Herman E. Daly. Guest Editorial, in: G. Tyler Miller, Jr. Living in the Environment: An Introduction1

to Environmental Science. Belmont, Calif.:Wadsworth (1992).

Sustainable Living in the Biosphere

Calvin B. DeWitt1

I grew up in a city by the name of Grand Rapids that on the other side of Lake Michigan from myWisconsin home. And so, while I have lived in this rural place on Waubesa Wetlands now now for about40 years, my life began in an urban setting. Of course, there is a great difference between these twoplaces, and it is certainly true that it is easier to learn from the book of nature on the great marsh, the citywas a wonderful place to learn many lessons from nature. As a young child I was able to study insectsand birds around my house, and even was able to capture some caterpillars to watch them grow in glassjars where I fed them the same kind of leaves on which I found them. I watched them closely as they gotbigger and bigger, and after many weeks they hooked themselves to a stick, and began to spin! Theirwork produced a beautiful chrysalis from which later emerged a beautiful butterfly. It filled me with aweand wonder! It gave me great joy! From a little worm to beautiful butterfly! How wonderful!

And there were the bats that flew around the street lamps in the early evening, catching insects that wereattracted by the light, and I was fascinated when they followed small wads of paper I would through upinto the air to see if I could divert them. But most wonderful was my backyard zoo---a very small placewhere my parents allowed me to keep whatever living things I could find. Some things, like turtles, Icould buy in a local store, and when I got older I could take my bicycle to wetlands outside of the city tocatch other kinds of turtles, and all sorts of other creatures. I studied all of these things for hours anddays on end and learned the many things they had to teach me. In the process of observing them, Ilearned to do more than just look at them; I learned to "behold" them---really looking at them intently notonly with my eyes but also with my mind.

Every person can experience a wonderful progression---a progression from awareness, to appreciation,to stewardship of the biosphere. Awareness involves seeing, identifying, naming, and locating, andcan lead to Appreciation. Appreciation involves tolerating, respecting, valuing, esteeming, andcherishing, and can lead to Stewardship. And stewardship means using, restoring, serving, keeping,and entrusting. At the heart of stewardship is a loving and caring of whatever we hold in trust. Stewardship principles of Earthkeeping, fruitfulness, and rest and recreation, come together in theprinciple of Con-Serving, which means that as we are served by the biosphere's ecosystem services,we return these services back to the biosphere with services of our own. Stewardship seeks harmonyof humankind with the entire biosphere. Stewardship dynamically shapes and reshapes humanbehavior in the direction of maintaining individual, community, and biospheric sustainability inaccord with the way the biosphere works.

"The major challenges facing us today are: (1) for physical and biological scientists to definemore clearly the limits and interactions within ecosystems and the biosphere, and to developeconomies more in conformity with such limits; (2) for social scientists to design the institutions thatwill bring about the transition to a steady state and permit its continuance; and (3) for philosophersand theologians to stress the neglected traditions of stewardship and distributive justice that exist in

our cultural and religious heritage."1

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Every one of these beautiful creatures was a kind of masterpiece, and I know that my beholding of themwas just as long and as deep as an art critic would behold art in an art museum. My heart was happy! The world and all its creatures were beautiful. I felt like humming, and singing---I was so happy! And Idid! As I grew up, this wonder and awe continued to grow, and it is because of this growing in

knowledge of a wide array of living things that I became a scientist. Science became my vocation. Science became my calling.

My vocation, as you know, includes my being a scientist at the University of Wisconsin. And how didthis happen? It is because of my father who said to me: "Cal, do what you love to do. Then you will doit very well. And eventually someone will even pay you for it!" And so that is how I became a professor,first at Calvin College in Michigan, next at the University of Michigan, and then at the University ofWisconsin where I have been since 1972. Following my father's advice, I continued to study animals andplants. My goal was learn absolutely as much as possible about living things. How do they work? Whydo they do the things they do? How do they survive in a challenging world?

