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What Is Environmental Stewardship?

Environmental stewardship describes the actions that are taken by a person or a group of people to protect, restore and/or sustainably use natural resources. These actions can be carried out on a range of scales, from local to global, in rural and urban settings. Stewardship-supporting activities can include educational programs, social marketing campaigns, and payments for ecosystem services (PES) that aim to promote intrinsic motivations by creating a connection with nature, or changing people’s ethics, values or beliefs. Additionally, extrinsic rewards and sanctions, like financial incentives, market premiums, fines, or loss of access to markets can be used to encourage the stewardship behavior.

Despite its use as an expression for conservation, the idea of environmental stewardship also involves a more holistic understanding of the relationship between humans and nature. It is based on the idea that all humans are interconnected to the natural environment and must therefore treat it with respect. This kind of stewardship covers concepts such as sustainable livelihoods, adaptive co-management and the social-ecological system. These concepts can provide a holistic perspective on the role humans play in managing natural resources.

The majority of stewardship-related abstracts are classified under Action with 76%, which indicates that the actions of environmental stewardship is an essential aspect of getting the desired ecological and Our site social outcomes. Of the remaining abstracts, the smallest proportion is coded under Outcome with only 1%, suggesting that interventions that target outcomes tend to be at broader eco-regional and/or national-international scales, and not on the individual level.

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