Examining capacity-outcome relationships to develop an environmental stewardship capacity index in New York City

Abstract

Civic capacity to care for the urban environment is a key factor in urban sustainability efforts. Civic environmental stewardship groups play critical roles in solving governance challenges associated with sustainability, serving as brokers, acting as stewards, advocating for policies, and being repositories of social-ecological memory. Understanding the existing capacity of such groups to create social-ecological outcomes across the urban landscape enables better planning and implementation of equitable nature-based solutions. In this paper, we draw upon existing frameworks of community capacity and environmental stewardship to operationalize an empirical, organizational stewardship capacity index at a neighborhood scale. We applied survey-based civic environmental stewardship mapping data from the New York City 2017 Stewardship Mapping and Assessment Project (STEW-MAP) to create this index. We evaluated stewardship capacity variables against perceived social and environmental outcome measures collected by groups in the STEW-MAP survey to develop the stewardship capacity index. We find that neighborhoods where more groups exist, where more time is spent on stewardship, and where more types of stewardship actions are supported have better perceived Cumulative outcomes. Our results highlight the known role of networks in community capacity and reveal the roles of diversity of stewardship actions (Stewardship types) and level of effort (Time spent on stewardship) in achieving outcomes. The result of our analyses is a mapped index of stewardship capacity, which visualizes the in current capacities at a neighborhood level and identifies future opportunities for capacity building. With a focus on transparency, this index can be applied by managers, public and civic alike, as they seek to support and increase civic capacity to care for the environment.

Citation

Johnson, Michelle L.; Campbell, Lindsay K.; Svendsen, Erika S. 2025. Examining capacity-outcome relationships to develop an environmental stewardship capacity index in New York City. Environmental Management. 13 p. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-025-02145-x.