Understanding the GHG Protocol Land Sector and Removals Standard

For companies in food, agriculture, consumer goods and bio-based materials, land has always been a material part of their carbon story, and one of the hardest to tell accurately. Emissions from land use change, soil management and agricultural inputs are spread across geographies, suppliers and farming systems that are difficult to trace and even harder to quantify consistently.

The GHG Protocol's Land Sector and Removals (LS&R) Standard introduces the first standardised corporate framework for accounting for land-based emissions, land use change and carbon removals. Going into effect 1 January 2027, it sets new expectations for how land impacts are measured, reported and disclosed.

This guide explains what the standard covers, why it matters and what companies should be doing now to prepare.

Why land accounting has always been difficult

For most companies, land-related emissions sit deep in Scope 3. They are spread across farms, regions, and suppliers, often with limited traceability and inconsistent data availability. As a result, there has been a widespread reliance on high-level averages, or outright exclusion of land impacts.

That approach is becoming increasingly difficult to justify. Land use change, soil emissions, livestock emissions, and land pressure now represent a material share of emissions for many sectors.  For companies with agricultural supply chains, it can represent the single largest source of Scope 3 emissions, often outweighing all other categories combined. The LS&R Standard is designed to make land impacts visible, comparable and auditable, and to create a consistent basis on which investors, regulators and target-setting initiatives can assess corporate claims.

What the standard covers

The Land Sector and Removals Standard is a supplement to the existing GHG Protocol Corporate Standard and Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Standard.It defines requirements for how companies should account for four categories of land-related activity.

1. Land Use Change Emissions cover emissions arising from the conversion of natural ecosystems (forests, wetlands, grasslands) to agricultural or other land uses. These are often the largest and least-reported component of agricultural Scope 3 footprints. The standard requires companies to account for land use change emissions even where conversion occurred years prior to the current reporting period, allocating those emissions over time.
2. Land Management Emissions cover ongoing emissions from soils, livestock, fertiliser application, and other agricultural practices associated with producing the goods a company sources. These are distinct from land use change and cannot be adequately captured through spend-based methods.
3. Land Use and Occupation introduces a metric beyond emissions: the hectares of land required to produce the goods a company sources or produces. This makes land pressure visible as a disclosure metric in its own right, which matters for sectors where biodiversity and ecosystem impacts are as material as carbon.
4. Carbon Removals covers CO₂ removals from land management practices, such as improved soil carbon sequestration, and from technological removal pathways. The standard applies strict requirements to removal claims, including conservative accounting assumptions, permanence tracking and reversal accounting. This makes removals harder to report, but significantly more credible when they are.

Note: Version 1.0 of the standard applies to agriculture and CO₂ removal technologies. Forestry is not fully addressed in this version, with further guidance expected in future updates.

A real-world example: Soy in a food supply chain

To understand what changes in practice, consider a food manufacturer sourcing soy as a key ingredient. Under conventional Scope 3 accounting, that company might apply a spend-based emission factor to its soy purchases. This would miss the most important drivers of actual climate impact: where the soy is grown, whether that land was recently converted from natural ecosystems, and how the land is currently managed.

Under the Land Sector and Removals Standard, the company is expected to account for:

• Land use change emissions — if sourcing regions are associated with recent ecosystem conversion, those emissions must be identified, allocated and reported, even if the clearance predates the company's sourcing relationship.
• Land management emissions — soil emissions, fertiliser use and farming practice emissions tied to soy production in those sourcing regions are included as part of the company's Scope 3 inventory.
• Land occupation — the total agricultural land area required to produce the soy the company sources is reported, making land pressure visible to investors and stakeholders.
• Traceability — the precision of the data used depends on how far down the supply chain a company can trace its sourcing. Country-level traceability allows the use of jurisdiction-level data. Regional or farm-level traceability comes with an expectation of correspondingly precise data.

This does not mean every company needs perfect farm-level data tomorrow. But it does mean that data quality and traceability directly determine the robustness of a company's carbon inventory, and that gaps previously hidden in averages will become visible.

What changes for companies

Land can no longer be excluded without explanation.

 If land sector activities are material to a company's operations or value chain, they are expected to be included in the GHG inventory. Exclusions must be justified, not simply assumed.

Scope 3 becomes more spatially specific. 

Generic global averages are permitted only where traceability genuinely prevents more precise accounting. Companies with better supply chain visibility are expected to use it. This raises the bar for supplier engagement and sourcing data programmes.

Removal claims face a higher evidential standard. 

Many companies have included land-based removals in their net-zero pathways with limited rigour. The LS&R Standard's requirements on permanence, conservative accounting and reversal tracking mean that removal claims which were previously accepted will need to be revisited.

Land occupation becomes a formal disclosure metric. 

Beyond emissions, reporting the land footprint in hectares gives stakeholders a clearer picture of biodiversity and ecosystem risk, relevant not only for climate targets but for nature-related disclosure frameworks such as TNFD.

The standard is effective from 2027, but that timeline is deceptive. 

Target-setting bodies, investors and regulators are already incorporating land-related expectations into their frameworks. Companies that wait until 2027 to begin building the necessary data infrastructure will find themselves behind.

What companies should do now

1. Assess whether land is material to your footprint. If you source agricultural commodities, bio-based materials, or natural ingredients—or if you report carbon removals—land is almost certainly material. A high-level screening assessment can confirm scope and priority.
2. Map your sourcing regions and traceability position. Understand where your key agricultural commodities are grown, what level of traceability you currently have, and where data improvements are realistic in the near term. This mapping is the foundation for everything that follows.
3. Review your Scope 3 methodology for land-intensive categories. Spend-based methods cannot adequately capture land use change or land management emissions. Categories such as purchased goods, upstream transportation and waste will need more granular approaches for land-intensive inputs.
4. Audit any removal claims in your current inventory or net-zero pathway. Check whether existing removals reporting meets the LS&R Standard's requirements on permanence and reversal accounting. Where it does not, revise your approach before disclosure scrutiny increases.
5. Begin building data infrastructure now. Reliable land accounting at scale requires centralised, traceable data. The earlier that infrastructure is in place, the more useful it becomes as regulatory and investor expectations tighten.

How Zevero can help

The Land Sector and Removals Standard introduces complexity that most corporate data systems were not built to handle: spatially distributed supply chains, time-allocated land use change emissions, traceability-dependent methodology choices, and permanence-adjusted removal accounting.

At Zevero, we help companies translate standards like this into practical reporting. From land-intensive Scope 3 categories to FLAG alignment and removal accounting, our platform is built to handle the complexity without losing credibility.

If land is part of your footprint, now is the time to get ahead of it.

Want to understand how the Land Sector and Removals Standard applies to your supply chain? Speak with the Zevero team to assess where your current inventory stands.