SBTi FLAG targets: when they are required and how to set them

There are two routes into the requirement, and meeting either one is enough.

The first is by sector. SBTi designated six sectors where a FLAG target is required regardless of how much land emissions weigh: forestry, timber, pulp, paper and rubber; agricultural production; animal source food production; food and beverage processing; food and staples retailing; and tobacco.

The second is by weight. Any company whose FLAG emissions reach 20% or more of its total across all three scopes is required to set one, whatever its sector.

Below 20% the target is recommended but optional. There is a concrete consequence to skipping it, though: FLAG emissions still have to sit inside the boundary of your energy and industry target, and there you cannot count any removals. Carbon sequestered in soil or forest does not count toward it. For many agricultural companies that alone justifies setting the FLAG target even when not required.

This is where most people get it wrong, and the boundary is not intuitive. FLAG covers agriculture to the farm gate — processing excluded — plus land use change and land management, including forestry to the yard, again excluding processing.

Three things fall inside a FLAG target:

Land use change

All conversion emissions, including those associated with livestock feed and with converting natural forest into plantation. Estimated with either a direct or a statistical method, across scopes 1 and 3.

Land management

Biogenic CO₂, N₂O and CH₄. Also CO₂ from on-farm vehicles and fertiliser production, because they are embedded in the emission factors used for these activities.

Removals

Sequestration from improved forest management, agroforestry, restoration, silvopasture, soil organic carbon and biochar. Reported separately from emissions, never netted against them.

And the one that trips people up most: machinery diesel and irrigation energy are not FLAG. They are energy and industry, and belong in your scope 1 and 2 target. An inventory that dumps everything happening on the farm into the FLAG bucket is built wrong, and it shows at validation.

FLAG and energy-industry accounting are kept separate throughout. They are never aggregated into a single target.

A FLAG target must cover at least 95% of FLAG scope 1 emissions and at least 67% of FLAG scope 3 emissions. Each threshold is met independently — one does not offset the other.

If scope 3 also accounts for 40% or more of your total across all three scopes, you need two separate scope 3 targets: one FLAG and one energy-industry, each meeting its own 67%.

SBTi offers a sector pathway and commodity pathways, and they can be combined.

The sector pathway is a 3.03% absolute annual reduction. It suits companies with diversified land activities across their chain, typically midstream and downstream players.

There are eleven commodity pathways — ten agricultural plus timber and wood fibre — and they work by intensity convergence rather than absolute reduction. They are not freely chosen: you may only use a commodity pathway if that commodity accounts for 10% or more of your total gross FLAG emissions across all scopes.

With their own pathway

Beef, chicken, dairy, leather, maize, palm oil, pork, rice, soy, wheat, and timber and wood fibre.

Without one

Cocoa, coffee and rubber. Recognised land commodities, but they follow the sector pathway.

Two specific rules worth keeping at hand: companies in the forest and paper sector, or where timber and wood fibre account for 10% or more of FLAG emissions, are required to use the timber pathway. And rubber companies use the sector pathway, not the timber one, even though rubber comes from a tree.

When using a commodity pathway you must apply the regional version matching your sourcing, not the global one. The exception runs the other way: if the global pathway turns out more ambitious than your region's, you may opt for it.

This is the blocking requirement. Without a public no-deforestation commitment there is no validated FLAG target, and its conditions changed in March 2026.

Target date

At most two years after submitting the FLAG target, and never later than 31 December 2030. It used to be a fixed date; the March 2026 revision made it relative.

Cutoff date

2020 or earlier is recommended. If later, it must be at least three years before submission, and justified publicly for the relevant part of the chain.

Scope of the commitment

Companies assess which deforestation-linked commodities exist in their chain — produced, sourced, contained in purchased products, or embedded as animal feed — through risk assessment and due diligence.

Publication

Within 12 months of validating the target, the commitment must be published on the company's own site, including the method and outcome of that assessment and how it will be delivered.

SBTi further recommends aligning the commitment with Accountability Framework initiative guidance, and adding no-conversion and no peat burning commitments.

The ambition level of a FLAG target is not chosen separately: it follows the ambition of your energy and industry target. If that one is aligned to 1.5 °C, so is FLAG.

The timeframe is a minimum of five and a maximum of ten years from the date the target is submitted for validation — not from the base year, which is the common mistake.

For the long term the reference is the Corporate Net-Zero Standard: where the energy and industry target requires at least a 90% reduction, FLAG requires at least 72%. The gap reflects a biophysical floor that land cannot go below.

• Check whether your sector is among the six designated. If it is, the target is required and no percentage needs calculating.
• Split the inventory: land emissions on one side, fuels and energy on the other. Without that split neither target can be set.
• Work out how much each commodity weighs within your FLAG emissions. 10% is what unlocks its own pathway.
• Review the previous land use of each plot and its year of change. That is the evidence behind the no-deforestation commitment, and it is worth having before committing to a date.
• If you have removals — soil, agroforestry, restoration — make sure they are accounted for separately from emissions. Netting them is an invalidating mistake.