5.1 Environmental Stewardship

Environmental stewardship is the use, care, and protection of the Earth’s resources—often in a very local context—grounded in an understanding of the importance of environmental quality to humans as well as the effects of human action on natural systems.  According to theWorld Resources Institute (WRI) publication,North America's Environment: A Thirty–Year State of the Environment and Policy Retrospective, while North Americans have increased by 2% per year since the early 1970s, their consumption of goods increased by 2.3% annually. WRI’s EarthTrends  reports that today,Americans consume three times as much meat per capita and six times as much paper as residents in the rest of the world on average.  And with just 5% of global population, in 2005, the US consumed 25% of the world’s energy resources.

Global population quadrupled to 6 billion in the 20^th century and is projected to increase by another 50% to 9 billion by 2050, increasing the demand for and pressure on natural resources. In Boston and Massachusetts, increasing energy use and greenhouse gas emissions, sprawling development and traffic congestion, the loss of habitat supporting bio-diversity, forest and agricultural land, and the depletion of water supplies and fish stocks are recognized as challenges requiring increased environmental stewardship.