Abstract

Author:
Ackim Phiri

Doi: 10.26480/egnes.01.2026.01.06

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License CC BY 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

Globally, water, land, wildlife and forests are finite, critical, and intertwined resources key in development of communities. The abundance of these resources is enough for the current generation and those to come, but its spatial distribution is not. However, growing urbanization levels boosted by population increase and globalization has brought various challenges for environmental stewardship like; shortage of land, depletion of scarce natural resources, increasing demands for food, poor public health, climate uncertainty and droughts. The inability of meeting current basic needs is one crucial challenge of maintaining the integrity of ecosystems as the population increases. Therefore, it is cardinal as nations develop and population go up, to understand the emerging challenges and develop strategies to mitigate the adverse effects these places on environmental stewardship in the face of climate change. Against this background, this review explores various emerging challenges faced in environmental stewardship especially with a changing and unpredictable future climate, as well as fast-growing population and recommend appropriate ESD strategies for implementation in order to attain a more sustained and resilient society. Hence, to effectively mitigate these challenges better research, and enhanced natural resource management are required.