SS 18

Earth Stewardship: Linking Ecology and Ethics in Theory and Practice

Earth Stewardship signals a broader understanding of the expanded role of science in society. To engage science in reducing the rates of anthropogenic damage to the biosphere, the ESA launched the Earth Stewardship Initiative in 2009. This session emerges from the new Ecology and Ethics book series and elaborates a conceptual framework for continuing Earth Stewardship as an integral part of ESA’s new century. Understanding and respecting biocultural diversity, with the multiple forms of land stewardship that it implies, will allow us effectively and justly to confront local and global socio-environmental challenges. The session explores stewardship across scales and disciplines, including the humanities as well as the sciences.

Short presentations and topics will include:

• The Centennial Return of Stewardship to the Ecological Society of America. (JB Callicott)
• Earth Stewardship: An Initiative by the Ecological Society of America to Foster Engagement to Sustain Planet Earth (FS Chapin III, STA. Pickett, ME Power, SL Collins, JS Baron, DW Inouye, MG Turner, ESA)
• Earth Stewardship, the Need for a Transdisciplinary Approach and the Role of the International Long Term Ecological Research Network (M Maass, M Equihua, ILTER, Mexico, JJ Armesto PUC-IEB, Chile)
• The Politics of Earth Stewardship in the Uneven Anthropocene (L Ogden, Dartmouth College, I Klaver, UNT)  
• Earth Stewardship as Liberation Ecology: Latin American Perspectives (RH May, Jr.,  DEI - Costa Rica, R Rozzi, UNT & UMAG-IEB, Chile)
• Citizenship versus Stewardship (E Hargrove, CEP-UNT)