Modelling a path to more sustainable landscapes

Stem of sugarcane © kampwit, Adobe stock

The challenge

Voluntary sustainability standards (VSS) are developed to galvanise social and environmental improvements in agriculture and create transparency in supply chains. Commodity buyers and those involved in VSS want science-based principles and methodologies to help future standard setting. In addition, VSS and their users want to provide credible impact assessments and scenarios in real time to help evaluation. Furthermore, consultation will help to decide where to target standard adoption to maximise environmental performance.

A science-based approach

To address these challenges, Bonsucro and a broad coalition of project partners are exploring how standards can take a science-based approach and adapt to different environments by using locally informed metrics. The project will develop a geospatial tool that will allow stakeholders to explore the impact of standards adoption in “real-time” and inform decision-making. In addition, the economic benefits and costs of VSS adoption will be identified, and standards will be linked to the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals.

Palm oil trees © Jonathan Perugia for Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil

Modelling impact at scale

The research component of the project is led by the University of Minnesota (UMN) with The Natural Capital Project. The Initiative will assess each of the three VSS involved to fully understand regional “hotspots” in terms of environmental and economic opportunities and challenges. It will also summarise results at the regional and country-level and evaluate VSS performance against the national-level SDGs for South Africa, Mexico, Brazil, China, Malaysia, Indonesia, and India and identify opportunities and challenges given local context. This country-level analysis will pilot the development of country-level VSS indicators to explore the interplay between standards and net-environmental-impacts.

October in Nairobi © Sustainable Agriculture Network

Informing risk

The approach will look at yield, water use, nutrient loading, greenhouse gas emissions, land use change, habitat loss, and economic costs. The models can then be used to evaluate the potential impact of different mitigation policies such as adopting certification standards, deforestation-free commitments, and policy influence. The geospatial tool will allow decision makers to evaluate different policy scenarios and prioritise future activities to minimise risk while maximising outcomes in a cost-effective way.

Download project outputs

Information pack: SCOPE geo-design tool | Bonsucro, UoM

Information pack - SCOPE geo-design tool | Bonsucro, UoM

SCOPE is a geo-design tool that enables users to assess multiple outcomes related to commodity production and alternative policies including total production, water availability, water quality, greenhouse gas emissions, and land conversion. The tool allows for examining on-farm policy compliance and explore outcomes at local to landscape levels.

This document presents how SCOPE can provide important information to certification stakeholders on how an area could perform against a standard (or is performing against a standard) at the local, landscape, or jurisdictional level.

Information pack - SCOPE geo-design tool | Bonsucro, UoM9.37 MB

Case study: Corporate global value chain - SCOPE geo-design tool | UMN, Bonsucro

The Modelling a Path to More Sustainable Landscapes project is a three-year effort to spatially analyze the baseline risk of commodity production and the role of sustainability policies to mitigate those risks.

This document is for people interested in increasing the value and integrity of data and in assessing the potential impacts of policy decisions in terms of agriculture production and environmental outcomes.

Case study: Corporate global value chain - SCOPE geo-design tool | UMN, Bonsucro5.05 MB

Case study: Financial institutions - SCOPE geo-design tool | UMN, Bonsucro

The Modelling a Path to More Sustainable Landscapes project is a three-year effort to spatially analyse the baseline risk of commodity production and the role of sustainability policies to mitigate those risks.

This document is for people interested in increasing the value and integrity of data and in assessing the potential impacts of policy decisions in terms of agriculture production and environmental outcomes.

Case study: Financial institutions - SCOPE geo-design tool | UMN, Bonsucro4.18 MB

Case study: SDGs - SCOPE geo-design tool | UMN, Bonsucro

The Modelling a Path to More Sustainable Landscapes project is a three-year effort to spatially analyse the baseline risk of commodity production and the role of sustainability policies to mitigate those risks.

This document is for people interested in increasing the value and integrity of data and in assessing the potential impacts of policy decisions in terms of agriculture production and environmental outcomes.

Case study: SDGs - SCOPE geo-design tool | UMN, Bonsucro6.08 MB

White