2015), the rise of community supported fisheries programs globally (Brinson et al. Fisheries management, for example, has seen a growing emphasis on the role, rights and responsibilities of small-scale fishers in stewarding local resources-as evidenced in programs such as Chile’s Territorial Use Rights Fisheries program (TURFs) (Gelcich et al. As these examples show, locally-oriented stewardship practices, policies and programs have emerged in fisheries, agriculture, forestry, protected areas, wildlife, ecosystem service, and water management across rural to urban environments. 2009 Krasny and Tidball 2012 ICCA 2013 Jupiter et al. Our focus on local stewardship also aligns with an increasing emphasis on local communities and resource users in conservation and environmental management policies, programs and practice globally, as evidenced in initiatives such as community-based conservation (CBC), community-based management (CBM), community-based natural resource management (CBNRM), indigenous and community conserved areas (ICCAs), integrated conservation-development projects (ICDPs), locally managed marine areas (LMMAs), “other effective area-based conservation measures” (OECMs), and urban stewardship initiatives (Barrett and Arcese 1995 Berkes 2004 Cinner and Aswani 2007 Govan et al. Thus, implicit in our framing of environmental stewardship throughout this article is a focus on the often-central role of local people in caring for the environment that they are proximal to, connected to and, in some contexts, that they depend on for subsistence needs and livelihoods. However, one way through which people get involved in promoting sustainability and in responding to external drivers of change, using their own expertise and knowledge, is through engaging in local environmental stewardship actions and initiatives. ![]() The global scale of many current environmental issues might lead to the perception that local actions can no longer meet these challenges. Stewardship actions can also be taken at diverse scales, from local to global efforts, and in both rural and urban contexts. It is applied to describe strict environmental conservation actions, active restoration activities and/or the sustainable use and management of resources. ![]() The term environmental stewardship has been used to refer to such diverse actions as creating protected areas, replanting trees, limiting harvests, reducing harmful activities or pollution, creating community gardens, restoring degraded areas, or purchasing more sustainable products. Many individuals, local communities, environmental groups, and governments around the world are taking and promoting actions to steward the environment. The need to promote improved human-environment interactions through stewardship is ever pressing, which applies to terrestrial, marine, aquatic, and aerial environments in both rural and urban environments (Millenium Ecosystem Assessment 2005 Allsopp et al. Ultimately, our aim is to raise the profile of environmental stewardship as a valuable and holistic concept for guiding productive and sustained relationships with the environment. Further application of this framework in diverse environmental and social contexts is recommended to refine the elements and develop insights that will guide and improve the outcomes of environmental stewardship initiatives and investments. ![]() Finally, we discuss potential interventions and leverage points for promoting or supporting local stewardship and future applications of the framework to guide descriptive, evaluative, prescriptive or systematic analysis of environmental stewardship. Next, drawing from a review of the environmental stewardship, management and governance literatures, we unpack the elements of this definition to develop an analytical framework that can facilitate research on local environmental stewardship. First, we define local environmental stewardship as the actions taken by individuals, groups or networks of actors, with various motivations and levels of capacity, to protect, care for or responsibly use the environment in pursuit of environmental and/or social outcomes in diverse social–ecological contexts. Here we propose such a definition and framework. Establishing a clear definition and comprehensive analytical framework could strengthen our ability to understand the factors that lead to the success or failure of environmental stewardship in different contexts and how to most effectively support and enable local efforts. Yet environmental stewardship has not received adequate conceptual attention. ![]() There has been increasing attention to and investment in local environmental stewardship in conservation and environmental management policies and programs globally.
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