Across cocoa and coffee producing regions, integrated landscape approaches are increasingly demonstrating that climate action can deliver tangible environmental and livelihood outcomes. However, scaling these models beyond early adopters remains complex and resource-intensive.
Ghana: Governance at Landscape Level
In Ghana’s Sui River landscape, a multi-stakeholder Landscape Management Board is coordinating restoration and livelihood activities across forest communities. Established with support from Rainforest Alliance, the board brings together local farmers, district authorities, national agencies including the Forestry Ministry and Ghana Cocoa Board, and other institutional partners.
The initiative supports approximately 12,000 farmers through activities such as shade tree planting, forest restoration and income diversification, including beekeeping, pig rearing and snail farming. The approach recognises that environmental and social challenges in forest communities are interconnected and cannot be addressed by farmers alone. Instead, governance structures at landscape level aim to align actors, share responsibility and coordinate long-term solutions.
This model reflects broader momentum behind Integrated Landscape Management (ILM) in commodity sectors including cocoa, coffee, palm oil and beef. Landscape collaboration is also embedded in international guidance frameworks such as the Accountability Framework Initiative and has been highlighted in global biodiversity discussions as a mechanism to protect ecosystems underpinning supply chains.
Coffee Landscapes in Vietnam: Resilience Through Coordination
In Vietnam’s coffee-producing provinces of Lam Dong and Dak Lak, IDH has supported government agencies, farmer groups and major buyers, including JDE Peet’s, to implement landscape-level interventions. These efforts were partly driven by regulatory risks linked to chemical use in the sector.
Over the past decade, JDE Peet’s has supported water conservation and precision irrigation initiatives across these landscapes, resulting in a reported 20% reduction in water consumption. The company has integrated landscape approaches into its Nature Transition Plan, embedding regenerative agriculture and due diligence practices into sourcing strategies to address climate, biodiversity and human rights risks.
The case illustrates a key principle of landscape approaches: resilience cannot be achieved farm-by-farm alone. Restoring watersheds, maintaining forest cover and strengthening ecosystem services require coordinated action across entire production regions.
Enabling Platforms and Finance
The growth of landscape initiatives is also reflected in enabling platforms such as SourceUp, which now lists around 75 advanced landscape projects globally, with additional initiatives in development. New mechanisms, including the India Landscape Accelerator, are seeking to mobilise coordinated private sector participation in regenerative landscape investment.
At a global level, approximately $9 billion has been pledged under the Action Agenda on Regenerative Landscapes, signalling increasing recognition that landscape-scale collaboration is strategically relevant for managing long-term supply chain risks.
Barriers to Scaling
Despite demonstrated impact, three structural barriers constrain expansion:
- Time – Building trust and governance capacity across sectors requires sustained engagement over years.
- Cost – Landscape coordination is resource-intensive, and much early funding has relied on public donor support, which is now under pressure.
- Scale and replication – Approaches are highly contextual, making rapid replication across geographies challenging.
Private sector investment often remains anchored in corporate sustainability budgets rather than core procurement functions, limiting capital flow. At the same time, companies face increasing compliance demands, particularly under the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), which requires traceability and proof of deforestation-free sourcing for commodities including cocoa and coffee.
While EUDR has intensified focus on compliance, landscape initiatives offer potential efficiencies. Shared, pre-competitive data systems tested in Vietnam suggest that jurisdictional monitoring frameworks could reduce compliance costs compared to farm-by-farm verification. IDH estimates that coordinated landscape approaches could lower compliance costs significantly by distributing monitoring across actors.
The Way Forward
Landscape proponents argue that regulatory frameworks should better recognise long-term, governance-based sustainability strategies. Continued progress will depend on:
- Greater public–private co-financing
- Policy certainty and consistent market signals
- Integration of sustainability investment into core business strategy
- Harmonisation of reporting requirements to reduce administrative burden
Evidence from Ghana suggests that landscape governance structures can reduce deforestation and improve farmer incomes when actors remain committed over time. However, maintaining and expanding these approaches will require stronger incentives, clearer policy alignment and sustained investment.
Landscape and jurisdictional approaches are increasingly viewed not as discretionary sustainability initiatives, but as strategic tools to manage climate and nature-related risk across commodity supply chains. The challenge now lies in transitioning from promising pilots to durable, scalable systems of collaboration.
This article was drafted using information originally reported by Reuters.