Bright future for landscape approaches

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ISEAL has convened experts from 20 organisations to launch a new, collective position paper supporting sustainable landscapes, sparking positivity for more work in 2025.

At a time when sustainability solutions are urgently needed, landscape initiatives have the potential to address systemic environmental, social and economic issues holistically and at scale. 

But to do so, they need to have an effective operating structure with long-term investment and multi-stakeholder collaboration.

To help, ISEAL has convened 20 leading landscape and jurisdictional practitioner organisations to jointly launch a paper, aligning on the four core criteria that characterise mature landscape initiatives and how they can be used to demonstrate and improve effectiveness.

Foundation for progress

The new, foundational paper provides a common perspective on what needs to be in place for landscape initiatives to create lasting positive impact. 

The core criteria can help them to become more resilient, more attractive to investors and better placed to deliver positive sustainability outcomes.

Landscape core criteria

The paper is designed to support work on landscape and jurisdictional approaches by a range of actors, including those involved directly in the running of landscape initiatives as well as those seeking to invest in or report on landscape-scale impact. 

It describes how the core criteria and accompanying sub-criteria can be applied for six different use cases; improvement, assessment, investment, engagement, claims and learning.

The paper builds on CDP’s work to develop a Landscape Maturity Matrix for assessing the credibility of disclosure data. 

The work has evolved to consider a breadth of use cases and stakeholder experiences that are key to providing a common framing. They can be embedded in any organisation’s work on landscape and jurisdictional approaches, providing much needed consistency across the sector.

Having a simple, common set of criteria is foundational for the effective growth of landscape initiatives and the critical and lasting sustainability impact they can make.

Core Criteria for Mature Landscape Initiatives (2024)