Meeting Nature Goals: Landscape and Jurisdictional Approaches
Governments, companies, and civil society are increasingly using landscape approaches (LAs) and jurisdictional approaches (JAs) to work collectively, meet multiple nature goals, and transform landscapes around the world.
Why LA/JAs matter
Through collaborative efforts between companies, investors, governments, and landscape stakeholders, LA/JAs have the potential to drive resilient changes at a scale unattainable by individual or siloed action.
CDP recognizes the power of landscape-level action at an operative and realistic scale to achieve multiple global nature goals, drive sustainable businesses and investments, and maintain socioecological resilience.
Collective action and long-term benefits
LA/JAs are built on the understanding that companies and other stakeholders of a particular landscape/jurisdiction can agree on common sustainability goals due to a shared, place-based interest. This will therefore drive long-term collective benefits and impacts through collective action.
Collective action can build resilient ecosystems, communities, and businesses due to the multiple and long-term collective benefits that it can provide.
CDP's unique role in leveraging LA/JAs
Since 2020, stakeholders have been able to publicly disclose (through CDP) their landscape and jurisdictional actions, investments, and the outcomes for nature and society that are resulting from their engagement.
Timeline of LA/JA disclosure through CDP
LA/JA disclosure from companies & subnational states and regions
From 2020 to 2025, the number of companies disclosing engagements on LA/JAs surged from just 27 to more than 300, with expectations that this figure will double again over the next two years to around 770 by 2027. In 2025, 388 companies disclosed engagement in 650 individual landscape initiatives.
States and regions have also shown steady growth in their disclosures, contributing to the broader momentum towards resilient landscapes.
Despite the tremendous increase in the number of companies disclosing LA/JAs, there is great potential for improvement in the quality of disclosures and engagements.
To help bridge this gap, CDP has developed an initial matrix outlining four minimum criteria for LA/JAs, presented in the discussion paper, Assessing the Credibility of Disclosed Corporate Engagements in Landscape and Jurisdictional Approaches. Together, these criteria provide a shared reference point for understanding and assessing credible corporate engagements as well as the maturity of landscape, jurisdictional, watershed, and seascape initiatives (including scale, multi-stakeholder governance, collective goals and actions, and monitoring and reporting systems).
This work has since informed the Core Criteria for Mature Landscape Initiatives, developed through the Landscape Practitioner Network – a coalition of 20 organizations coordinated by ISEAL.
These criteria have become a shared framework that has been increasingly adopted and operationalized across the landscape community, including companies, practitioners, landscape monitoring frameworks, and standard-setters. Through sub-criteria and tools such as geospatial tracking and CDP’s standardized disclosures, they provide a practical blueprint for understanding LA/JAs, strengthening collaboration, action and investment, as well as guiding strategic decisions that can build socio-ecological resilience and support broader system transformation toward lasting environmental and social outcomes.
Example of tools and mechanisms aligned with the Core Criteria:
LandScale Maturity Framework
SourceUp Maturity Function
Proforest’s Blueprint for Resilient Landscape Initiatives
TNFD’s Guidance on Nature in Transition Plans
SBTN’s Landscape Engagement Target Methodology
Note, the following information presents insights from a preliminary qualitative analysis of the 2025 disclosure cycle up to now. Detailed credibility results will be shared here in the future.
The credibility assessment is based on core criteria, including scale, multi-stakeholder governance, collective goals, and transparent reporting. In 2025, around 30% of the 650 initiatives were deemed credible, with scale being the most challenging criterion to meet, especially for smaller or regionally specific initiatives.
Overall, disclosed engagements on LA/JAs correlate positively with CDP’s own scoring system and relevant KPIs.
Why should companies engage in LA/JAs?
Companies disclosed their reasons for prioritizing landscapes and jurisdictions for engagement – mostly reflecting organizations’ priority locations or having an operational presence in an area, as well as other corporate objectives around risk mitigation and enhancing positive environmental and social impacts.
Nature restoration is the leading motivation for companies to engage on LA/JAs, as selected by 268 organizations (70%).
Deforestation risk ranks second at 53%, showing that opportunity and risk considerations operate together. Operational presence and the ability to build on established initiatives are also prominent, while social outcomes appear strongly through increased human wellbeing and smallholder market access.
Organizations selected an average of six reasons, indicating that there are multiple motives for engagement rather than a single dominant rationale.
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.
Status of LA/JA engagement worldwide
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 that companies are just starting this journey.
A major barrier to companies' willingness to invest in LJIs is the lack of knowledge about existing initiatives or Multi-stakeholder Processes or Platforms (MSPs) with the potential to evolve into landscape and jurisdictional initiatives.
