Sustainable Landscapes Rating Tool

Co-developed by the 1000 Landscapes for 1 Billion People programme (1000L) and partners EcoAgriculture Partners, Rainforest Alliance, and Conservation International, this tool helps landscape leaders assess and track the progress of key conditions needed for true landscape sustainability, including land use planning and management, land and resource tenure, biodiversity and other ecosystem services, stakeholder coordination and participation and commodity production systems.

The Sustainable Landscapes Rating Tool enables a rapid assessment of the key conditions for jurisdictional policies and governance that enable sustainable landscapes. The Tool provides a snapshot of a jurisdiction’s capacity to establish and ensure effective functioning of policies, plans, strategies, regulations, monitoring systems and multi-stakeholder platforms, which, collectively, have been found to be important in supporting sustainable landscapes.

The Tool applies an objective, evidence-based rating system to assess each of the identified key conditions. It collects and organizes complex information about policies and governance into a structured and easy-to-understand format.

Landscape actors including sub-national governments, producer organizations, NGOs and civil society organizations can use the tool to:

• Communicate externally about the status of key enabling conditions to attract investment and other support
• Benchmark progress on establishing enabling conditions against internationally-recognized criteria
• Build support among diverse stakeholders and facilitate planning to address gaps.

Investors including investment funds, banks, commodity sourcing companies, bi-lateral and multi-lateral development agencies and international NGOs can enhance their investment decisions by using the tool to:

• Identify jurisdictions likely to help them meet sustainability goals
• De-risk investments by providing a due diligence framework to unpack and understand key policy, legal, governance and other enabling conditions
• Identify priorities for policy and governance support that will help to facilitate transition to green growth.