In pursuing this goal I continued to nurture my ability to behold living things. And soon this brought meto do my first full study of one wonderful species, the Desert Iguana. This is a lizard that lives on the hotdeserts of the far southern United States. East of the mountains of California I found a place where thereis only about 2.5 inches of rainfall a year, and where surface temperatures in July and August go above150 degrees Fahrenheit! I lived there with my wife Ruth for a full summer, and figured out how thisremarkable reptile manages not only to survive, but even to thrive, in such a dry, hot, and thirsty land. My lizard's scientific name is Dipsosaurus which means "thirsty lizard!" The reason I am telling you thisis because of what happened at the conclusion of our stay in this hot desert. Yes, I did get heat stroke! But more importantly, I learned something about our own species, Homo sapiens. What happened wasthat in the last week of our summer on the desert, a large tank truck pulled up near our study site, wateredthe desert with a large hose and after that a platform of concrete was poured over the wetted ground. And next, a house was built upon that platform!

My study site is now the city of Palm Desert, California, my lizard is found locally only in the PalmDesert Zoo, and my study site is a broad driveway that leads up to a drive-in bank building! What I didn'ttell you earlier, is that my study site---and the whole city of Palm Desert---is located on a great "alluvialfan." It is located on a river delta of a river that flows out of the San Jacinto Mountains only about oncein a hundred years. And several miles to the west of Palm Desert, men in large machines were flatteningout the moving sand dunes of the open desert, watering the flattened sand, and laying slabs of concretefor building more homes! My beholding of desert lizards, whose life was finely tuned to be in harmonywith the great heat and tremendous dryness of the desert, was extended to my beholding of humanbeings, whose developments were fully disharmonious with the alluvial fan and the hot, dry desert.

This experience with lizards and people brought me to understand that people can do very foolish things. And as I studied people more an more, I discovered that they often charged ahead with little or noknowledge of the economy of the ecosystems within which they did their work, and with little or noknowledge of the economy of the biosphere. I discovered that people like ourselves fail to seekunderstanding of "how the world works" and also fail to ask "what ought to be?" Instead they go aheadwithout seeking scientific or ethical knowledge and "just do something." They go right to the praxiscorner of our S-E-P Triad without connecting with Scientia and Ethics. And they get into great trouble. And they also bring trouble to ecosystems and to the biosphere.

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I write this so that you come to know that my love for study of plants and animals brought me in time tostudy human beings as well, and particularly how human beings often have the great problem of doingthings without knowledge of what they need to know in order to act rightly in the world. And this iswhat brought me to be not only a scientists, but also a steward of my marsh (and the biosphere), and thechairman of my town.

What has been my path? And what has been the path of so many others among us that have developedthe resolve and passion to help our species live in harmony with the creation and its economy? I havethought about it much, and have discussed it often with my students, colleagues, and fellow citizens. And from this thinking I believe it has to do with a progression. It is the progression that can occur inevery one of us. It is the progression from awareness, to appreciation, to stewardship. Let me explainwhat I am saying. Here is the progression, in brief.

1) Awareness (seeing, identifying, naming, locating),2) Appreciation (tolerating, respecting, valuing, esteeming, cherishing), and 3) Stewardship (using, restoring, serving, keeping, entrusting).

And here it is in more detail:

1 Awareness of the Creation

The very first thing necessary is that people develop awareness of the world, including such things asplant and animal life, the organization of this life into ecosystems, the ecosystem services provided to alllife by the biosphere, and the biosphere itself together with the biospheric economy. Awareness meansputting ourselves and others into situations and states of mind so that all these things are brought to ourattention. It can start simply, such as putting up a bird feeder and beholding the birds that come andwondering where they go when they leave. When so many other things compete for our time andattention, the creation and its living creatures, and especially things like the biospheric economy mightnot even seem real to us. We might find that it seems real only on some of our walks or journey, andeven then it may be seriously obscured (or may pass by too fast on our high-speed trains). Awareness---the first step toward responsible stewardship---means noticing creation, its creatures, and its ecosystem. It means noticing what is happening in the biosphere.

Awareness involves seeing, naming, identifying, and locating. It means taking off the blinders put overour eyes by ourselves and society so that we not only see the magnificent creation, but want to name andknow the names of the things we see. It means providing ourselves with enough peace andthoughtfulness that we have the time and the will to identify a tree or mountain, bird or river. It meanshaving the sense to enter the natural world intentionally in order to locate and find the creatures thatmake up the living fabric we call the biosphere. Ultimately, it means beholding.

