This chapter from the book “Transforming REDD+: Lessons and new directions” highlights how jurisdictional approaches (JAs) to sustainable development seek to protect forests, reduce emissions, and improve livelihoods and other social, environmental and economic dimensions across entire governmental territories: states, provinces, districts, counties and other political administrative units.

The study explored 39 subnational jurisdictions across 12 countries, which together contain 28% of the world’s tropical forests, and found that all had made formal commitments to reducing deforestation. Most (38 of 39) had also taken concrete actions to implement these pledges. The majority of these sampled jurisdictions have developed and implemented integrated jurisdictional strategies, robust jurisdiction-wide multistakeholder processes, and quantifiable, time-bound targets that define their vision of sustainability – despite a scarcity of international climate finance to support these and other interventions.

Annual deforestation decreased between 2012 and 2017 in just under half of jurisdictions (17 of 39), although any links between actions taken by subnational governments and observed trends in deforestation are yet to be analysed.

The factsheet highlights the Produce, Conserve, Include (PCI) as an investment-ready model designed to meet aggressive targets in Mato Grosso in Brazil, an agricultural powerhouse state that produces nearly 30% of Brazil’s soy and has more than 30 million cattle, the largest herd in the country. The Mato Grosso government created the PCI strategy, a leading jurisdictional approach, for a new vision for the state’s future: increased productivity across the state while maintaining native vegetation cover and reducing deforestation.

The PCI’s ambitious vision add up to huge environmental benefits: over 6 gigatons of avoided emissions by 2030. Meeting these aggressive targets requires a multi-stakeholder effort, and the PCI brings together government agencies, civil society, producer groups and companies to drive toward impact.

This factsheet outlines the case for companies to engage in the PCI. Benefits include: (1) Progress toward corporate forest goals; (2) Incentives for sustainable expansion of production; (3) Robust and transparent statewide monitoring; (4) Reduced deforestation risk across the state; (5) Progress toward corporate climate goals; (6) Proof of concept for a new model of deforestation leadership

A jurisdictional approach can be a useful complement to sustainable sourcing by ensuring that there is sufficient volume and supply of sustainable commodities to make company deforestation-free commitments realizable, and by helping to avoid system leakage whereby sustainable sourcing approaches by some companies are undermined by other companies adopting non-sustainable approaches. This research identifies several emerging trends that could support a jurisdictional approach.

The publication highlights key reasons why jurisdictional approaches are crucial for tackling deforestation. First, they can help to mainstream sustainability in the forest regions versus creating “an oasis of green in a desert of deforestation” where sustainability efforts are undermined by leakage from continued deforestation elsewhere. Second, jurisdictional approaches have the greatest potential for long-term impact by seeking to reconcile competing social, economic, and environmental objectives through active engagement of local institutions. Finally, jurisdictional approaches provide the opportunity to create replicable examples of success to inspire change elsewhere.


Three potential unique roles for TFA partners identified in the study are:
(1) Signal publicly. TFA and its partners could relay to key stakeholders (involved in the jurisdictions) of the importance of the jurisdiction’s sustainable development plans and its associated goals and activities.
(2) Establish sustainable sourcing roadmaps and targets.
(3) Develop a cross-jurisdictional platform to shorten the “learning curve” for jurisdictions by providing a repository of both local and international best practices to engage with the private sector, local communities, smallholders, government agencies, and civil society

This paper, developed through a workshop of practitioners convened by WWF, provides case studies and a detailed comparative analysis of five-place based initiatives in Brazil, Liberia, Ghana, and Colombia, and lessons learned extracted from them.

Key learnings are:
(1) Political leadership is key to advancing a jurisdictional approach, but it is also a primary risk; initiatives need to be designed to be resilient to political change.
(2) A push for quick results and a desire to avoid opposition to a jurisdictional initiative sometimes interfere with early, inclusive engagement; however, success in the long term depends on stakeholder engagement in initiative design and implementation.
(3) Several types of financing are needed, likely in stages, to support and sustain jurisdictional approaches; proponents need to differentiate categories of finance and to be able to articulate and align specific needs (and deliverables) to financial offerings.
(4) Private sector actors are crucial for success, given the dominant role that market forces often play in driving land use change compared with public finance. That said, proponents must distinguish the needs and roles of different private sector actors to delineate asks, expectations, and compelling partnerships.
(5) Skilled and tailored storytelling that articulates a jurisdictional initiative’s goals, needs, and early successes is critical to building support and growth among different audiences.
(6) The complexity and duration of jurisdictional initiatives requi re sustained investment to achieve systemic change; therefore, local and global expectations should be thoughtfully managed to avoid creating unachievable goals or time frames, and to help ensure lasting results.

This report provides an overall synthesis of jurisdictional sustainability across the tropics based on research in 39 subnational jurisdictions where there are intentions in place towards implementing a low-emission development agenda. These jurisdictions, spread in 12 countries, encompass 28% of the world’s tropical forests and vary widely in both their deforestation rates and the amount of their forest that is remaining.

The study found that nearly all (38 of 39) jurisdictions have signed formal, international scale commitments to slow deforestation and/or accelerate reforestation or forest recovery. Many are financing and implementing innovative policies and programs, prioritizing indigenous peoples, local communities, and smallholder farmers as key beneficiaries of these interventions. Deforestation has declined in half (19 of 39) of the jurisdictions below official projected subnational forest reference levels. These declines in deforestation represent approximately 6.8 GtCO2 e of avoided carbon emissions, attributable to both subnational and national policy interventions and private-sector actions.

