A forest as a biological living trust.

Although most people speak of forest “stewardship,” I personally prefer the concept of a “living trust” because “stewardship” does not in and of itself have a legally recognized “beneficiary”– someone who directly benefits from the proceeds of one’s decisions, actions, and the outcomes they produce. Although a “steward,” by definition, is someone who “manages” another’s property or financial affairs and thereby acts as an agent in the other’s stead, there is nothing explicit in the definition about a legal beneficiary. For this reason, “stewardship” is a much more wishy-washy term than “living trust” because the fiduciary responsibility of “stewardship” is to the current owner(s) whereas the fiduciary responsibility of a “living trust” is to the beneficiaries.

A living trust is like a promise. And “promises are scary things,” says author Elizabeth Sherrill. “To keep them means relinquishing some of our freedom; to break them means losing some of our integrity. Though we have to make them today, promises are all about tomorrow – and the only thing we know for sure about tomorrow is that we don’t know anything for sure!”

A “living trust,” in the legal sense, is a present transfer of property, including legal title, into trust, whether real property (such as forestland) or personal property (such as livestock, jewelry, interest in a business, and so on). The person who creates the trust (such Chris Maser may be best known for his insights into the role of soils in forest ecology, but in much of his work has centred on how human beings factor into the ecological equations. In this piece, Chris argues we must specify who benefits from environmentally-sound forest practices, and redefine our relationship with those forests to better reflect this.