2 Appreciation of the Creation

If we develop our awareness so that it not only causes us to look, but also to behold, then we will come tothe next stage---the stage of appreciating. Awareness, while it is extremely important, is not an end initself. Awareness moves to appreciation. We cannot appreciate things and processes of which we areunaware. And what is appreciation? At the very least, appreciation means tolerating. We may tolerate,for example, worms and hyenas and in tolerating them we are showing that we appreciate them. But

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beyond toleration, appreciation can mean respect. We certainly respect a large bear or lion, for example,because of its power and fearsomeness. We also can respect a lowly worm, particularly when we learnabout its importance to the making and processing of soil that in turn may help the plants we grow forfood or beauty. Appreciation can build farther of course---from tolerating and respecting, on to valuing. As we learn of biospheric provisions and of ecosystem services, and the vital importance of plants andanimals in these provisions and services, we will come to value them. We might even come to valuethem only for what they are! And we can move still farther in our appreciation, even to esteeming andcherishing living creatures and the systems within which they live and work. And so, awareness leads toappreciation.

Stewardship of the Creation

Appreciation does not end the matter either, for appreciation leads to its ultimate conclusion:stewardship. At first stewardship may mean use of Creation; perhaps our appreciation for a flower willlead us to put in a vase to decorate our table. At this stage of understanding of the meaning ofstewardship, it may mean about the same thing as management, meaning what we do as necessity to keepour plants flowering or our gardens producing. But stewardship will bring us well beyond management,to becoming a kind of reciprocal relationship in which the services of the garden are returned withservices of our own. This reciprocal service is the kind of service in which the service of the one isaccompanied by the service of the other. The Latin prefix con when connected to the word servicecreates the word con-service or con-servation and this reflects a relationship between people and othercreatures, between people and the creation, that puts both into harmony with each other. The one that isserved also serves, back-and-forth.

As I summarized earlier, we know that many provisions and ecosystem services are being degraded andare being used unsustainably. What this does for what we accomplish in our stewardship is to engage usin restoration of what has been abused and degraded in the past. It then becomes restoration stewardshipand this is a stewardship that brings justice to the land and its creatures---brings justice to the biosphere. It is just stewardship. I know from my experience on the desert of California, and we all know fromother things we have seen, that people often have degraded and abused the creation---both knowingly outof necessity or greed, and unknowingly out of ignorance or intentionally being misinformed. And thismeans that our stewardship may mean that it will work to set things right again—to reconcile things. Wemight even buy back something degraded to make it right again, which is the meaning of redemption andredemption stewardship.

In all of our stewardship---stewardship of every kind---serving is always at its heart. And serving requires a loving and caring keeping of what we hold in trust. And, as each of us gets olderand we look to the next generation, our service in the creation will involve our entrusting others withwhat we have served, kept, and restored.

Four Principles for Stewardship

About 10 years ago I received a telephone call from the United States Department of State. The personwho called me was negotiating treaties with other nations on preserving the biodiversity around theworld. Her question was, "Can you give me a list of ethical principles that we can use in our negotiationswith other governments for protecting the diversity of plants and animals around the globe?" And thenshe went on to say, "We have all the scientific material we need for these negotiations; What we want

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from you is the ethical material; In other words we need to know the ethical reasons for preserving thebiodiversity of the biosphere."

This request of the State Department was a good one. It recognized that much like science is necessaryfor taking action on international treaties on biodiversity, so also ethics is a necessary consideration. Both science and ethics need to be used to craft treaties on biodiversity. Already at that time I had beenasked for ethical principles from other people, but this was the first time I had the request coming fromthe national government. And so what I did was to present four ethical principles I had developed earlier,but now recast in a way they could be used in government. The four principles I gave the Department ofState were Earthkeeping, Fruitfulness, Rest-Restoration, and Con-Servancy. These four principles take differentforms and are expressed differently in various cultures and traditions around the world, but they arenearly everywhere present. In the language of government---and in language everyone else canunderstand irrespective of their particular cultures and traditions---thhese four principles can besummarized as follows:

