Corporate reporting of land-sector greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is complex, with companies using varied methods to calculate emissions from land use change and land occupation. Although frameworks such as the Greenhouse Gas Protocol offer general accounting guidance, their built-in flexibility in data and methods can lead to inconsistent results across companies and supply chains. This guidebook introduces a standardized, geospatially based methodology for estimating GHG emissions from land use change driven by agricultural expansion and land occupation. The approach uses spatial datasets to produce globally consistent emission factors across crops, jurisdictions, and traceability levels. These metrics give companies a common reference for estimating emissions, identifying high-impact regions, and reporting progress with confidence, transparency, and comparability

Key Findings:

  • Although well-defined standards and guidelines exist for land use change emissions reporting of corporate greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories, considerable flexibility remains in the selection of input data and methods, making it difficult for companies and third parties to fully operationalize and compare metrics.
  • Our methodology offers a detailed, robust, and comparable approach for calculating greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation (i.e., the loss of tall, woody vegetation with tree canopy density equal to or greater than 10 percent) and associated soil carbon emissions driven by agricultural production.
  • Complete land use change emissions (i.e., beyond deforestation and associated soil carbon) and other required accounting categories in the draft Land Sector and Removals Guidance (LSRG) published by the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHGP 2022) are expected to be operationalized in future phases of this work. Consequently, land use change (LUC) emissions estimates for crops whose expansion primarily replaces nonforest ecosystems (e.g., maize, soybean, wheat, rice) could be systematically underestimated if based only on the methods in this guidebook.
  • Our methodology uses open, globally consistent datasets to provide consistent LUC emission factors from forest to raw crops globally across different supply chain traceability levels.
  • The methodology serves as a reliable industry reference to support transparent, accurate, and consistent LUC emissions accounting. Aligned with the LSRG, it also aims to harmonize corporate GHG inventories and establish a benchmark for future tracking and reporting of LUC emissions.

Executive Summary:

Background

Companies track their GHG emissions using corporate GHG inventories and can use the GHG Protocol’s Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard for requirements and guidance regarding compiling GHG inventories across all sectors. The GHG Protocol’s draft Land Sector and Removals Guidance (LSRG) provides companies with high-level requirements and guidance on how to report scope 1 and scope 3 land use change–related metrics: GHG emissions from land use change—including, but not limited to, deforestation—and land occupation metrics. However, given the breadth of the audience it serves, the issues it covers and its need to stay data-agnostic, the LSRG offers companies considerable flexibility in selecting input data and methods.

As a result, companies sourcing the same commodities from the same supply chains may report very different GHG emissions and land occupation metrics and consequently arrive at different conclusions when tracking progress toward reducing emissions or when prioritizing supply chain interventions and related investments to mitigate GHG emissions from land use change. This can lead to confusion, inefficiencies, and contradictory claims from companies that are based solely on methodological or data differences rather than on-the-ground realities. Ultimately, this can obstruct concerted action and investment in LUC mitigation in priority regions.

Project overview

To fill this gap, World Resources Institute (WRI) and Quantis, with the support of Mérieux NutriSciences | Blonk and HowGood, are addressing the urgent need to improve comparability of scope 1 and scope 3 GHG inventories and provide a harmonized resource across agricultural commodities. Together, we are operationalizing aligned, transparent, and science-based metrics that follow the LSRG to improve land use change emissions, starting with deforestation and land occupation in corporate accounting. The methods and good practice guidance provided in this guidebook are based on our interpretation of best practices in the GHG Protocol’s LSRG (draft) released in September 2022; note that these methods are subject to change. This guidebook assumes familiarity with the GHG Protocol in general and the draft LSRG in particular. Table ES-1 shows the scope of this guidebook.

Notably, this guidebook promotes transparency, standardization, and comparability in corporate inventory emissions reporting by offering open-source methods and precalculated tables of deforestation emission factors and yield factors (available in the accompanying technical note [Fitts et al. 2025]; see Table ES-2 for details on how the two publications differ). These open data and methods will allow any company to implement these resources in its own systems or infrastructure. The metrics will also be integrated into tools offered by WRI and its partners, facilitating the automated quantification of LUC-related GHG emissions in corporate supply chains.

Preview image by Timon Reinhard