ABSTRACT
Many decades ago, Aldo Leopold (1949 [1966]) proposed notions of environmental stewardship (which he called land ethic), productive use of ecosystems (land) and ecosystem renewal. He argued for a functional ecological norm for conservation that could be achieved when human use of land did not negatively affect ecosystem functions. Leopold’s key perspectives are reflected in resilience thinking. His seminal concept of land health (and we might add water health) is a triangulation of steward - ship, productive use and self-renewal. It can be reinterpreted through a resilience lens as the health of social-ecological systems (Berkes et al. 2012). This is the subject of Chapter 4.
