Adoption: Adopt clear and consistent criteria for preferential sourcing at the landscape/jurisdictional level. These criteria will define levels and types of preference in sourcing, and the conditions under which the company will reduce or discontinue sourcing from suppliers in a given landscape/jurisdiction.

• Criteria for measuring the quality of L/JIs should address their social, environmental, and economic goals; strategic plans; role of governance and policy; and M&E system. The Commodities/Jurisdiction Approach is one tool that provides predetermined criteria for assessing L/JIs.

Implementation: Seek new suppliers within landscapes/jurisdictions that meet selected criteria and/or expand sourcing from existing suppliers in these regions. For early stage L/JIs, companies may still need to assess and verify whether individual suppliers comply with social and envi-ronmental targets. As more advanced L/JIs can demonstrate a high level of effectiveness in stopping deforestation and exploitation, companies may be able to rely on monitoring done at landscape/jurisdictional scale to ensure suppliers meet their sourcing criteria. Companies should publicly specify their use of landscape/jurisdictional preferencing, criteria, and preferred sourcing regions. This sends a clear market signal that progress at that level of the landscape/jurisdiction strongly informs sourcing decisions.

• Link decisions to decrease purchases from jurisdictions struggling to meet sustainability criteria with ongoing dialogue and engagement with other purchasers, and with the government, suppliers, and other stakeholders in the region. This incentivizes improvement, rather than just letting these jurisdictions default to supplying purchasers with lower standards.

Growing support: Engage directly with L/JIs to help them achieve and maintain their qualifications for preferential sourcing. Brands and retailers with purchasing power can profoundly influence suppliers and governments within a landscape/jurisdiction and should coordinate on preferential sourcing approaches through industry platforms such as the Consumer Goods Forum. The combined influence of several major downstream purchasers can have far greater influence than when purchasers act alone.

Work together to set up jointly funded, independently operated, open source tracing systems for commodities produced within a landscape/jurisdiction. Under such a system:

• Land use maps and a traceability system are developed through, agreed to, and regularly updated by L/JI stakeholders.
• An independent third party gathers stakeholders’ information, including satellite imagery, locations from which companies make purchases, and the movements of commodities from farmgate to their exit from the jurisdiction.
• The company integrates this local system with its own tracking efforts from the landscape/jurisdiction further downstream.
• All stakeholders regularly update data to maintain the integrity of their joint traceability system.

If there is interest in expanding from joint traceability to a full certification system for the landscape/jurisdiction, collaborate with the government and third-party independent certifiers to create one. Key elements of this approach:

• A clear linkage of the certification effort to an L/JI ensures all partners in the initiative support certification as a contribution toward meeting the initiative’s goals.
• Established and credible standards, and direct engagement with international certifying bodies, enable the landscape/jurisdiction to develop its certification system.
• Certification bodies have capacity to educate producers and other supply chain partners on the value and the process for achieving certification at the landscape/jurisdictional level.
• Demonstrated value-add of certification for producers and other supply chain partners motivates and sustains their participation.

Determine whether the target landscape/jurisdiction has set a goal around enhancing smallholder finance in support of sustainable production. If so, companies should align their efforts with the L/JI’s goals and geographic priorities. Alignment could mean adjusting their own existing efforts or investing in programs delivered by others. Upstream companies with capacity to engage smallholders should take the lead; downstream companies can provide funding to support financing programs.

Identify which smallholders need to participate to meet landscape/jurisdiction-level conservation and sustainable production goals, and determine what they need to succeed:

• If not already organized into groups, encourage smallholders to do so, with help from local civil society organizations.
• Identify the financial hurdles that prevent smallholders from earning a living in a way that protects forests and meets other conservation goals.
• Design interventions in a way that links financial access to forest protection and/or soil conservation, better cropping practices, etc.
• Ask smallholder participants to provide geo-coordinates (an effort eased by technical assistance) for their plots, thus enabling remote sensing to monitor performance and ensure compliance with forest conservation agreements.