1 Earthkeeping Principle

Earth is the planet on which we and all life live, move, and have our being. It is wrapped in theembracing fabric of life that we admire and respect---the great envelope we call the biosphere. And it isvery important that we do not simply to take the earth and its biosphere for granted; we must payattention to what it is teaching us, not only about how we can "read the book of nature" in order to learnhow it operates, but also to about how we can "read its vital signs" much like we or a doctor does inchecking our own personal health. Much like we read our own vital signs---our heart rate, our bloodpressure, our body temperature---we must be alert to reading the vital signs of our biosphere. Earth, likeour bodies, also has vital signs that must be read. This is vital for "keeping the Earth"---it is vital for"Earth-keeping." We know, of course, that not any one of us can degrade or destroy our planet and itsbiosphere in any significant way. But we also know that when there are many of us---when we arenumbered in the millions and billions---that we can make a major difference on workings of thebiosphere. And when we also recognize that each of us can also multiply our power by hundreds andthousands of times through the use of energy-using machines, we know our impact can be very greatindeed. We come to know that our species, Homo sapiens, in our day has become a majorbiogeophysical force on earth. Human beings now have the capacity to degrade and destroy the systemsthat sustain us and all life. We have the capacity to "un-create" the biosphere. And this means that eachone of us must needs to "keep the Earth"; each one of us has to be an "Earth-keeper"; each one of usneeds to put into practice the Principle of Earth-keeping.Figure 44.1 Variations of Earth's surface

temperature for the past 140 years. Hadley Center, UK Meteorological Office.

What are some of the vital signs that we can read from what the biosphere is telling us? One importantsign, much like for human beings, is its temperature. And thanks to the Intergovernmental Panel onClimate Change (IPCC), we have a group of leading scientists and climatologists who have been readingthe temperature of the Earth (see Fig. 1). Of course this graph does not tell us what the cause of thetemperature rise is, much like a body temperature of 104 degrees Fahrenheit does not tell the cause of ourfever, but it is a sign that must be heeded. Another sign is the loss of topsoil and the abandonment ofagricultural lands, as we summarized these in an earlier chapter. Again, this loss does not tell us thecause, but it is a vital sign that compels us to find the cause, so that we can help correct the problem. And whether the cause is because of human beings or not, it is important that appropriate action is taken. Earth-keeping is vital to our living on Earth.

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Figure 44.1 Variations of the Earth's surface temperature for the past 140 years. Hadley Center, United Kingdom

Meteorological Office.

2 Fruitfulness Principle

The biosphere fully depends upon the ability of the creation to be fruitful. Fruit trees for example mustproduce fruit in order for seeds to be developed and distributed by fruit-eating animals, including people.Fish of the sea and fish ponds also must be fruitful---they must be able to replace themselves withyounger fish in a continuing process that goes through the generations. All species of plants and animalsmust be fruitful so their lineages---their "species" will not be broken, but will continue for generationsover hundreds and thousands of years. Every living things must be fruitful. And the Principle ofFruitfulness means that every human being, their communities, regions, and countries must take care thatthe great variety and abundance of life continues on through the generations. Care must be taken not toallow species of living plants and animals to go extinct. And when their numbers get to be very low,such as occurred for the Whooping Cranes that once lived on my marsh, and the Giant Panda that lives inChina, extra efforts must be made to bring these species back from "the brink of extinction."

Springtime of 2008 was especially wonderful for me in my Town of Dunn, because there for the firsttime in my life I observed 5 Whooping Cranes on a wetland south of my home, where they stayed forthree days during their migration to northern Wisconsin. In 1941, the population of this wonderful cranespecies was done to only 15 birds! And applying the Principle of Fruitfulness here meant thatextraordinary efforts were made to prevent it from going extinct. This included work at the InternationalCrane Foundation, about 40 miles north of me in Baraboo, Wisconsin, where George Archibalddeveloped the means for raising these rare cranes from Whooping Crane eggs that were incubated bySandhill Cranes. The population was increased gradually through the work of nine cooperatinggovernment and private organizations so that in 2009 there were 268 birds. Remarkably, this effort usedultra-light airplanes to lead young Whooping Cranes between central Wisconsin and Florida to help them

