Environmental Stewardship is a broad concept that can be applied to a broad array of projects and activities. It can refer to strict conservation efforts which protect and preserve ecosystems, active restoration efforts designed to restore damaged or destroyed habitat or sustainable use of resources and management actions. It could also be a reference to individual choices that reduce the negative impacts of human activities and live responsibly (Missouri Botanical Garden). The term “stewardship” can refer to a variety of scales from the local to the global in urban and rural contexts.

There is a growing emphasis on involving local communities and resource users in environmental stewardship policies, programs and practices worldwide through initiatives such as community-based conservation (CBC) and community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) as well as indigenous and community-conserved areas (ICCAs) as well as locally-managed marine areas (LMMAs) as well as sustainable livelihoods and various other forms of community-based conservation and development projects (Cattermoul et al. 2008; Bennett 2010).

The success of this initiative will depend on a variety of factors, including:

For example communities that rely on harvesting specific mega-fauna, it might not be feasible to implement strict conservation measures that completely exclude these species from the ecosystem (Gavin et al. 2015). In these cases, implementing conservation measures that don’t allow for any harvest would likely be seen by some communities as being incompatible with their culture. In some cultural contexts too strict conservation measures or restrictions on harvesting can Our site be seen as an intruder of private rights, and may cause social tensions. 2017).