Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
• The integrity of the environment and its biophysical processes have
primacy over human desires when such desires would destroy the
system's integrity (read productivity) for future generations.
• Nature's inviolate, biophysical principles determine the necessary
limitations of human endeavors.
• The disenfranchised as well as future generations have rights that
must be accounted for in present decisions and actions.
• Nonmonetary relationships have value.
In figuring out how these principles would apply, as we attempt to assess
a practical issue or project using the triple bottom-line, one point becomes
quite clear: Ecology trumps economics, not the reverse. But, the fact is that
the reverse has long held sway in our nation's culture and, consequently, led
to the observed breakdown in both our economy and our environment. This
is precisely what must change, and the triple bottom-line approach consti-
tutes a step in that direction.
The Forest as a Triple Bottom-Line Example
Our system of national forests constitutes a biological living trust for all gen-
erations. A living trust represents a dynamic process, whether in the sense
of a legal document or a living entity. Human beings inherited the original
living trust—planet Earth—long before legal documents were invented. The
Earth as a living organism is the ultimate biological living trust of which
we are the trustees and for which we are all responsible. Our trusteeship,
in turn, is colored, for better or worse, by the values our parents, peers, and
teachers instilled in us, our experiences in life, and the ever-accruing knowl-
edge of how the Earth functions as an ecosystem.
That said, the actual administration of our responsibility for the Earth as a
living trust has, throughout history, been progressively delegated to profes-
sional trustees in the form of elected or appointed officials when and where
the land is held in legal trust for the public—
public lands
. In so doing, we
empower elected or appointed officials with our trust, our firm reliance,
belief, or faith in the integrity, ability, and character of the person who is
being empowered. With respect to a forest, for instance, we delegate to the
U.S. Forest Service these responsibilities.
On public lands, such empowerment carries with it certain ethical mandates
that are the seeds of the trust in all of its senses—legal, living, and personal:
• “We the people,” present and future, are the beneficiaries; whereas the
trustees are the elected or appointed officials and their hired workers.
• We entrusted these people to follow both the letter
and spirit
of the
law in its highest sense.
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