Stewardship Versus Citizenship - Earth Stewardship: Linking Ecology and Ethics in Theory and Practice - page 307

suite of interconnected problems that threaten the ability of the Earth to provide the
services and resources on which we depend (Chapin et al. 2011 ). If the ESA's Earth
Stewardship initiative is to address a global scale, then it needs to better represent
the biocultural heterogeneity of the contrasting regions of planet (Rozzi et al. 2012 ).
In this chapter I argue that to effectively address global scale socio-ecological chal-
lenges and convene participation at a planetary scale, the concept of environmental
citizenship might better suited than stewardship.

20.2 Stewardship and Dominion

In the beginning, the term dominion was similar to what stewardship has come to
mean today. When the term was translated into European languages, however, it
became erroneously associated with another term, domination. To capture some-
thing of the original sense of dominion, people began using stewardship, a term that
appears only fi ve times in the Bible and mostly in the context of stories about bad
managers. Citizenship has much to commend it environmentally. First, it can be
associated with Aldo Leopold's remark that humans are “plain citizens” of the
biotic community, opening a door into Leopold's writings and thought. Second, it
can be used to distinguish values related to being a consumer from values related to
being a good citizen. This distinction is important because economists typically
argue for policy in terms of consumer preferences, erroneously substituting them
for citizen preferences which can be quite different. Finally, citizenship can help tie
ethics and politics together in a sense promoted long ago by Aristotle. Ethics and
politics are basically the same, that is, formed in terms of the same elements of
moral character, but with the fi rst focused on the good of the individual and the
second on the good of the group. Although stewardship need not be abandoned,
since spreading the word about the need to protect the environment to Jews,
Muslims, and Christians is certainly worthwhile, a focus on citizenship can spread
that word farther without danger of religious and cultural backlash.
Environmental stewardship under the label “land stewardship” has been pro-
moted by such Christian environmental thinkers and practitioners as Wendell Berry
and Wes Jackson. Berry ( 1981 , p. 81) writes: “To see and respect what is there is the
fi rst duty of stewardship … That is an ecological principle and a religious one.”
Essentially for him, the purpose of stewardship is to protect the Earth: “… in losing
stewardship, we lose fellowship; we become outcasts from the great neighborhood
of Creation. It is possible—as our experience in this good land shows—to exile
ourselves from Creation, and ally ourselves with the principle of destruction…”
(Berry 1981 , p. 281). Jackson, likewise, strikes a religious tone, noting that
Mennonite “famers, like their close religious relatives, the Amish, believe that the
highest calling of God is to farm and be good stewards of the soil. Within an agri-
cultural context, they are usually regarded as the most ecologically correct farmers
in America. The strong ethic of land stewardship is, without doubt, largely respon-
sible” (Jackson 2011 , p. 10). Jackson is a founder of the Land Institute in Kansas
and has worked closely with the Land Stewardship Project in Minnesota.