Table 3.

Definitions of key concepts related to environmental stewardship

Elements of stewardship	Definitions
Stewardship actions	The approaches, activities, behaviors, and technologies applied to protect, restore or sustainably use the environment. Stewardship actions can occur at different scales, can address issues that are more or less complex, and are taken by different actors or groups based on their characteristics, motivations, and capacities
Actors (or stewards)	The different individuals or configurations of stewards across scales of organization who are driving stewardship initiatives. Actors have different actual and desired rights, roles, and responsibilities. Actor characteristics may influence willingness, motivations, and ability to participate in stewardship
Motivations for stewardship	The intrinsic or extrinsic incentive structures or reasons that people take action to care for the environment. Intrinsic motivations are associated with actions that are expected to bring personal pleasure or satisfaction, through (a) alignment with ethics, morals, values, and beliefs or (b) the achievement of psychological needs for self-determination and self-actualization. Extrinsic motivations are associated with the expected achievement of separable outcomes including (a) the perceived direct costs and benefits of stewarding resources and (b) externally provided rewards or sanctions. An individual or group’s motivations defines the rationale for actions, clarifies obligations and provides the willpower to act
Capacity for stewardship	The ability to take action to care for the environment. The capacity of actors to take stewardship actions is enabled or constrained by local assets and broader governance factors. Local assets that support stewardship capacity can include social, financial, physical, cultural, political human, and institutional capital. Broader governance—including institutions (i.e., laws and policies, organizations and networks, and decision-making processes) and structural processes related to power and politics (i.e., economic inequality, discrimination, exclusion from decision-making)—might also empower or constrain the agency, options and capacity of stewards
Context of stewardship	The set of social, cultural, economic, political, and biophysical factors that determines which stewardship actions will be socially, culturally or politically appropriate and ecologically effective. The nature of change, including complexity, scale, speed, type, and severity, occurring can challenge local stewardship capacity
Outcomes of stewardship	The ecological and social impacts of stewardship actions. The outcomes of stewardship can be intended or unintended, produce synergies or trade-offs, be desirable or undesirable, and have differential costs and benefits for distinct groups
Stewardship interventions	The policies, programs or market mechanisms that different organizations and actors—including governments, NGOs, interest groups, and local communities—promote and implement with the intention of enabling or developing environmental stewardship
Leverage points for stewardship	The specific levers or points where different local or external organizations and actors might intervene to produce change in the stewardship of a system in order to facilitate desirable ecological and social outcomes. Leverage points can include introducing new actors, providing incentives, augmenting capacity or governance, promoting certain actions, or monitoring outcomes to facilitate adaptive management