Accounting for Natural Climate Solutions Guidance

The Accounting for Natural Climate Solutions Guidance provides a robust methodology to effectively measure GHG emissions from land, forests, and soils across the supply chain to be embedded in corporate and product footprints, which can be used for science-based climate target setting efforts. This groundbreaking guidance is expected to transform sustainable management of forestry and agriculture in corporate supply chains.

After a rigorous pilot process in 2018, “Accounting for Natural Climate Solutions: Guidance for Measuring GHG Emissions from Land, Forests, and Soils across the Supply Chain” and its accompanying Annex are released and publicly available today.

Download the Guidance + Annex

Working with nature can provide effective solutions to urgently address climate change.

The world is starting to heed the call for the critical need to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Natural climate solutions – from forests, agriculture, soil and land – have been recognized as key levers in mitigating the negative impacts of climate change.

The Accounting for Natural Climate Solutions Guidance brought together more than 40 private companies, NGOs, governments, and scientific institutions in an unprecedented, collaborative multi-stakeholder initiative led by Quantis.

Industrial partners include, among others, Atvos, Barry Callebaut, Braskem, General Mills, IKEA, L’Oréal, LVMH, Mars, Mondelēz International, PepsiCo, Philip Morris International, and Pirelli. Non-profits, consultancies, investment firms, governmental bodies and research institutes such as ADEME, Ceres, CDP, Climate-KIC, Continuum Textiles, EcoAct, Navigant, Embrapa, Global Canopy, Gold Standard, IINAS, Mercer Environment Associates, moja global, Permian Global, Rainforest Alliance, South Pole Group, Supply Change, Textile Exchange and WWF also contributed to this important work.

“The […] Guidance fills a critical gap in greenhouse gas accounting for the corporate sector. These recommendations and pilot projects will lay the foundation we need to get to the hard work of implementing and measuring progress toward tackling the climate challenge and meeting deforestation goals.”

Martha Stevenson, Director Strategy & Research, WWF US Forests

“To meet the goal of the Paris Agreement, we must both reduce greenhouse gas emissions and address land use change – eliminating deforestation and increase carbon sequestration. The […] Guidance by Quantis serves as an important first step towards a standardized way […] to account for this missing piece of companies’ climate footprint.”

Andreas Ahrens, Head of Climate, Inter IKEA Group

“As one of the world’s largest food companies, Mondelēz International is working hard to combat deforestation in ingredient origins as this is the biggest single contributor to our end-to-end carbon footprint. This new guidance fills an important gap in emissions reporting and will lead to more consistent measurement tools. This will in turn enable companies like ours to better track and report our progress against our goals.”

Jonathan Horrell, Director Global Sustainability, Mondelēz International

"Mars is excited to be part of this initiative - we believe better and more consistent quantification of GHG emissions from deforestation will help accelerate global efforts to reduce both deforestation and GHG emissions."

Kevin Rabinovitch, Global Sustainability Director, Mars, Incorporated

"We made an ambitious commitment to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions across our value chain by 28 percent by 2025. Having consistent measurement and guidance on this critical area will allow us to better track progress towards our goals."

Jerry Lynch, Chief Sustainability Officer, General Mills

"This guidance is extremely relevant for Brazil which is uniquely positioned [to be] a key player in the future bio-economy [...]. This guidance enabled us to get in-depth insights on theoretical concepts; decrease our LCA uncertainty levels; strengthen the relationship with our suppliers and ultimately corroborate with satellite imagery the results of our supply management system."

Yuki Hamilton Onda Kabe, LCA Specialist, Braskem

"At PMI, we’re focused on delivering GHG emissions reduction through targets based directly on climate science to limit global warming and the impact of climate change. We’re pleased to participate in this initiative to contribute to the Guidance, and its practical application in the future."

Andrew Harrop, Head of Environmental Sustainability, Philip Morris International

"We've seen how the topic of forests is becoming a major focus areas for investors. This report fills an important need to support companies in quantifying their impacts from forests along their value chain. We look forward to building on the insights we gained through our participation in this work and the feedback from companies and investors on reporting land use change emissions in a standardized way - this will influence the future development of CDP's disclosure framework."

Morgan Gillespy, Director Forests, CDP

“This report fills an important gap in existing GHG accounting guidance. We’ve seen a surge in interest in this topic lately, including affirmation by a great majority of stakeholders involved in a recent GHG Protocol survey. We expect to continue working with Quantis and the community they formed around this report to ensure that land-based solutions find an appropriate spot in how companies are acting on and reporting on the climate issue”

Cynthia Cummis, Director Private Sector Climate Mitigation, World Resource Institute

The Accounting for Natural Climate Solutions Guidance delivers 12 recommendations to ensure greater consistency in calculating and accounting for land use and land use change-generated GHG emissions, both in relation to products (e.g., product carbon footprint) and organizations (e.g., corporate carbon footprint).