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re-establish their migration route (see figure 44.2). The mission of these organizations and theirWhooping Crane Eastern Partnership is the full restoration of a self-sustaining migratory population. InChina there is another project underway that is inspired by the Fruitfulness Principle. This is the greatwork on conservation of the crane that is pictured so widely in Chinese pottery and tapestry, the criticallyendangered Siberian Crane. More that 3,000 of these beautiful birds spend their winters over the400,000 hectares of the Poyang Lake Basin in the mid Yangtze River Basin of China. And this SiberianCrane Wetland Project is being done cooperatively with the United Nations Environmental Program, theWorld Bank's General Environmental Facility, the International Crane Foundation, and the State ForestryAdministration of China. This population is nearly the entire world population of these cranes---cranesthat not only contribute importantly to the ecosystems of which they are part, but also are importantsymbols in Asian culture of health and longevity.

The Fruitfulness Principle, in its many forms across continents and cultures, is vital for sustaining therichness and beauty of life on Earth, even as it is basis to maintaining the provisions and ecosystemservices of the biosphere. The foundation of this principle is this: human beings are expected to enjoythe creation and take some of its fruit; however we should not destroy its fruitfulness---we should notdestroy its capacity to yield fruit. Applying the Principle of Fruitfulness will mean that we will save thewide array of plant and animal species across the biosphere, will sustain and restore the capacity of ourfisheries to produce fish, and will tend our farms and gardens in ways that keep them fruitful, not only inthe short run, but also for generations to come.

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3. Rest & Restoration Principle

All of us have learned that we need times of rest and restoration. We cannot push ourselves beyond ourlimits, or we will become sick or collapse. The same is true for the rest of the creation. Everythingneeds time to recuperate from doing things; everything needs time for restoring and rejuvenating life andwork. In many agricultural systems around the world, this is recognized by allowing the land to liefallow every several years. And experience shows that giving the land rest and time to restore itselfbenefits the land and ourselves in the long run. Of course, during times of dire need, we may findourselves abandoning the practice of letting the land rest, but we cannot continue this for long, or, likeour own bodies, the land will take its own rests once everything it has to give has been depleted by ourpressing it beyond its limits.

In many cultures this need for rest and restoration is illustrated in a seven-day week in which one or twodays are set aside as times we do not work at our regular jobs. In a few cultures there this is applied tothe land in ways that allow it to rest one year out of seven. There is a farmer in Alberta Canada I knowwho lets his land rest every second year because as he said to me, "This is what my land needs." TheRest and Restoration Principle is linked to fruitfulness, of course. Relentless exploitation that goes onyear after year, and decade after decade usually results in loss of fruitfulness, and more than that maywell bring things so that they bear no fruit at all. Erosion and degradation of land, such as we alreadyhave summarized, that results in total abandonment of agricultural land is an example. Over-worked,over-watered, and overly-pressed land leads to erosion, desertification, salinization which means eventualloss of the land for productive purposes.

The Rest and Restoration Principle applies not only to land, but also to its life. We respect this, forexample when specific rules are established that prevent hunting or fishing at certain times of the year. And we respect this principle when we engage in the production of trees in our forestry practices. As weneed our times for rest and restoration, so do the other creatures and the rest of the creation. There is anold saying in some cultures that there is even more to rest and restoration---and that is to provide livingcreatures the time and opportunity to enjoy their life and living! Our purpose, like the purposes of othercreatures, is not to work all the time, but also to enjoy ourselves along with the rest of the creation.

4. Con-Servancy Principle

We already have considered how each of us is in a kind of reciprocal relationship with other livingcreatures and with the provisions and ecosystem services given to us by the biosphere. We gave thisreciprocal service a name. We called it con-service or con-servation. This is the heart of the Cons-Servancy Principle. It is a principle that helps us as human beings put ourselves into ecological harmonywith each other and with the rest of the creation. This principle overarches all the others.

What is this service, we may ask? Well, it includes giving names to all the other creatures---somethingdone by each of us, but particularly by taxonomists whose scientific training gives them keen insight intothe relationships, character, ecological role of each species they study and who name them accordingly. It also includes acting on the other three principles---earthkeeping, fruitfulness, and rest and restoration. Its major contribution as a principle is that it wraps up all the other principles together into an integrativewhole. And this integrative whole---this Con-Servancy---is at the heart of stewardship.

