ecological sci-
ences and environmental ethics; as a scientist his stewardship praxis was broad and
deep. If we want to understand what stewardship means, we should review the lives
of these and other people. They show us that Earth Stewardship is not only what we
think and write about the Earth, but, foremost, what we do, individually and col-
lectively, on behalf the Earth's creatures, its biocultural diversity, and its climate.
They also reveal the essential role played by international collaborations and
exchanges, by building institutional platforms, and by complementing disciplines
and life experiences.
Earth Stewardship requires personal commitment and involvement. It is to do
science and philosophy committed personally to the well-being of all the Earth's
co-inhabitants—human and other-than-human—and to the biogeochemical pro-
cesses that make life, as we know it and cherish it, possible on what Holmes Rolston
calls “the home planet.”
7
The lives of Golley, Stang, Mendes, and Lutzenberger
7
See Rolston (
2013
).
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