Ecosystem stewardship: A resilience framework for arctic conservation

• Published in: Global environmental change 2015-09, Vol.34, p.207-217
• Main Authors: Chapin III, F. Stuart, Sommerkorn, Martin, Robards, Martin D., Hillmer-Pegram, Kevin
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Arctic; Biodiversity; Climate change; Conservation; Construction; Ecosystems; Governance; Human; Human wellbeing; Resilience; Resource development; Stewardship; Sustainability; Wildlife conservation
• ISSN: 0959-3780; 1872-9495
• DOI: 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2015.07.003

•Stewardship shapes changes toward a more sustainable future for people and nature.•Stewardship addresses social and economic drivers of biodiversity change.•Conservation must be actively shaped now to address inevitable arctic changes.•We identify actions that have been or could be taken to foster arctic conservation. Ecosystem stewardship is a framework for actively shaping trajectories of ecological and social change to foster a more sustainable future for species, ecosystems, and society. We apply this framework to conservation challenges and opportunities in the Arctic, where the rapid pace of human-induced changes and their interactions force us now to consider a new relationship between people and the rest of nature. Biodiversity, which has traditionally been the target of conservation efforts, is increasingly affected by human impacts such as energy demand and industrial development that are motivated more by short-term profits than by concerns for societal consequences of long-term arctic biodiversity change. We posit that effective approaches to conservation must (a) foster both ecosystem resilience and human wellbeing, (b) integrate ecological and social processes across scales, and (c) take actions that shape the future rather than seeking only to restore the past. To this end, we identify progress through actions that have been or could be taken at local, national, and international scales to promote arctic resilience and conservation. A stewardship approach to conservation aims to prevent undesirable changes and prepares for adaptation to rapid and uncertain changes that cannot be avoided and for transformation to avoid or escape undesirable states. The greatest opportunity for arctic stewardship at the local scale may lie in building upon culturally engrained (often indigenous) respect for nature and reliance on local environment, empowering it through knowledge and power sharing with national regulatory frameworks. This, in turn, allows connection of drivers with impacts across scales and raises awareness of the value of human–environment relationships. At national and international scales stewardship provides rules for coordinated action to reconcile local and regional conservation actions with those that are motivated by constraints at the global level, to foster ecosystem integrity and human wellbeing in the face of transformative changes in environment, landscapes, species, and society.