Promoting sustainable agro-commodity production through jurisdictional approaches: insights from a synthesis review

This blog presents findings from a synthesis review of jurisdictional approaches as a model for promoting sustainable agro-commodity production. It examines how JAs function as integrated, government-led, multi-stakeholder initiatives and evaluates their contributions to environmental goals, social inclusion, and landscape governance. The review highlights emerging progress, ongoing challenges in financing and impact assessment, and the critical role of context in determining effectiveness.

Summary by Evidensia Team

Amidst the ongoing search for more effective governance structures to promote sustainable agriculture and landscape conservation, jurisdictional approaches (JAs) have emerged as an innovative model attracting rising interest. But what exactly are JAs, and how are they supporting sustainability in landscapes where crops like soy, palm oil or cocoa are grown? In this blog, we present the latest findings from a synthesis review on JAs, examining their potential contributions to sustainable agro-commodity production and the challenges they face as they seek to transform sustainability practices across diverse social and political contexts. What are Jurisdictional Approaches? There are numerous types of Jurisdictional Approaches. Generally, the term refers to an integrated landscape governance initiative in which state, business and civil society stakeholders collaborate to improve environmental sustainability. One high profile example often referred to as a JA is the Produce, Conserve, Include initiative, which was established in 2015 in Mato Grosso, Brazil. This harnesses collaboration between government, farmers, civil society and the private sector to promote reduced deforestation while supporting agricultural production and strengthening social inclusion. In Berau district in Indonesia’s East Kalimantan province, another pioneering JA has established a multi-stakeholder governance process to support negotiation of a low emissions economic development plan for the whole district–again with the aim of reducing deforestation associated with palm oil production, and improving smallholder inclusion and productivity. A defining feature of JAs compared to other multi-stakeholder collaborations is a high level of (usually sub-national) government involvement. JAs emerge at the interface of decades of efforts to promote forest and landscape conservation policy, and to promote sustainable agro-commodity supply chains. Integrating insights and practices from both these traditions, the central aim of JAs is to harness coordinated, multi-stakeholder efforts to drive change towards sustainability within a whole jurisdiction, through a mix of both public policy and private supply chain interventions. JAs are rapidly gaining traction amongst practitioners working to promote the sustainable production of internationally traded agro-commodities, particularly in landscapes dominated by the production of commodities like palm oil, cocoa, soy, and beef, which are recognised as key drivers of deforestation and environmental degradation. By aligning government policy with market incentives for sustainable practices, it is hoped that JAs may offer the potential to scale up the impact of efforts to reduce deforestation, improve agricultural practices, and support broader social and economic development goals. Key Questions on the Impact of Jurisdictional Approaches To take stock of current knowledge on the potential and challenges of JAs, we conducted an in-depth analysis of both academic and grey literature, reviewing 67 publications in total. These included publications in which the concept of JAs had been explicitly invoked, and those analysing case studies that fell within our definition of JAs, even where authors used different conceptual language. The studies we reviewed encompassed evidence from a range of geographical locations, primarily in high-risk deforestation areas like Brazil, Indonesia, and some (other) parts of Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa. We analysed the state of existing knowledge on JAs with respect to three central questions:

How are JAs contributing to achieving sustainability objectives, and how can their impact be assessed?
How are JAs addressing participation and social inclusion, particularly the involvement of marginalized groups?
What are the biggest opportunities and obstacles facing jurisdictional approaches in varied implementation contexts?

The Impact of Jurisdictional Approaches Since JAs are relatively new governance frameworks, few studies have conducted systematic evaluations of their long-term impact. The complexity of measuring success stems from several factors:

Long time horizons: Many JAs aim to produce transformative changes that take years, if not decades, to fully materialise.
Multiplicity of goals: JAs aim to address multiple environmental, social, and economic objectives, which makes it difficult to evaluate their success in the absence of complex and multi-dimensional performance metrics.
Multiple confounding factors: JAs are implemented alongside a wide array of overlapping policy and supply chain interventions, which makes it difficult to disentangle impacts resulting from JA interventions from impacts of interacting initiatives.

Despite these methodological challenges, what do we know about the performance of JAs to date? Existing evidence suggests that some progress has already been made, though processes of change have been slow. Many JAs are starting to make progress toward their goals, particularly in the form of negotiating deforestation reduction commitments and promoting sustainable agricultural practices. A small number of jurisdictions, such as Mato Grosso in Brazil, have also developed policy and legal frameworks to support these efforts. In some cases, such efforts have included the establishment of new performance monitoring tools and verification systems that attempt to document and disaggregate the complex impacts of JA interventions. However, few JAs have so far progressed beyond these preliminary phases. In the face of inadequate global support in the form of performance-based funding, alongside challenges in developing straightforward metrics required to access such funding, many JAs have struggled to mobilize sufficient finance to incentivize and facilitate the scale and speed of reforms needed to realise their ambitious aims. Social Inclusion and Participation Another major ambition of JAs is to promote social inclusion in sustainability governance, particularly through the inclusion of marginalized groups such as smallholder farmers, indigenous peoples, and women. Our synthesis review revealed a variety of institutional mechanisms being used to facilitate the participation of these groups, including:

Multi-stakeholder governance structures: Many jurisdictional initiatives have established special purpose multi-stakeholder forums that aim to include diverse groups in governance processes.
Co-development of sustainability roadmaps: In several cases, local stakeholders, including marginalized groups, are involved in creating jurisdictional sustainability plans (often coordinated via the formalised multi-stakeholder forums).
Capacity-building programs: Some JAs include training and financial incentives aimed at empowering smallholders and other marginalised groups to adopt sustainable practices.

