Leveraging Carbon Instruments for Financial Sustainability in a Soy Landscape Initiative

The Western Mato Grosso Sustainable Landscape Initiative includes a range of activities across six municipalities, which aim to increase sustainable agricultural production in the state while ensuring conservation of native vegetation and inclusion of smallholders and Indigenous Peoples. The activities within the landscape initiative include conservation and restoration efforts as well as regenerative agriculture on soy farms, which provide carbon benefits through avoided, removed, and reduced emissions.  

This case study in collaboration with IPAM, the PCI institute and Produzindo Certo and supported by the Land Innovation Fund, presents the results of a supply and demand analysis, exploring various options of instruments for leveraging carbon benefits to ensure the long-term financial sustainability of the initiative. The analysis is based on a combination of desk-based research, stakeholder interviews, and landscape-specific data. 

The publication provides a distinctive overview and comparison of financial mechanisms linked to the carbon benefits in a landscape initiative to ensure the landscape’s long-term financial sustainability, taking a real-life case study as an example. These mechanisms, especially corporate SBTi targets and voluntary carbon credits, are not often analysed in the same setting. The report illustrates how a combination of instruments might be best placed to cover the different needs within a landscape initiative. By leveraging carbon benefits and climate targets, the wider goals related to people, nature, and resilience, which are integral to landscape initiatives, can be advanced through the application of well-established frameworks.