Developed in collaboration with the Jurisdictional Action Hub, the consolidated map linked to below identifies LJIs.
The map features data from the following sources.
Corporates:
LJIs identified by a collaborative global study of midstream and downstream companies supporting initiatives focused on palm oil, cocoa, pulp and paper, beef and soy (see green circles on map).
Corporate disclosure through CDP, from 2022 to 2023 – specifically assessment data based on core criteria (see red triangles on map).
Governments: States and regions disclosure through CDP, from 2022 to 2023 (see red triangles on map).
Civil society: Multi-stakeholder governance processes and platforms (see blue circles on map).
Note, ‘unspecified’ initiatives did not have an initiative name specified by the discloser.
LA/JA goals supported by companies
For governments and companies with nature commitments – including those related to deforestation, smallholder wellbeing, climate mitigation, adaptation and socio-ecological resilience – engaging with LA/JAs can help achieve these commitments effectively.
Companies most often use LA/JAs to advance environmental goals and sustainable production practices, while social and governance goals remain areas where stronger engagement and investment are needed.
Biodiversity protection is the most commonly reported goal, cited by 148 credible initiatives (67%), followed closely by avoided deforestation (146 credible initiatives) and natural ecosystems conservation (138 credible initiatives).
Capital for landscape initiatives
Landscape initiatives require good governance, time, and financial capital to implement and achieve their sustainability goals. This includes capital for foundational initiative processes – governance, planning, and monitoring – that are established as the initiative matures, as well as capital for implementing the activities outlined in a shared action plan.
The finance sector plays a pivotal role in advancing corporate adoption of LA/JAs. By considering these in investment strategies (eg within KPIs for sustainability-linked loans) as well as engaging clients and investees to participate in and support landscape initiatives, financial institutions can manage their own environmental risks, and have the potential to unlock new revenue streams.
Furthermore, as landscape initiatives mature, there will be increasing opportunities to invest in initiatives and the projects nested in them.
The need for public-private action at scale
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 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 that the private sector play a key role 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 from 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 developed a series of pitchbooks.
These pitchbooks were developed 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.
Claims, monitoring and reporting on landscape initiatives
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 subnational 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 subnational governments can use for LA/JAs include:
LandScale, an assessment framework and platform for stakeholders to assess landscape performance over time against key indicators in ecosystems, human well-being, governance and production; and
SourceUp, a platform that connects investors and purchasing companies with producing regions, and also facilitates the creation of agreements signed by local stakeholders to address sustainability challenges ('SourceUp Compacts'). For example, SourceUp now enables companies supporting landscape initiatives to download pre-filled inputs for CDP’s Forest Questionnaire section 8.15.2, helping to make landscape engagement easier, more complete, and more consistent to report.
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 monitoring systems and claims.
Next steps
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.
LA/JAs work at the root causes of the systemic drivers of nature loss, and develop context-based management plans to drive sustained collaboration, investments, and ultimately socio-ecological resilience. Collective action at landscape and jurisdictional scales can deliver long-term positive impacts for people and the environment.
In 2025, CDP updated and refined its LA/JAs questions to best capture related investments and actions reflected by practical experience by 2025.
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 including the Science Based Targets Network (SBTN), the Landscape Practitioner Network (facilitated by ISEAL and including +20 organizations), 1000 Landscapes, the Forest Positive Coalition of Action (FPC), and the Governors’ Climate and Forests Task Force (GCF-TF), among others.
Browse LA/JA publications
CDP reports
Managing Risks in the Palm Oil Supply Chain: A Guide for Investors
Landscape and Jurisdictional Approaches in Indonesia: Policy Brief
Collective Action: Corporate Engagement In Landscape and Jurisdictional Approaches
Blind Spots on the Balance Sheet: Uncovering Financial Implications of Deforestation
CDP and Regions 4 States & Regions Climate Action Summary Report 2025
CDP articles, blogs and factsheets
Publications using CDP data and insights
Working Across Landscapes: An Investor Guide to Managing Nature Risk at Scale
Core Criteria for Mature Landscape Initiatives: A Collective Position Paper
Landscape Initiative Maturity: Operationalizing a Shared Maturity Framework Through Assessment
Companies Collaborating for Sustainable Soy Landscapes: Progress and Transition Pathways
CDP and Regions 4 States & Regions Climate Action Summary Report 2025
Standards and frameworks with integration of LA/JAs
Acknowledgements
CDP gratefully acknowledges the Walmart Foundation’s sustained support, which has helped make this work possible and enabled it to evolve into a stronger platform for collective action across landscapes and jurisdictions.