Fostering Stewardship and Sustainable Behaviors

The primary measure of success is to support 18 projects or campaigns per year focused on promoting sustainable behaviors and stewardship. An additional measure is to engage 28,000 volunteers through Partnership-supported efforts by 2035. These targets are based on a review of the number of behavior change projects and volunteer events in 2022 and 2023, for which the Partnership provided financial, hands-on, or technical support.

Status

Check back soon to see 2025 progress.

In the meantime, the Partnership supports and hosts a variety of stewardship programs to better connect people to their environment, provide a sense of ownership, and help them better understand local environmental challenges and solutions. Check out our volunteer opportunities to see how you can get involved!

The Partnership also works to encourage sustainable practices beyond volunteering by hosting workshops on topics like sustainable landscaping for homeowners, assisting local groups with their promotion of sustainable behaviors, sharing information on what individuals can do at home to curb stormwater pollution, running social media campaigns like #DontTrashLISound, and supporting programs like the Long Island Garden Rewards Program to help offset the costs of more sustainable lawn infrastructure.

Challenges

One of the main challenges to fostering stewardship and sustainable behaviors in the Long Island Sound watershed is that the process of promoting behavioral change and encouraging people to adopt sustainable practices is complex. This work requires a lot of time, capacity, and often funding understand local population habits and attitudes and identify the best behaviors to focus on and the barriers preventing people from performing those behaviors.

As many of us know from experience, adopting new habits (or getting rid of old habits) can be extremely challenging for a variety of reasons. Human behavior is driven by many factors beyond just knowledge of what we think we should do. In this example, other factors that might prevent someone from performing a behavior to promote a healthy lifestyle could be lack of time, perceived or actual cost, lack of proper infrastructure available, etc.

The same is true when thinking about why people do or do not engage in behaviors that promote environmental sustainability. Certain practices that, while they would help improve the health of the Sound greatly, may be unattainable for some community members, even if they wanted to engage in them. For example, replacing a home septic system through a reimbursement program is not financially feasible for everyone. There are also social desirability norms, and sometimes even official Homeowners Association requirements, that can prevent people from adopting certain practices at home that impact the appearance of their yard.

Beyond the challenges associated with encouraging people to adopt and engage in sustainable practices, accurately recording people’s behaviors and measuring behavior changes over time is also extremely difficult  because it requires long term surveys and often relies on self-reporting.

While we track the number of people participating in volunteer programs as a main measure for fostering stewardship, there are limitations to the assumptions we can make about what participating in a volunteer program could tell us  about people’s general sustainable behaviors beyond volunteering. For example, while there may be high turnout or good participation at volunteer events and programs, behaviors may not be translated to long-term or continued stewardship of the Sound. However, we consider volunteering to be an important part of being an environmental steward, and it is itself an environmental practice that contributes to the collective good of the community and Long Island Sound.

Importance

Long Island Sound is nestled between urban centers, including one of the most densely populated cities in the country, New York City. To protect the Sound and sustainably co-exist, it is crucial for people in the region to be stewards of the land and adopt sustainable behaviors that help maintain the health of the Sound and its watershed. More than 23 million people live within 50 miles of the Sound. Its watershed is also expansive; the Connecticut River, which supplies most of its freshwater, extends almost to the Canadian border. To protect and conserve the health of Long Island Sound, people must adopt sustainable behaviors in their daily lives that help maintain the Sound’s health. Volunteering and getting involved in stewardship projects, such as participatory science programs, can help further connect people to their environment, provide a sense of ownership, and help them better understand local environmental challenges and solutions. Additionally, mitigating several of the challenges the Sound currently faces, including marine debris and nitrogen pollution from fertilizer and septic systems, will require the adoption of specific individual behavior changes. This further underscores the importance of Long Island Sound Partnership’s efforts to foster stewardship and sustainable behaviors.