What do landscape or jurisdictional approaches have to offer?
We explore whether these approaches can deliver responsible sourcing of agricultural and forest commodities at scale.
Many people involved in the responsible sourcing and production of agricultural and forest commodities will have heard of landscape approaches or jurisdictional initiatives, but not all will be clear on what the terms mean and what they can offer in practical terms.
These approaches can be found under different names — territorial approaches, green municipalities, and produce–conserve–include compacts, for example – but what they all share is that they all offer ways for governments, industry and civil society to work together to achieve long-term change at large scale.
Proforest’s new briefings shed light on the types of landscape or jurisdictional approaches that are developing in many parts of the world. They explore how these can support companies’ commitments to produce and source commodities responsibly, as well as the limitations of these approaches.
Common elements
With a variety of stakeholders, goals, activities and accountability mechanisms, different initiatives will achieve different outcomes. Yet landscape or jurisdictional initiatives often have a number of common elements, including the participation of government, and shared goals that support sustainable development at scale.
But what do they mean for companies moving towards responsible production and sourcing practices through their supply chains? How can they help deliver companies’ commitments to zero deforestation, workers’ and community rights, and conservation of biodiversity?
Synergies with responsible sourcing
Where the goals, activities and other elements of a landscape or jurisdictional initiative coincide with companies’ responsible sourcing objectives, these approaches may support and underpin individual efforts to move towards sustainability.
For example, the Governors’ Climate and Forest Task Force is a government-led initiative that involves nearly 30 states and provinces, in Latin America, Southeast Asia and West Africa. It promotes low emission rural development and reduced emissions from deforestation and land use (REDD+). Other commodity-focused initiatives aim to transform commodity supply chains, and include, for example, the IDH Initiative for Sustainable Landscapes. Whilst the EU timber legality programme (FLEGT) works with governments and other stakeholders in tropical timber producing countries to develop their systems of governance and enforcement of timber production.
While these approaches may not coincide completely with a company’s own commitment to responsible sourcing, they may support elements of it. Achieving zero deforestation in commodity supply chains, for example, has synergies with other initiatives to reduce emissions from deforestation. Eliminating poor labour practices from an individual supply chain may be supported by other commodity-wide approaches. By joining forces, companies may be able to implement their own commitments as part of a bigger movement.
And this is one of the key benefits of these approaches. As Terry Sunderland, a scientist with the Center for International Forestry Research says: “Everybody needs to be talking to each other, because everything interacts at the landscape scale, and … only through partnerships can the landscape approach work.”
