STEW-MAP in the Baltimore Region (2019)

Addressing the challenges of sustainable and equitable city management in the 21st century requires innovative solutions and integration from a range of dedicated actors. In order to form and fortify partnerships of multisectoral collaboration, expand effective governance, and build collective resiliency, it is important to understand the network of existing stewardship organizations. 

The term ‘stewardship’ encompasses a spectrum of local agents dedicated to the evolving process of community care and restoration. Groups involved in stewardship across Baltimore are catalysts of change through a variety of conservation, management, monitoring, transformation, education, and advocacy activities for the local environment – many with common goals of joint resource management, distributive justice, and community power sharing. 

The Stewardship Mapping and Assessment Project (STEW-MAP) is a method of data collection and visualization that tracks the characteristics of organizations and their financial and informational flows across sectors and geographic boundaries. Data were collected in 1999 in the Gwynns Falls Watershed, and in 2011 the effort was expanded to Baltimore City. This effort was repeated in 2019, when a survey asking about attributes and relationships was sent out to 1318 potential environmental stewardship groups. Responses from 163 groups established a stewardship network connecting 1,197 organizations.