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Con-Servancy and the Meaning of Stewardship

In September, 2000, I was invited to contribute to a consultation of the John Ray Initiative (JRI) held atWindsor Castle in England. My role would be to present one of four papers to a gathering of prominentscientists and ethicists on the topic of "Stewardship." A year earlier the JRI deliberated on what responsewas needed to the global environmental crisis, and more specifically on what name we should give to theactions that need to be taken. Very tentatively, they had agreed to test the word "stewardship" for this,and so for their meeting in 2000 they asked me to present the case for "stewardship" and asked thechemist and inventor of the "Gaia Hypothesis," James Lovelock to take the position against using thisname. The other two speakers were asked to provide ethical and philosophical content to the meeting. Each of us was given half a day for presentation and responses.

At the conclusion of this 3-day meeting, the consultation decided on "stewardship" and proceeded next tocommission a book on the topic. The book would include our four contributions, plus papers from awide array of other scientists and ethicists. It was published in 2006 as Environmental Stewardship:Critical Perspectives---Past and Present, and my contribution was, "Stewardship: RespondingDynamically to the Consequences of Human Action in the World."1

The consultation asked, "Can the stewardship model that has been practiced from antiquity up to theindustrial revolution be re-instated, refurbished, and returned to effective service? Can it be madesufficiently robust at a time when human beings have become a major biological and geological force?

Developing Stewardship for our Time

In my Windsor presentation, I reported my research finding that any culture or civilization in our timeassess the effects of human actions on the biosphere, and if it fails in this assessment or does not respondappropriately, it collapses. The work of Jared Diamond provides many examples, and tells how thecollapse of the people of Easter Island can become a metaphor for the Earth. When the Easter Islandersgot into difficulties, there was nowhere to which they could flee, nor to which they could turn for help. And that plight is one we do not wish to have for the entire Earth and its biosphere.

In our day, the creation has been transformed in our perception of it, from its being a teacher or bookfrom which we learn how to live rightly, into its being a large collection of resources that are there for usto take. Along with this transformed worldview from earth as teacher to earth as resources is denial ofthe human adverse impact on the Earth, and even the misrepresentation of knowledge that obscureshuman degradation of the biosphere and its ecosystem services. Even with the reality of biospherictransformation and degradation, of biogeographic restructuring of terrestrial ecosystems, and of thetrophic restructuring and microbialization of the oceans is being denied by those who benefit from theirabuse of the Earth and its services. Yet, despite such misrepresentation, this reality of transformation anddegradation is beginning to make itself manifest. The Earth is warming, agricultural lands are beingdegraded and abandoned, and the biodiversity of the biosphere is being seriously threatened. The timehas come to take action that is appropriately sufficient and robust to engage the immensity of ourproblem. And this brings us to examine the nature of stewardship and how it came to be.

To investigate how we become stewards, and practice stewardship in the first place, it is helpful toremind ourselves, both from personal experience and from history, that every one of us engagesinteractively with the world around us. Locally, as in our homes and gardens, our interactions includecorrections that we make as we see things not working right. We see erosion from open soil, and put

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mulch around our plants; we see our house get too warm in summer and plant a tree to give shade. At thelocal and community scale we also may correct for bad effects of our actions, and may for example,interact with fellow citizens and local leaders to shape and reshape our behavior in the direction ofmaintaining and improving individual and community health. At the global level we also may act---mainly through our leaders---to seek actions that correct unanticipated detrimental effects of humanactions on the biosphere.

And so we find that we interact with our world. This is true for every one of us. The collective result ofall these human actions join together with day and night, seasons of the year, currents of wind and water,and geological developments to produce a vibrant and dynamic world. And this shapes and reshapes usas people, helping us to respond dynamically, and appropriately, in a dynamic world. As so what makesfor right living---what makes for responsive and responsible stewardship---is necessarily also dynamic.