However, the review also highlighted several challenges regarding social inclusion. Social inclusion has sometimes been narrowly conceived, with a central focus on the inclusion of (often poor) smallholder farmers overshadowing efforts to promote other dimensions of inclusion (such as gender). Moreover, while JAs have opened formal political spaces for broad-based stakeholder dialogue in the form of multi-stakeholder forums, there is little evidence that marginalized groups are being substantively empowered to influence decision-making processes. Opportunities and Challenges: The Importance of Context Although we can identify some cross-cutting global trends, our review also highlights significant variation in approaches and impacts across cases, shaped by factors that are heavily context-dependent. Several enabling factors can help JAs thrive. Strong political leadership and resourcing at the local level can drive necessary reforms and coordinate diverse stakeholders. Robust state capacity and political stability help ensure durable resourcing and political support. Meanwhile, high levels of private sector engagement and commitment—in turn often facilitated by high proportions of internationally-traded commodity production in a given landscape–help to incentivize sustained commitments. Nonetheless, significant challenges remain. Many JAs are overly reliant on donor funding, as robust markets for sustainable finance and commodities remain underdeveloped. Significant challenges also flow from underdevelopment and persistent contestation in systems of performance measurement, verification and assurance—credible assurance remaining critical for expanded market support for JAs. JAs are also highly sensitive to changes in local leadership. When political priorities shift, JAs lose momentum, and their objectives may be sidelined in favour of short-term economic goals underpinned by unsustainable forms of resource extraction. Understanding context is crucial both to identifying opportunities and navigating challenges linked to the often fragile social and political leadership coalitions that underpin the policy frameworks on which JAs partially rely. In landscapes and jurisdictions with deep inequalities and histories of dependence on extractivist economic strategies, JAs need to continually juggle both threats of political pushback, and obstacles to broad-based inclusion in the benefits JAs produce. Conclusion Jurisdictional approaches represent a promising and innovative solution to the complex challenges of sustainable agro-commodity production. While significant progress has been made, there is still much work to be done to ensure that JAs can achieve their ambitious goals. The key lies in balancing environmental objectives with social inclusion, ensuring strong political leadership, and securing sustainable financing. More resilient, durable and impactful JAs will depend importantly on the capacity of JA proponents to navigate changes in local political leadership, to persuade, incentivize or circumvent potential detractors of strengthened sustainability governance. For both donors and program proponents, this means engaging not only with incumbent governments but also with a wide range of local political leaders. This helps build broad coalitions that can last through multiple project cycles as well as shifting political administrations. Widespread promotion of information about the political and financial benefits of JAs—such as attracting new markets and investors—can support this effort. Program supporters and donors can also increase attention to social inclusion—making sure that not just smallholder farmers, but also women, Indigenous communities, and people with disabilities are meaningfully involved. This can be challenging, in the face of tensions between working with powerful local leaders and ensuring that benefits are shared with more marginalized groups. One practical step that could be more widely used is to map out local power dynamics early on using power mapping tools, and draw on this analysis to inform program planning and delivery strategies. Amidst elevated global political and economic uncertainty, creative strategies for securing long-term public and private resourcing in support of JAs will also be crucial. Domestic governments, international buyers and financial institutions will all need to play a role in opening up medium to long-term financing opportunities. Attracting finance in turn demands clear evidence on impacts. Yet monitoring and evaluation methodologies themselves will need to do a better job of capturing the complex, interactive and long-term impacts of jurisdictional interventions. In addition to the increasingly sophisticated supply chain and project level monitoring and verifications systems on which much attention has focused, there is a need for companies and donors to actively support local government capacity in monitoring and evaluation. Where possible, such efforts can support established domestic systems of data collection and reporting. For example, development of a set of Sustainable Jurisdictions Indicators by the Indonesian Sustainable Districts Forum (LTKL) is helping local governments to manage complex performance reporting by integrating both international and national indicators into government data collection and reporting systems. As we continue to refine these approaches, we can draw valuable lessons from both the successes and the setbacks experienced by pioneers of jurisdictional approaches. For practitioners working in sustainability governance, JAs provide a valuable opportunity to drive change at scale—if the right strategies are implemented, and if the political and social context is carefully considered. This blog draws on insights from the systematic review: Jurisdictional approaches to sustainable agro-commodity governance: the state of knowledge and future research directions and the learning event: Jurisdictional approaches: how can they contribute to achieving sustainability objectives?

View details of the primary research behind this resource

Jurisdictional approaches to sustainable agro-commodity governance: the state of knowledge and future research directions

Synthesis paper

Journal article

Published June 2025 by Evidensia. Authored by Kate Macdonald , Janina Grabs, Rachael Diprose, Bahruddin and Philip Schleifer

Promoting sustainable agro-commodity production through jurisdictional approaches: insights from a synthesis review

Research Focus

Region/Country:

Summary

Research detail

Jurisdictional approaches to sustainable agro-commodity governance: the state of knowledge and future research directions

Evidensia partners