Earth Stewardship invokes scientific and normative propositions while attempting to bridge global and local scales. While calls for a shift in behaviour are nothing new, the planetary scale of interest confuses the arena of stewardship and action. Stewardship cannot take place on a planetary scale: rather, Earth Stewardship will be an emergent property of a global system of actors operating at the local scale. Planetary scale crises may be understood through the lens of science, however it is at the local scale where the impacts will be felt, the attachments to place founded, and the motivation to act generated. Moreover, science alone cannot, provide the moral, ethical or social values central to stewardship. Using qualitative social research examining large landscape conservation initiatives in Australia and North America this paper will explore the interplay between science, values and action central to Earth Stewardship.
Results/Conclusions
The impulse to manage large landscapes emerged from: a growing appreciation of the cumulative impacts of habitat fragmentation and climate change on biodiversity; the proposition that current actions are insufficient given the pace of global environmental change; a realization that social and institutional systems are mismatched with the scales of ecological processes; and a normative commitment to the conservation of biodiversity and large intact landscapes. As these initiatives seek to align efforts vertically and horizontally across large spatial (i.e hundreds to thousands of miles) and temporal scales, they provide fertile empirical material to examine the challenge of implementing Earth Stewardship. Drawing on the concept of ecological connectivity, these initiatives claim to ‘connect people’ while ‘connecting landscapes’. An examination of this framing demonstrates the power of a science-based concept that can bridge normative and scientific domains to create a space for meaningful action at the local scale. However, scientific uncertainty in the Australian case and exclusionary environmentalist rhetoric in the North American case threaten to undermine the imperative for action and the broad base of support needed to significantly change land-use practices. These cases highlight the importance of creating an inclusive platform for Earth Stewardship and to enable non-scientific rationalities to have a voice in determining appropriate conservation action.