The land sector, which refers to all activities that use land, such as agriculture and forestry, is a significant contributor to climate change. It is responsible for nearly a quarter of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, with land-use change, such as converting forests to croplands or pasture, accounting for about half of these emissions.

Slashing land-use change emissions is critical to keeping global warming in line with the Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F) and enabling a global net-zero future. For businesses in land-intensive sectors, reducing land-use emissions will also help build more resilient, adaptive supply chains that mitigate future climate risks.

While accurately measuring these emissions in supply chains has long been a challenge, Land & Carbon Lab, WRI and Quantis are introducing new tools, including a guidebook and a tech note, to help companies improve land-use change emissions accounting and traceability.

What Are Land-Use Change Emissions and Why Do They Matter? 

Land-use change emissions are GHG emissions that arise from the conversion of one land use to another — most notably when natural ecosystems like forests are cleared to grow crops such as oil palm or soy or to graze livestock.

Tracking land-use change emissions:

  • • Highlights which commodities’ growth has driven deforestation and in which regions these activities are most significant.
  • • Reveals whether companies’ claims, such as “no deforestation” or “no conversion,” translate into real climate benefits.
  • • Guides companies in setting credible targets for emission reductions and enables accurate accounting to measure progress against those targets.

Setting Targets and Measuring Progress to Reduce Land-Based Emissions 

What gets measured gets managed. For companies serious about climate commitments, credible targets should align with Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates of the emissions reductions needed by the sector to achieve 1.5-degree-C pathways, using the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) framework.

A company should compile GHG inventories to account for its annual emissions by accurately measuring its products' carbon footprint, which provides the essential baseline needed to track progress over time.

Corporate accounting for land-use change emissions has steadily gained momentum since 2022, when the SBTi introduced guidance for the forest, land and agriculture (FLAG) sector. It provides the first standardized framework for companies with significant land-sector emissions to set targets in line with the latest climate science. Companies submit these targets for a thorough evaluation against criteria defined by the SBTi. Once validated, targets are made public and companies must then publicly disclose their progress annually, ensuring transparency and credibility.

For many years, the GHG Protocol has complemented the SBTi by providing a progress-tracking framework for businesses. Major target-setting programs, such as SBTi, and voluntary disclosure systems build on and conform with GHG Protocol standards.

The GHG Protocol’s Land Sector and Removals Guidance (LSRG) explains how companies with significant activities in the land sector can account for and report their land-based emissions and other metrics related to activities on land in their operations or value chain. 

The Role of Deforestation in Land-Sector Emissions

Reducing deforestation is critical to achieving targeted reductions because when forests are cut down or burned, the carbon they store is released into the atmosphere, turning forests from carbon sinks into carbon sources. Nearly a quarter-century of data shows that the dominant driver of forest-related emissions has been agriculture.

As part of setting SBTi FLAG targets, companies are required to commit to no-deforestation supply chains. They can do so by aligning with guidance from the Accountability Framework initiative (AFi), which recommends that companies adopt the most ambitious target date possible for achieving a deforestation-free supply chain and a 2020 cutoff date, meaning companies should source products from land that has not been deforested since Dec. 31, 2020. Companies should publish annual reports quantifying their progress toward these commitments.

Curbing deforestation is key to significantly reducing GHG emissions for many companies in the land sector. Without tackling deforestation-related emissions, meeting their broader climate and sustainability targets is nearly impossible.

Decoding Sources of Corporate Guidance for GHG Emissions

Here are some of the most common acronyms used in corporate GHG accounting and reporting:

AFi: The Accountability Framework initiative is a roadmap for achieving ethical supply chains that protect forests, natural ecosystems and human rights. It provides guidance, aligned with SBTi and the GHG Protocol, to support companies in taking integrated action to manage deforestation, ecosystem conversion and GHG emissions from land-use change.

CDP: CDP, formerly known as the Carbon Disclosure Project, is an environmental disclosure system used by companies to voluntarily report sustainability indicators. Companies are required to submit information through a questionnaire that combines all the CDP topics — including water, forests, biodiversity and climate change — into one submission.

FLAG targets: What SBTi calls forest, land and agriculture climate targets, aimed at reducing land-based emissions and enhance carbon removals.

GHG Protocol: The Greenhouse Gas Protocol provides the world’s most widely used standards for measuring and managing greenhouse gas emissions.

LSRG: This refers to the GHG Protocol’s Land Sector and Removals Guidance, which explains how companies should account for and report GHG emissions and removals from land use, land-use change, biogenic products and carbon dioxide removal technologies.

