An underlying principle of carbon removal in which stored carbon is at all times the responsibility of an assigned steward. The steward might initially be the entity responsible for storing the removed carbon (e.g., a North Sea geological storage operator under the CCS Directive), with stewardship being reassigned at a later date subject to some statute of limitations (e.g., stewardship automatically transferred to a government body after X years). In the event of a reversal, the current steward is responsible for remediating the environmental impact, perhaps by paying for the removal and storage of an equivalent amount of carbon.