On Frank Golley’s International and Interdisciplinary Insights for a Twenty-First Century Earth Stewardship Based on Environmental Ethics - Earth Stewardship: Linking Ecology and Ethics in Theory and Practice - page 420

services that depend on sustaining biodiversity. Although progress over the last few
decades is clear, some of the same concerns raised previously still remain as chal-
lenges, especially for more effective inclusion of people and the appreciation of their
ecosystem connections (Golley 1978 , 1991 ; Likens 1998 ).

29.2 The growing Importance of People in the Global

Ecosystem

Golley's contributions were important in redirecting professional ecologists to
extend their perspectives to view humans as part of the planetary ecosystem (Golley
1993 , 1994 , 1998 ). Golley's close working relationships with colleagues such as
Gene Odum and H.T. Odum (Craige 2002 ), his participation in international
research projects, and his leadership in professional societies, provided a basis for
developing his philosophy. His views on the role of professional ecologists and their
needs for developing their own ethical codes grew from a deeply focused apprecia-
tion of cultural and biological diversity and his leadership roles in several interna-
tional professional societies (Golley 1978 , 1983 , 1984 ).
Frank Golley's approaches to ecological research included recognizing the
importance of intrinsic values in resolving environmental confl icts through use of
ecosystem and landscape-level concepts, especially the value of “connectedness”
(Golley 1998 ). Based on his research on the development of the ecosystem concept,
Golley concluded that the acceptance of this idea helped initiate “a dialogue about
how humans value nature.” This concept “provided a basis for moving beyond
strictly scientifi c questions to deeper questions of how humans should live with
each other and the environment. In that sense, the ecosystem concept continues to
grow and develop as it serves a larger purpose” (Golley 1993 ).
The ecosystem concept contributed to interdisciplinary collaborations among
participants in the UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere Program and other large
projects where environmental values were considered, in some cases for the fi rst
time (Odum 1977 ; Golley and Hadley 1981 ; Golley 1993 ). The multiple ways in
which different individuals debated, and many eventually agreed on, the impor-
tance of this ecosystem concept helped to re-defi ne the primary role that the eco-
system concept played in their research and teaching (Mitman 1992 ; Wright et al.
1995 ; McDonnell and Pickett 1993 ). The ecosystem approach remains highly use-
ful in conservation biology and much of current ecological science (Likens and
Lindenmayer 2012 ; Perring et al. 2013 ).
By the 1960s and into the 1970s ecologists began new debates about the value
of ecological concepts that seemed inadequate for resolving global environmental
confl icts (MacIntosh 1987 ; Hagen 1989 ; Di Pasquo 2013 ). Ecologists were mov-
ing beyond only considering direct effects, to a more thorough consideration of
the impacts of unexpected indirect effects. They no longer used the “balance of
nature” metaphor that originated many decades earlier (Egerton 1973 ; Hagen
1992 ; Pickett 2013 ). Golley emphasized that it is essential to have a broad view