Posted on March, 14 2019

Climate change, biodiversity loss, inequality, exploitation: new solutions are urgently needed to address today’s sustainability challenges at the scale required.

Landscape and jurisdictional approaches – which go beyond individual supply chains to address issues across whole landscapes and regions – offer one promising way forward. By bringing stakeholders from across a landscape together, they have the potential to drive large-scale, lasting impact.

To harness their potential, landscape approaches need to be able to demonstrate that they are delivering on the environmental and social issues that matter. WWF and ISEAL have just published a discussion paper outlining what a credible assurance system for landscape initiatives might look like.

Leading companies are expressing interest in using these approaches to engage supply chains, meet zero deforestation and conversion-free commitments, and communicate progress. This demands credible assurance systems to monitor, verify and communicate impacts. Robust assurance systems strengthen management and enable producers across landscapes and the companies that source from them to make public claims about their impacts, creating incentives for further improvement. They also offer confidence for donors, investors, customers and other stakeholders.  

WWF and ISEAL, the global membership organization for credible sustainability standards, are working to support credible assurance for landscape initiatives. We’re keen to collaborate with more partners to test and refine this approach.