Tailor the specific form of a company’s intervention should to the identified financial hurdles:

• If farmers lack capital to invest in sustainable practices, a company could provide long-term contracts to help them access loans with reasonable terms. That would enable smallholders to make the needed investments yet maintain their livelihoods for the loan’s duration.
• If farmers lack experience or comfort dealing with banks, a company could help train them to engage in the formal financial market. Smallholders could especially benefit from assistance in creating the formal business plans that lenders require before deciding to extend credit. A company could also foster relationships between smallholders and a microfinance, regional, or national financial program/institution. They are uniquely positioned to show the big picture of how access to finance can build financial security, and can help smallholders gain saving, borrowing, and repayment experience.
• If farmers can’t provide lenders with a loan guarantee, or collateral, a company could step in to guarantee loans on smallholders’ behalf. It could also negotiate long-term offtake agreements with smallholders for the commodities they produce, which could serve as collateral for their loans.
• If farmers are so small or remote, they can only access disadvantageous loan terms, a company can offer supply chain financing, extend other forms of credit, or offer small loans to these farmers directly. Such alternative loans should offer terms on par with traditional financial institutions, structured flexibly enough to account for the more challenging environments smallholders face. Alternatively, a company might advocate and work with government to create or improve a development fund designed to finance smallholders that have difficulty accessing credit from traditional lenders. In both cases, the company should streamline the loan process, for example by creating a way for smallholders to prequalify their business plans with potential funders.

Consider both up-front financing to support a transition to sustainable production, and results-based payments that reward smallholders and communities for maintaining forest cover and other valuable natural resources in the landscape. Results-based payments can take the form of: renewable offtake guarantees, where renewal is contingent on forest protection; periodic direct payments to households, cooperatives, and/or community funds for forest protection; and/or contributions to jurisdiction-level or national funds (for example, REDD+ funds) that are allocated to communities and smallholders by an L/JI in exchange for forest protection.

• Where local laws provide payment for environmental services, companies can connect smallholders with information about how to access these funding streams.

Companies engaged in an L/JI should identify the main countries that consume the commodities produced in the jurisdiction, then determine:

a) what support governments of those countries can provide the L/JI; b) how best to approach those governments for this support; and c) which role (relative to other stakeholders) companies can play in engaging consumer governments.

• The “asks” for consumer country governments may include direct financial support for the L/JI through bilateral aid agencies; recognition and incentives for brands and retailers in the consumer country to source from the landscape/jurisdiction; and/or trade preferences for commodities sourced through the L/JI. Research which “asks” are most viable to demonstrate the value of the L/JI to advancing related government goals.
• Some consumer country governments (as well as the EU) already have well-established commitments to sustainable/deforestation-free commodities. These often have an office which provides a logical point of contact for the L/JI to engage. For governments without a clearly identified mandate or office, try to engage the bilateral aid agency, trade and/or environment ministries, food regulators, or other offices. Highlight how their mission aligns with the L/JI’s focus on reducing deforestation, carbon emissions and biodiversity loss, and promoting sustainable commodity production and community development.
• How a company engages a consumer country government will depend on their existing relationship. Companies with headquarters, production facilities, and/or employment in the country may engage directly with its relevant government agencies, seeking to open doors for the L/JI. To avoid the perception that they are lobbying for commercial advantage, companies might partner with NGOs when engaging with governments.
• A company can enlist its supply chain partners (traders, brands, retailers) that are based in the consumer country to strengthen the case for supporting the L/JI.

Companies involved in national or international platforms that support L/JIs (such as TFA) can indirectly work to support education and policy development with consumer governments. Participating in credible platforms and initiatives provides an effective way to engage with governments. With full-time staff, the ability to use examples from several different L/JIs, and diverse stakeholders, such platforms can bring more influence with consumer governments than any one company or L/JI acting alone.

Engage with government counterparts through development and implementation of an L/JI to ensure that policy makers know and care about the initiative’s progress, see the value of company participation, and are motivated to apply emerging lessons to develop ongoing policy.

The timing and targeting of policy development will vary: some policies may need to change for an L/JI to get underway (for example, authorization for a government agency to participate in an initiative). Other needed changes may become clear only after there is some experience implementing an L/JI (for example, clarification of community forestry regulations). Engaging policy makers should be an iterative process. That’s why companies should offer themselves to policy makers as longer-term partners in the work of the initiative.

Getting governments to implement policy or enforce regulations may require companies to engage with agencies at both national and sub-national levels. Companies can call officials’ attention to issues with implementation and seek creative solutions with other stakeholders.

Promoting investment and supply chain linkage opportunities, as LTKL has done in Indonesia, can open new avenues and incentives for local, national, and international business partners to invest in sustainable production and protection. Companies with national and global reach can support investment plans, identify and recruit investors, and choose to co-invest in new ventures that add value for their supply chains.

To avoid the perception of influencing public officials to back private interests, companies should engage with government in open platforms alongside other L/JI stakeholders.

They should also clarify when they are speaking on behalf of the initiative and when they are lobbying for their own interests.

Clearly articulate the value of community participation. Local communities may be discouraged or fatigued by years of promises from governments or companies that failed to generate tangible benefits. Provide clear incentives, status, and income opportunities to secure early and ongoing participation. Don’t over-promise, and be explicit about who would benefit (all members indirectly, or only those directly engaged). Clarify as well what the benefits will be (e.g. tenure security, higher crop yields or prices, improved genetic material, value-added processing, access to finance) and what participants must do, or risk, to earn them.

