Ecosystem stewardship is an action-oriented framework intended to foster social-ecological
sustainability of a rapidly changing planet. Recent developments identify three strategies that make optimal use of current understanding in an environment of inevitable uncertainty and abrupt change: reducing the magnitude of, and exposure and sensitivity to, known stresses;
focusing on proactive policies that shape change; and avoiding or escaping unsustainable social-ecological
traps. All social-ecological systems are vulnerable to recent and projected changes but
have sources of adaptive capacity and resilience that can sustain ecosystem services and human
well-being through active ecosystem stewardship
