Discover and CommunicateTrusted Landscape-LevelSustainability Insights

Time is running out to solve the complex environmental and socio-economic challenges facing our planet. No company, organization, or community can tackle these issues alone. We need a standard, holistic approach to measuring progress that supports better decision making and collaboration.

LandScale is a tool to assess and communicate landscape sustainability. It helps you gain critical insights, make more informed decisions, and share credible stories of impact.

The assessment framework, verification mechanism, and reporting platform enable the private sector, governments, and civil society to access reliable information that can guide and incentivize sustainability improvements at scale.

Here’s How It Works

1 Assess the Landscape Conduct an assessment using the holistic framework and online tool. 2 Verify the Results Gain more confidence in your insights through verification. 3 Communicate Sustainability Share your results via the reporting platform and make credible claims.

Measuring Performance, Powering Sustainability

Designed for Diverse LandscapesCompanies, industry initiatives, NGOs, governments, donors, and financial institutions can use LandScale to measure the sustainability of any landscape with substantial natural resource-based economies and supply chains, including agribusiness, forestry, extractives, infrastructure, and tourism.

Made for Forward-ThinkersLandScale assessments can be conducted by a single organization, a group interested in developing a collaborative landscape program, or an existing multi-stakeholder landscape partnership.

LandScale Can Help You• Catalyze cross-sectoral action and

share responsibility for improvements• Streamline sustainability assessments

with a holistic, ready-made framework • Assess all key sustainability indicators,

including ones outside your expertise• Gain reliable insight into the

cumulative impact of all activities within the landscape

• Strengthen investment and support for your work by communicating progress

Supports Robust ClaimsThe ability to communicate progress and achievements at landscape scale through simple yet credible claims is key to attracting additional investment and support for your work.

LandScale helps you make claims based on progress and achievements related to issues covered by an assessment. These landscape performance claims can be combined with claims about your role in or link to the landscape.

Example Claims• X chocolate company sources 20% of

its cocoa from the Y district, which has been deforestation-free since 2018

• Between 2015 and 2020, sedimen-tation in the landscape’s three rivers decreased by 21%

A Globally Recognized Tool• Developed through a transparent

and collaborative process• Tested in several diverse

landscapes around the world• Aligned with the Sustainable

Development Goals to facilitate reporting

• Designed to cover a wide range of sustainability issues

• Made for varied landscape management structures, geographies, and commodities

Mexico

Costa RicaGuatemala

UnitedKingdom

Indonesia

Brazil

GhanaEthiopia

Peru

EcuadorColombia

Tested in Landscapes Around the World

Several landscapes with different geographies, challenges, commodities, and governance models are testing LandScale to ensure it’s practical and impactful. See all of the pilots at landscale.org/pilots/

Morocco

Dominican Republic

Philippines

http://landscale.org/pilots/

GhanaEvaluating and communicating progress at the landscape level toward ambitious REDD+ and Cocoa and Forest Initiative commitments

ChallengesGhana is the second-largest producer of cocoa in the world and has one of the highest deforestation rates in Africa. Cocoa farming expansion is the primary driver of deforestation in Ghana’s tropical high forests. This growing trend threatens biodiversity (in one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots), increases GHG emissions, and puts cocoa production at risk by degrading the ecosystem, thereby jeopardizing farmers’ and forest-users’ livelihoods.

Using LandScaleIn 2017, Ghana and several leading cocoa and chocolate companies joined the Cocoa & Forests Initiative to end deforestation and restore forest areas. Partners in two cocoa-producing landscapes, Juabeso-Bia and Kakum, are using LandScale’s ready-made framework to assess whether their investments, strategies, and field activities effectively address challenges connected to their CFI commitments. The partners will also use LandScale to communicate their progress to gain further support for their work.

Costa RicaBuilding support and attracting investment for the Agua Tica Water Fund by defining common goals, tracking progress, and credibly communicating results

ChallengesThe watershed for the Costa Rican capital, San José, provides water for hundreds of thousands of people and some of the country’s biggest industries, including the beverage sector, electricity production, coffee, and others. However, rapid urbanization has resulted in degradation and strained water resources. The watershed must preserve and restore water catchment areas to ensure water for the capital’s people and economy.

Using LandScaleThe Agua Tica Water Fund – established by public and private groups in the region – implements restoration and conservation actions for the San José watershed. By using LandScale to define common goals and milestones, Agua Tica can catalyze collective action and ensure the combined efforts of different programs, policies, and initiatives drive ambitious change and track progress towards improving socio-economic, environmental, and governance outcomes at the full landscape level. LandScale also helps partners demonstrate the impact of their efforts, to build additional support for their work.

BrazilDemonstrating the broader sustainability benefits of commercial reforestation to provide market differentiation, secure additional investment, and deliver impact at scale

ChallengesExtensive cattle ranching and soy production have contributed to the degradation of the natural vegetation and soil in the Bagé municipality of Rio do Sul, Brazil, making business as usual unsustainable. Yet, most local landowners are not convinced that restoring the land with native forest and agroforestry systems can provide an economically viable alternative.

Using LandScaleThe GreenBranch Company will use LandScale’s holistic framework to demonstrate the benefits of commercial reforestation beyond carbon sequestration at the project level to local stakeholders, carbon-credit buyers, and financiers. Tracking landscape-level improvements in areas important to local landowners will encourage wider buy-in for the initiative, thus unlocking opportunities to scale the reforestation efforts. Credibly communicating the broader sustainability benefits of reforestation will also help differentiate the carbon credits from this project in the market and may prove beneficial in attracting additional sustainable financing in the future.

Developed by a Coalition of PartnersLandScale is a collaborative initiative led by Verra, the Rainforest Alliance, and Conservation International in partnership with the Climate, Community & Biodiversity Alliance, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, Nature Conservation Research Centre, EcoAgriculture Partners, and

Solidaridad, with input from a broad range of stakeholders.The global initiative is supported by the International Climate Initiative (IKI) of the German Federal Ministry of the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU) and the BHP Foundation’s Environmental Resilience Global Signature Program.

Interested in Using LandScale? The assessment framework, reporting platform, and verification mechanism will be released for public use in 2021. Visit www.landscale.org to sign up for our mailing list and stay up to date on the latest developments.

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