Organize communities for effective representation. Communities may be represented by legitimate and effective leadership through traditional local government and/or through women, youth, farmers, or small businesses constituencies. But they may also be marginalized. Rather than direct or engage deeply in an effort to enfranchise communities – with which companies may have competing or conflicting interests — companies can support their empowerment process by funding an independent third party to support community dialogue and organizing.

Build capacity for effective representation, consultation, decision making, and governance. Community representatives may need help understanding the roles, rules, tools, and steps in the landscape/jurisdictional planning process. Likewise, community members may need support to know what’s at stake and how to speak through and guide their representatives. A company could fund capacity building and/or provide seasoned staff to help enhance knowledge and skills.

• Capacity building is rarely a once-off. It is needed from the outset through planning and implementation, as new kinds of information, opportunities, and activities arise. Some opportunities and choices will present trade-offs within or between groups and require community dialogue to inform a response.

Disseminate landscape/jurisdictional information to communities. Provide regular information, in local languages, via trusted local media, about meetings with, topics in, and opportunities to engage with the multi-stakeholder body advancing an L/JI. When government policies change, companies can leverage these communication channels to raise awareness with communities about what is happening, and why it matters.

Help community representatives participate in the multi-stakeholder process. A company can offer financial support, compensating the most vulnerable community members (e.g. women, tribal or ethnic minorities) for any time away from their job or family that they invest in the landscape/jurisdictional process. It can also pay for live or written translation, to overcome language barriers to participation.

• Once in attendance, previously marginalized community representatives may often also need encouragement to speak openly and often. Companies can help create space in meetings for active participation by reserving them special time to voice their opinions, then ensure that what they say is respected. To that end, one helpful guide can be found in Tools and best practices for ensuring public participation in Environmental Impact Assessments.¹

Identify which company data other stakeholders could use to improve landscape/jurisdiction-level sustainability. Local stakeholders often lack a complete picture of land-related ecological, ownership, and use characteristics or dynamics, which impedes the ability to plan, execute, and monitor progress. Companies that possess these data or that have influence with those who do can fill important gaps in information.

• The data need not be proprietary. Companies can bring even relevant public information to the attention of other stakeholders unaware of it. For example, Global Forest Watch provides data on tree cover loss and instances of fire, which can be analyzed within any jurisdiction to determine where there may be deforestation hotspots or risk. Such data help inform land use planning decisions as well as monitoring and enforcement activities.

Data might be held by farm/concession managers if the company is a commodity producer, by the procurement or sustainability teams if the company is an upstream commodity buyer, or by producers and traders in the company’s supply chain that operate in the jurisdiction.

Relevant data could include:

• Boundaries of farms, ranches, forest management units, or concessions – including those managed by the company and by independent smallholders
• Coordinates of mills or other processing facilities
• Geological, water, or other biophysical data
• Maps of community lands and areas with important environmental attributes (e.g. High Conservation Value areas or High Carbon Stock areas)
• Management plans for land overseen by the company or by its suppliers
• Historical maps or other records of ground cover and land use that could help establish trends over time
• Non-competitive information on crop production, soil productivity, and/or conservation needs that could help identify good production practices

Data sharing can pose challenges both for local actors and to the companies that share. To mitigate these risks in advance, companies should:

• Follow national guidelines, particularly when sharing farm boundaries, and apply proper social and environmental safeguards to minimize impacts on local communities
• Draft agreements that define who can use the shared data, and how
• Aggregate contributions so that only consolidated data are made publicly available, with identifying information stripped out
• Limit sharing of the most sensitive or controversial data with only those government actors engaged in land use planning or enforcement (e.g. ministries of agriculture, forestry, environment, rural development), using non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) to ensure confidentiality of data that informs landscape/jurisdiction-level planning efforts.

Data should be shared with the multi-stakeholder body representing key actors in the landscape/jurisdiction to guide discussions about setting targets, planning land use, and implementing decisions (see “Co-design jurisdictional goals, key performance indicators (KPIs), and implementation strategies” and “Support development of a robust landscape/jurisdictional land use plan”). A robust conservation or restoration plan will take into account data about the relationship between priority conservation areas, production areas, and processing facilities. Likewise, access to these data will enable the government or other stakeholders to monitor implementation of landscape/jurisdictional action plans and progress toward achieving KPIs.

Share data in formats that match those used to develop or monitor progress toward meeting landscape/jurisdictional outcomes (ideally digital; sometimes printed maps or written descriptions are handy).