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Publication Date

11-2024

In this perspective, we draw from 20 years of implementing the Stewardship Mapping and Assessment Project (STEW-MAP) to show how civic actors provide capacity and local knowledge needed for effective decision-making and implementation in the face of multiple interconnected stressors, including climate change and inequality. Urban areas are striving to achieve sustainability and resilience goals while advancing diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice. There is broad recognition that systematic change cannot be achieved via single sector solutions. Rather, just and equitable sustainability and resilience outcomes will be achieved through multi-sector, trans-disciplinary efforts led by diverse and inclusive partnerships. Processes of collaboration between groups and across sectors can foster trust and social cohesion to build adaptive environmental governance capacity. Hindering these outcomes is a lack of approaches for identifying civic groups and their networks, understanding their roles in the larger governance system, and harnessing their capacities systematically and at landscape scales. STEW-MAP was developed to address this gap in a natural resources management context and has been applied in 20 locations across the Americas. Synthesizing key insights for practitioners and researchers, we identify the critical role of civic organizations in collaborative, networked governance, while highlighting inequities that affect this stewardship work. We reflect on how stewardship mapping has been used as a decision-support, networking, and visualization tool and identify future research and practitioner directions that fully acknowledge the persistent role of civic groups in caring for the environment and enlivening democratic practice.

DOI

10.15365/cate.2024.170203

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