Exploring Environmental Stewardship and Climate Action

Recently, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a deadline for life on the planet, should development and industry continue at its current rate. This struck a paralytic fear in many hearts, despite the clear call to action it was intended to be. Right now, that impulse to shut down must be overridden by intentional decisions to be transformative and active in the service of environment.

Humans wear many hats. We are ecosystem engineers, keystone species, and other important roles among the general biosphere. Our presence in any given environment is remarkable and transformative. Part of the environmentalist consciousness of our impact on the environment is one of stewardship. Environmental stewardship is the management and oversight of the environment (in its many forms) by humans. This relationship implies a distance and power over the rest of the Earth that is not as reciprocal as life is. Without greater acknowledgement of the interconnectedness and interdependence of all living things (as well as non-living things) on this planet, there is an important piece of how we approach ameliorating human-caused climate change.

In this way, environmentalism has shortcomings when it comes to holistically addressing the systemic ways in which humans impact the environment. Through agriculture, textiles, infrastructure development, housing, war, and many other human systems, we uniquely impact the Earth and all its inhabitants.

In mining the concept of stewardship, the lineage of the attitude comes into focus. Environmental stewardship, as part of a conservation movement, as well as a larger environmentalist movement, has roots in the United States among those influenced by thinkers and writers like Anne Carson (Silent Spring, 1962) and Paul and Anne Erhlich (The Population Bomb, 1968). This thought privileged understandings of environmental stewardship as the responsibility of those with a supposed "luxury" of environmental consciousness to the pristine natural world, as well as, those in the global south with less knowledge and care for such issues.

In this patronizing and ahistorical perspective (which has since transformed and branched off), there is a lack of care and kinship with other people.

How can a perspective truly consider the interdependence and value of all life on planet, if it cannot even respect the full humanity of other people? It cannot.

Stewardship is distinct from kinship, which is relational and personal rather than strictly hierarchical and patronizing. In kinship, there is a nod to environmental thought which values the environment and other people inherently rather than conditionally, like only seeing another being for its consumptive value or productive potential. Such thought includes environmental justice, a framework created in 1991 at the first National People of Color Environmental Leadership Conference. Over 300 activists from different U.S. localities came together to articulate 17 principles, which clearly value both other people and the environment and their interconnectedness, with attention to the historical harm done to both specific groups of people and the environment and the need to address these consequent effects of that harm.

Click here for the principles of environmental justice.

These principles are almost 30 years old and come from a group of largely urban activists, who articulated their specific environmental concerns. In New York City, away from forests mountains, we need to more clearly articulate the value of the environment. This value must be holistic and inclusive of all people, as well as all non-human living and non-living things.

The ecological understanding of the interconnectedness of all the factors of an environment lends itself well to a greater and more encompassing set of concerns and considerations when approaching the behemoth of climate change. With this in mind, we should be able to reclaim the enthusiasm and hope needed to act and transform.