SBTi: The Science-Based Targets Initiative is a voluntary corporate climate initiative that helps companies set ambitious, science-based emissions reduction targets and provides target validation services.  

Accounting for Land-Use Change Emissions in Practice

Although there are guidance and resources for companies through SBTi and the GHG Protocol, corporate reporting on land-use change emissions is still evolving, and there are currently many different approaches to calculating land-sector emissions. While the LSRG provides high-level requirements and guidance on how companies should account for and report these emissions in their GHG inventories, calculating land-use change is complex. Companies that source the same commodities from the same sourcing areas can still end up with different land-use change emissions and land occupation (the amount of the land required to produce a crop) due to a variety of factors. For example, companies can use a wide range of data and methods that may employ different assumptions and allocation methodologies.

This plethora of methodologies and data sources, combined with variations in yields and land management practices and limited traceability in some supply chains, all lead to major inconsistencies in how land-use change emissions are calculated. Such differences make it difficult to meaningfully compare one company to another and for companies to direct attention to where they can do the most to reduce emissions in reality.

While there will never be a one-size-fits-all approach to assessing something as nuanced and complex as land-use change impacts, continuous improvements in data and tools are making it easier for companies to navigate this complexity. To help bring more consistency and transparency to how companies measure land-use change emissions, Land & Carbon Lab, WRI and Quantis have released an open-source methodology and metrics for calculating emissions from deforestation and land occupation. Developed with support from Mérieux NutriSciences | Blonk and HowGood, the guidebook uses the latest geospatial data to help increase accuracy in emission estimates. 

This guidance is designed to help companies accurately identify emission hot spots, align emission calculations and disclose progress with confidence. Future phases of this work will expand to include emissions from other types of land-use change beyond deforestation, as well as additional accounting categories in the LSRG. Learn more here. 

Unpacking the Different Levels of Traceability Across Land-Use Change Emissions Accounting

A company’s ability to trace specific products to the lands where they are grown or produced plays a crucial role in accurately estimating land-use change emissions. More refined traceability allows for more targeted calculations.

The statistical land-use change (sLUC) approach is highly scalable because requisite data is widely accessible, allowing companies to estimate land-use change emissions across a large portfolio of products and regions. But assigning emissions using proxy data may lack nuance. For example, visibility into emission hot spots may be reduced.

Meanwhile, the direct land-use change (dLUC) approach requires companies to have crop- and location-specific data over the past 20 years, so it may be challenging and expensive for companies to implement across their whole product portfolio — particularly for companies with complex, multitiered commodity supply chains and indirect suppliers from which data is not readily available.

The jurisdictional land-use change (jdLUC) approach provides a middle ground that increases precision relative to a sLUC approach while avoiding some of the practical challenges of land-management-unit-level analyses.

Like adjusting the optical zoom on a camera, sLUC provides a wide-angle, big-picture view of emissions, while jdLUC and dLUC allow companies to zoom into the picture in a way that captures nuances and reflects actual land-use change emission impacts. 

What Accurate Accounting for Land-Use Change Emissions Means for Companies 

For companies, improved traceability may either raise or lower reported emissions. But the goal isn’t just about the raw numbers — more accurate and precise data helps companies develop informed solutions that protect forests and cut emissions in meaningful ways.

In concrete terms, this means companies can:

  • Get a better understanding of the true climate impacts of their supply chain: Companies can pair land-use change metrics with land-occupation data to create a full picture of a company’s land footprint.
  • Identify emissions hotspots within the value chain: Companies can analyze the “why” behind hotspots and use this data to address where emissions are occurring, investing in practices and interventions that reduce pressure on land.
  • Target interventions where they matter most: Higher-quality emissions data can be used for better decision-making. Companies can use this data to design more ambitious, intervention-based strategies and to meaningfully engage suppliers and jurisdictions.
  • Improve on-farm practices: Addressing land-use change, which represents the vast majority of emissions, provides a foundation for companies to explore opportunities to further reduce their footprint while maintaining or improving productivity and efficiency. 
Oil palm nursery near Bengkulu, Sumatra
An oil palm nursery near Bengkulu, Sumatra. Photo by James Anderson/WRI

New standardized resources now allow companies to overcome common challenges and apply consistent methods regardless of their level of traceability, providing better information to guide more targeted actions. This is a critical step forward for companies to effectively understand, measure and reduce their carbon footprint in the near term and ultimately create more resilient, future-proof supply chains.