Meeting Nature Goals: Landscape and Jurisdictional Approaches

Governments, companies, and civil society are increasingly using landscape and jurisdictional approaches (LA/JAs) to work collectively and meet multiple nature targets in landscapes around the world.

Both the public and private sectors are increasingly recognizing the value of collaborative and multi-stakeholder approaches at scale. Additionally, a wider community of practitioners are working to increase adoption of LA/JAs globally. These include the Science Based Targets Network (SBTN), 1000 Landscapes, the Forest Positive Coalition of Action (FPC), and the Governors’ Climate and Forest Task Force (GCF-TF), among others.

What are landscape and jurisdictional approaches and initiatives?

A landscape or jurisdictional approach is a multi-stakeholder collaborative strategy to advance shared sustainability goals and build resilience at landscape scale. The key difference is that a jurisdictional approach is a landscape approach defined by administrative boundaries and with a high level of government involvement.

Meanwhile, landscape and jurisdictional initiatives are the on-the-ground collaborative programs to set common goals, take collective action while reconciling different interests, and monitor progress towards improving social, environmental, and economic outcomes at a landscape/jurisdictional scale.

Through collaborative efforts between landscape stakeholders, LA/JAs have the potential to drive change at a scale unattainable by individual action. By disclosing through CDP, stakeholders can publicly communicate their landscape and jurisdictional actions, investments, and the positive outcomes for nature and society that are resulting from their engagement.

From 2020 to 2023, we have seen an increase from just 27 companies to more than 300 disclosing engagements on LA/JAs. Despite the tremendous increase in the number of companies disclosing LA/JAs, the quality of disclosure and engagements have great potential for improvement.

To support in bridging this knowledge gap, CDP has developed a credibility and maturity matrix with key minimal criteria for LA/JAs as part of our discussion paper, 'Core Criteria for Mature Landscape Initiatives' and 'Assessing the Credibility of Disclosed Corporate Engagements in Landscape and Jurisdictional Approaches'.

These criteria can be used by any stakeholder seeking to better understand LA/JAs. They have now been adopted and evolved into sub-criteria by a range of organizations and practitioners of the landscapes community.

Of the 309 engagements that disclosed in 2023, 50% didn't meet the key criteria. Reasons for this include:

Note, the following information presents insights from only those responses that fully or at least partially met these key criteria in the 2023 disclosure cycle.

Companies disclosed their reasons for prioritizing landscapes and jurisdictions for engagement, mostly reflecting organizations’ priority locations or having an operational presence in an area, and other corporate objectives around risk mitigation and enhancing positive environmental and social impacts.

To advance understanding of the use of LA/JAs as corporate strategies for responsible sourcing and positive nature and social impacts, key recommendations and findings were developed in collaboration with the Tropical Forest Alliance and Proforest. The summary report and insights per commodity (cocoa; pulp, paper, and packaging; palm oil; beef; and soy) are available on the Jurisdictional Approaches Hub.

Despite more companies reporting the use of landscape and jurisdictional initiatives (LJIs) for sustainable production and to meet multiple nature goals, many of these approaches are still nascent, indicating companies are just starting this journey.

A major barrier to companies willing to invest in LJIs is the lack of knowledge about existing initiatives or Multistakeholder Processes or Platforms (MSPs) with the potential to evolve into landscape and jurisdictional initiatives.

To help, the consolidated map below – developed in collaboration with Tropical Forest Alliance – identifies LJIs, featuring data from the following sources:

Note, ‘unspecified’ initiatives did not have an initiative name specified by the discloser.

For governments and companies with nature commitments – including those related to deforestation, smallholder wellbeing, climate mitigation, and more – engaging with LA/JAs can support in achieving them effectively.

Companies most often used LA/JA to support environmental goals, followed by social, production, and governance goals.

The finance sector plays a pivotal role in advancing the adoption of landscape approaches. By considering landscape approaches in investment strategies, as well as engaging clients and investees to invest in landscape initiatives to help manage risks, financial institutions can mitigate their own environmental risks and have potential to unlock new revenue streams.

More insights from the intersection of landscape action and finance can be found in our report, 'Mobilizing capital for sustainable landscapes' (2024) focused on the Latin America market, our blog post, 'From calls to action to action on nature' (2023), and our brief, 'Landscape and Jurisdictional Approaches: Opportunities to finance a nature-positive net-zero transition' (2022).

Harmonized action between companies and governments is essential to ensure the long-term efficacy of a landscape initiative. Identifying high value actions can help organizations prioritize their engagement strategy and efforts.

Generally, the most common LA/JA actions taken by companies align with the actions that states and regions deem most helpful for companies to carry out:

Two-thirds of the initiatives disclosed by states and regions have developed implementation plans and are operational – nearly all these disclosed that government funds and subsidies are the major source of funding. Other states can look to these as examples and roadmaps for their action plans, and companies can play a major role in supporting the design, implementation, and monitoring of these initiatives.

Of the 20 states and regions that disclosed that they are not currently involved in LA/JAs, five were not involved due to a lack of financial resources. More than 80% of the specific initiatives disclosed by states and regions had indicated government funds/subsidies as a source of financing, suggesting a key role for the private sector to play in investing in new and existing initiatives.

Most initiatives disclosed by states and regions have developed implementation plans and are operational. Additionally, seven states and regions disclosed initiatives specifically related to their efforts on Jurisdictional REDD+ (Reduction of Emissions for Deforestation and Forest Degradation, ‘+’ sustainable forest management, conservation and enhancement of forest carbon stocks). Mobilization of private capital is essential to support the design, implementation, monitoring, and ultimate resilience of these types of integrated initiatives with multiple nature goals. For more information on unlocking private capital flows and investments into landscapes and jurisdictional initiatives, see our recent in collaboration with Earth Innovation Institute, 'Engaging investors through strategic communication' (2024).

To unlock funding from private sector to jurisdictional initiatives, the GCF-TF Indonesia and the states and regions disclosure developed a series of pitchbooks for the provinces of Aceh, Central Kalimantan, East Kalimantan, North Kalimantan, Papua, West Kalimantan, and West Papua. The pitchbooks present a consolidated set of target initiatives which are key to advancing jurisdictional strategies and support local sustainable alternative livelihoods, biodiversity, climate change, and sustainable landscape/seascapes.

Companies and governments must ensure they track the progress and performance of LA/JAs over time. Comprehensive and transparent monitoring systems are essential to ensure that initiatives deliver their intended impacts, help identify successes, and inform future decisions.

Impactful monitoring frameworks are needed to help collect and share insights as well as ensure long term investments. Companies and sub-national governments can disclose through CDP to help promote their LA/JAs and communicate outcomes.

Many tools are available to support initiatives with monitoring, reporting, and data collection. Examples of robust landscape-level monitoring frameworks that companies, conveners, and sub-national governments can use for LA/JAs include:

As awareness of the interconnections between climate, nature, and society grows, CDP continues to evolve its questionnaire to align with leading frameworks and incorporate topics such as landscape and jurisdictional approaches.

Collective action at landscape and jurisdictional scales can deliver long-term positive impacts for people and the environment. In 2024, CDP updated questions on LA/JAs to best capture the related investments and actions public and private sector are taking, such as:

In collaboration with ISEAL and a wider practitioner community on LA/JAs, a series of joint position papers have been developed with further guidance for companies on effective actions, investments and related claims.

Key resources

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank our donor organizations, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Business Case Initiative and the Walmart Foundation, for their support.