Land Sector and Removals Standard: how land is accounted for from 2027

Requirement 1 is direct: it applies to any company reporting a corporate GHG inventory in conformance with the GHG Protocol that has significant land sector activities in its operations or value chain, or that chooses to account for and report CO₂ removals.

Note the "or value chain". Owning land is not required: a food company buying agricultural raw material has land sector activities in its scope 3, and the standard applies.

The GHG Protocol explicitly sets no numerical significance threshold. The company defines and justifies it — a freedom and a responsibility, since that criterion ends up in the report and an assurer will read it.

This is the substantive change. Requirement 31 mandates disaggregating the report into accounting categories that cannot be mixed. First, the coarse split between fossil and land:

Fossil fuel and industrial emissions

Disaggregated by scope 1, 2 and 3, and within scope 3 by each category.

Land emissions

Further disaggregated into four subcategories, each by scope 1 and by each scope 3 category.

The four land subcategories are:

Land use change

Carbon released when one use is converted into another: forest to cropland, grassland to plantation.

Land management net biogenic CO₂

The net biogenic carbon flux associated with how land is managed over time.

Land management production emissions

What the productive activity emits on that land: soil nitrous oxide, methane, urea and lime.

Biogenic product emissions

Those associated with biogenic carbon held in products, under Requirement 17.

Each subcategory is also reported broken down by gas. For scopes 1 and 2, in tonnes of the gas and in tonnes of CO₂ equivalent; for each scope 3 category, in CO₂ equivalent.

Common practice was to subtract what was captured from what was emitted and show a net figure. The standard prohibits it: emissions and removals are distinct accounting categories and are reported separately.

Reporting removals is optional. But choosing to report them activates every associated requirement — traceability, sourcing region safeguards, data quality, permanence — and you cannot take only the convenient part.

An aggregate total is allowed, but it goes elsewhere: "total emissions" is reported separately from the physical inventory, under additional accounting categories. The logic is to keep the physical inventory free of aggregates that hide composition.

A conversion is not charged entirely to the year it happened. It is spread across an assessment period whose length depends on the crop.

• For annual crops, or products with a cycle or rotation of up to 20 years, the period is the 20 years prior to and including the reporting year.
• For products with a cycle or rotation longer than 20 years, the period is the length of that cycle. Orchards and forest plantations carry their conversion considerably longer.

The split uses linear amortisation, weighting products harvested closer to the conversion year more heavily. Another method may be used, but it must be disclosed and justified.

Beyond emissions, the standard requires two things that are not tonnes and get overlooked during planning.

Land occupation (Requirement 12)

Hectares of agricultural land occupation, in scope 1 and in scope 3 for each category. A metric parallel to the gas inventory: it does not add to the tonnes, it is reported alongside.

Land carbon leakage (Requirement 13)

If one of your activities displaces food production and you consequently show lower emissions or higher removals, you must quantify the impact of that displaced production and report it separately.

Leakage is triggered in three specific cases: using agricultural products for non-food, non-feed purposes — crop-based biofuels, bio-based feedstocks; a sustained reduction in food production from a change in use or management to which you attribute removals; or a sustained reduction in yield per hectare from changing management practices.

• An inventory split between fossil-industrial and land. If irrigation diesel and soil nitrous oxide currently sit in the same bucket, that is the first debt.
• The four land subcategories distinguishable, not a single field total.
• Previous land use and year of change for every plot, going back at least twenty years.
• Hectares of occupation, both your own and across the supply chain.
• If you account for removals, full traceability: without it, better not to report them, because reporting activates every requirement.
• A written significance criterion, if you intend to exclude land activities. The standard requires you to justify it.