Climate Crisis, Biosphere & Societal Collapse

Be careful.

It is hard ask for the concept of care to be broadened to include care for earth systems. Even if there is broad recognition of repairing and caring for things, the term care invokes for most the narrow conception of caring for people, and care work to be the provision of assistance to those who are ill, disabled or frail6. If however, we substitute the term stewardship for care, then we move towards a slightly different way of understanding. Stewardship is caring about the world we live in all its complexity and caring for every part of it in whatever state it is in. It not just caring to repair things once they are broken, it is to ensure things endure from the outset; it is not just caring to assist those in need, it is ensuring that community networks are strong and resilient so that difference can be supported and celebrated at all times; it is not caring to fix a food security system that is broken, it is about ensuring that food production skills and local availability of good food are strengthened at local levels; if is not just about supporting those who are care workers (for people or the environment) it is about strengthening neighbourhoods and communities so that members feel valued whatever their contributions might be. Stewardship is stressing caring about, which almost certainly will include caring for.