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Stewardship is a popular term for the principles and actions aimed at improving sustainability and resilience of social-ecological systems at various scales and in different contexts. Participation in stewardship is voluntary, and is based on values of altruism and long-term benefits. At a global scale, 'earth stewardship' is viewed as a successor to earlier natural resource management systems. However, in South Africa, stewardship is narrowly applied to biodiversity conservation agreements on private land. Using a broader definition of stewardship, we identify all potentially related schemes that may contribute to sustainability and conservation outcomes. Stewardship schemes and actors are represented as a social network and placed in a simple typology based on objectives, mechanisms of action and operational scales. The predominant type was biodiversity stewardship programmes. The main actors were environmental non-governmental organisations participating in prominent bioregional landscape partnerships, together acting as important 'bridging organisations' within local stewardship networks. This bridging enables a high degree of collaboration between non-governmental and governmental bodies, especially provincial conservation agencies via mutual projects and conservation objectives. An unintended consequence may be that management accountability is relinquished or neglected by government because of inadequate implementation capacity. Other stewardship types, such as market-based and landscape initiatives, complemented primarily biodiversity ones, as part of national spatial conservation priorities. Not all schemes related to biodiversity, especially those involving common pool resources, markets and supply chains. Despite an apparent narrow biodiversity focus, there is evidence of diversification of scope to include more civic and community-level stewardship activities, in line with the earth stewardship metaphor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper considers participatory modelling to integrate biodiversity conservation into land use planning and to facilitate the incorporation of ecological knowledge into public decision making for spatial planning. Réunion Island has experienced rapid urban and agricultural expansion, which threaten its unique biodiversity. In this context, we designed three participatory modelling sequences, involving overall 24 multidisciplinary researchers and stakeholders. The sequences aimed: (1) to map land-use and biodiversity, (2) to develop a conservation plan following systematic conservation planning principles using a spatial optimization tool (MARXAN) and (3) to simulate coupled land-use/conservation scenarios using a multi-agent system (MAS). The conservation plan confirms that priority areas for biodiversity protection are located on the coast where rapid land-use changes occur. Nevertheless, stakeholders from the urban and agricultural sector did not participate to this sequence. Indeed, conservation planning tools are useful to locate conservation priorities but they have to be designed with stakeholders to be accepted as negotiation tool. Besides, the researchers engaged in this second sequence were perceived as conservation stakeholders rather than holders of scientific knowledge. In the third sequence, the researchers involved adopted the stance of facilitating the elicitation of each stake and gathered trust from stakeholders. Overall, we conclude that the participatory development of land-use simulation models should be promoted to explore alternative scenarios for biodiversity conservation with stakeholders. In a situation of land-use conflict, a gradual and sequential participatory modelling approach should be implemented to fit into public decision-making processes. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]