Introduction: Linking Ecology and Ethics for an Interregional and Intercultural Earth Stewardship - Earth Stewardship: Linking Ecology and Ethics in Theory and Practice - page 13

make this evident. Personal commitment takes us beyond theory and puts us into
practice, into actively practicing Earth Stewardship. It is a stimulating perspective
because the viewpoint from personal involvement, commitment, and experience
will shape not only the science, but the very philosophy of Earth Stewardship.
Praxis integrates theory and practice, and in so doing transforms both. And both are
needed. In this sense Earth Stewardship is praxis.

1.4 Concluding Remarks

Latent throughout this topic is the importance of praxis, that is, the way people
actively relate in and to the natural world. Research and ideas are necessary but not
suffi cient. Earth stewardship is not only an idea, but a way of co-inhabiting in the
world.
Core ideas for Earth stewardship emerge from praxis, a praxis that is ancient and
contemporary, collective and individual.
Ethical values, citizenship traditions, metaphors and poetic creativity, contempo-
rary and traditional vernacular ecological knowledge, political ecology, institutional
networks, local communities, and exemplary lives complement the scientifi c per-
spectives of the Earth Stewardship initiative.
The hybridization of disciplines and traditions will stimulate and strengthen a
paradigm shift that fosters dynamic, intercultural, and interregional approaches to
Earth Stewardship. The integration of ecology and ethics into Earth Stewardship
inaugurates a new transdisciplinary stage of long-term socio-ecological research at
a global scale, and a biocultural approach that includes all beings with whom
humans co-inhabit the biosphere.

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