The presentation provides brief descriptions of useful landscape tools, resources and standards. These include standard setting initiatives that provide guidance and metrics to measure progress in jurisdictional or landscape initiatives such as the Commodities Jurisdictions Approach (CJA), Climate, Community and Biodiversity Alliance, and Landscape standard. Performance platforms providing information on jurisdictions and jurisdictional and landscape initiatives using a standard set of criteria highlighted include Governors’ Climate and Forest Platform (GCF), Produce Protect Platform, Landscape Assessment Framework.

The presentation also includes case Studies to highlight different types of jurisdictional and landscape initiatives, such as Produce, Conserve, Include (PCI) in Mato Grosso, Brazil, Jurisdictional Palm Oil Certification, and Carbon Fund in Madre de Dios, Peru. Other resources and related initiatives presented include the Accountability Framework initiative (AFi), Tropical Forest Alliance (TFA), and the Balikpapan Challenge.

Key insights include that to reward early progress, performance metrics need to incorporate process indicators (planning, agreeing on goals, setting baseline); inclusive, multistakeholder platforms that include local government are essential to provide structures and mechanisms for developing local compacts, driving progress and reporting and verification; and there’s a need for clear incentives for local producers, that could be promoted by including goals on improving productivity and/or improving farmer livelihoods.

This report by presents a “commodity-first” lens to identifying key landscapes where supply chain companies can make critical interventions to tackle deforestation. As supply chain actors will likely only engage with geographies in their direct supply chain, it focuses on commodity production and utilises recent data on drivers of deforestation to identify landscapes where deforestation is high, driven largely by the expansion of forest-risk commodities.

The study found that transformative impact will require commodity supply chain companies to broaden their efforts to complement individual supply chain action by engaging in jurisdictional approaches. Over a dozen landscapes are of particular importance given commodity production levels and associated deforestation. Amongst the top producing countries, 14 landscapes exhibit particularly high rates of deforestation, in total accounting for 32 percent of the total deforestation across Africa, Asia Pacific and Latin America between 2010 and 2017.

The study also found that a relative lack of jurisdictional approaches in landscapes relevant from a “commodity-first” perspective could create challenges for deeper private sector engagement. Out of about 95 currently active jurisdictional initiatives, only 20 are in the top commodity producing regions. Further, 90 percent of top producing regions of key commodities do not have an active jurisdictional initiative in place.

The Terpercaya study, led by the European Forest Institute’s EU REDD Facility and Yayasan Inovasi Bumi (Inobu), aims to build shared understanding of what jurisdictional sustainability is in Indonesia, and what indicators can best measure and track progress towards jurisdictional sustainability in a transparent way. This briefing outlines the indicators selected under Terpercaya to track progress, how they differ from other standards, and the approach taken to develop a consensus on the indicators, through the involvement of a multistakeholder advisory committee.

The 22 selected indicators are grounded in Indonesian law and designed to both evaluate the performance of the jurisdictions and demonstrate the benefits of sustainable and inclusive commodity production. The indicators are grouped into environmental, social, economic and governance categories and reflect the priorities and concerns of consumers, and of the Indonesian government, people and producers. They represent a means for promoting and improving market access, while supporting sustainable and inclusive economic growth throughout Indonesia.

This document aims to introduce the jurisdictional approach (JA) and its potential to accelerate the implementation of national priority agendas in Indonesia in its medium-term development plan (RPJMN) for the period of 2020-2024, particularly to achieve sustainable food and agricultural production. Jurisdiction-based multistakeholder approach is offered as an innovative new development model to assist Indonesia achieve SDGs, from the initial perspective of sustainable food and agriculture. The concept note was formulated through a series of meetings and discussions with CSOs facilitated by Indonesia’s Sustainable Districts Association Lingkar Temu Kabupaten Lestari (LTKL) to provide inputs to Indonesia’s National Development Agency (Bappenas).

The concept note elaborates on the definition and components of JA, including the lens of sustainable commodities used in its development, and the benefits and beneficiaries of JA for sustainable food and. It also discusses existing legal basis for the approach in Indonesia, enabling preconditions for its success, and examples from various JA initiatives developed by developmental partners and CSOs throughout Indonesia. Section 6 will provide the reasoning behind the proposal to use this while also demonstrating its potential for other sectors in the future.

RSPO Jurisdictional Approach to Certification (JA) is an approach to minimize the negative impact of palm oil cultivation on the environment and on communities, at the scale of government administrative areas, through the stepwise certification of the production and processing of sustainable oil palm products. It involves continuously progressing towards (1) achieving implementation no deforestation, no new planting on peat, ensuring safe and decent working conditions, and upholding human rights at landscape level; and (2) the certification of sustainable production and processing of oil palm products, managed and supported through a multi-stakeholder governed entity (referred as Jurisdictional Entity (JE) within the document).

The approach requires government leadership, support, and collaboration in playing a key role in facilitating a multi-stakeholder process, setting up overall governance, regulations and frameworks to bring jurisdictional members to apply RSPO standards progressively. Jurisdictional Certification will follow the RSPO 2018 Principles & Criteria, as well as other RSPO Standards. The challenge, however, is that the RSPO P&Cs have been developed with plantation concessions and estates, or growers and smallholders in mind, and not whole jurisdictions.

The RSPO Jurisdictional Working Group has agreed upon the framework presented in this document, but notes that new Standards and processes may be needed to address new challenges as they arise.