What is appropriate for maintaining ourselves, our communities, and the biosphere is ever changing. And so, cutting down a tree when forests are lush and full may help us achieve a comfortable and securelife, but cutting a tree when trees are scarce may bring us degradation of lives, water, and soil. Similarly,increasing human populations may be beneficial when there are very few people, but not so ifpopulations are reaching or have exceeded the carrying capacity of the land necessary to sustain them. And so, practices of the past may not be appropriate for the present, and practices of the present mightnot be appropriate for some future time. This dynamic interplay between people and the world they help create means that people, communities,and governments need to review and re-evaluate their actions repeatedly, year after year. This isnecessary for correcting actions that no longer are appropriate and finding new approaches that areneeded for sustainability and restoration. Our stewardship at all levels---from individuals togovernments---must be highly interactive and dynamic.

The Essence of Stewardship

Successful cultures and civilizations shape and reshape human behavior in the direction of maintainingindividual, community, and environmental sustainability. They understand their world and its workingsby direct experience and accumulated knowledge (scientia), gain from their experience and culture anunderstanding of what constituted right living in the world (ethics), and put an interactive and coherentunderstanding of the world and how rightly to live into practice (praxis). Their behavior has had to flowfrom the interactive and coherent engagement of scientia, ethics, and praxis, whether by authority andstriving of the leadership, or by individuals and communities learning to live with the way things areordered in the world, or both. Such striving has shapes and reshapes behavior in the direction ofmaintaining individual, community, and biospheric sustainability. Such interactive and coherentengagement leads to awareness, and appreciation of a world which provides the conditions and processeswhereby cultures and the full array of life on earth survives and flourishes. This awareness and respectfor the service of the biosphere to all life stimulates a response from people who reciprocate with humanactions directed toward assuring the continued provision and services of the biosphere. These actionsmust be in concordant harmony. In this respect, there is accord with "One World One Dream"---themotto of the Beijing Olympic Games of 2008, particularly as this motto reflects the ancient Chinesephilosophy and ideal of "Harmony of Man with Nature" (see figure 44.3).

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Figure 44.3 The Beijing Olympics motto. Photo by Calvin B. DeWitt.

These actions must be accomplished within the goal of harmony of humankind with the entire biosphere. The result is reciprocal con-service, all in accord with the way things are ordered in the coherentbiosphere. This is the essence of stewardship.

Stewardship dynamically shapes and reshapes human behavior in the direction of maintainingindividual, community, and biospheric sustainability in accord with the way the biosphere works.

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This is a pre-print of Chapter 44, "Sustainable Living in the Biosphere" by Calvin B. DeWitt inMelville Y. Stewart, ed., 2010, Science and Religion in Dialogue, Volume 2, being the third of threechapters in Part 15, "Stewardship and Economic Harmony: Living Sustainably on Earth," WestSussex, United Kingdom: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 658-670.

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1. Calvin B. DeWitt, Stewardship: Responding Dynamically to the Consequences of Human Action in theWorld. In: R. J. Berry. Environmental Stewardship: Critical Perspectives—Past and Present. London & NewYork (2006): T&T Clark International, 145-158.

Elements of Dynamic Stewardship

What does such dynamic steward ship do? It:

! restores us to our proper place in the creation.! re-establishes the links between science, ethics, and praxis! re-equips stewardship with dynamic responsiveness for a dynamic world! re-forms human incentives toward the integrity of community and away from arrogance, ignorance,

greed, and aggression! re-affirms and expresses in words and actions the passion for right living! re-educates people and communities for the spreading of right living! sustains and restores ecosystems in accord with the biospheric economy! shapes and reshapes human behavior in the direction of biospheric sustainability; and ! recognizes that stewardship is accomplished in behalf of the biosphere and its component systems, in

behalf of the processes and persons that sustain the biosphere, and in behalf of the integrity of thecreation.

These elements of dynamic stewardship need to be activated and applied at every level, from individualpeople to communities, and from our communities to countries, and from our countries to the inter-connecting institutions that embrace the biosphere we all hold in trust. In putting these elements into thepractice of dynamic stewardship, governments and their leaders are particularly important. So are ouruniversities and the people who help shape public policy in these and other institutions. All of these,together with the people identified in the beginning quotation of this chapter, together with governmentsand governmental leadership, can help all of us at every level to become not only better stewards of land,life, and biosphere, but help all of us to contribute to sustaining the great gift we share, the remarkablegift of the living fabric that sustains the great economy---the economy of the biosphere.2

Notes