The earth belongs in usufruct to the living.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

Usus (Use) Fructus (Fruit)

Included in the extended definition of ‘usufruct’ attributed to Simpson and Weiner (Oxford Dictionary 1989) in Chapter 4 was a reference to Marsh (1864:35) ‘Man in Nature’, wherein he stated:

“Man has too long forgotten that the earth was given to him for usufruct alone, not for consumption”.

Usufruct is a fine word and a fine definition of economic, environmental and ecological sustainability, in the above context, yet it has all but disappeared from the literature. In the English-speaking world the term ‘usufruct’ was in common use for centuries with tenants holding usufructuary rights over land that provided them with life-support. Since colonialism, the term was used to describe certain rights of indigenous people to the land they occupied. Usufruct is used in this thesis in the context of its original meaning, ‘use of the fruit of the land’, but conceptually extended to include all of the ecosystem goods and services, and in this context the usufruct is the production function of the land.
Source: Curtis, I. A. 2003. Valuing Ecosystem Services in a Green Economy. PhD Thesis, Ch.14, Pp 227-228.