Jurisdictional sourcing: Leveraging commodity supply chains to reduce tropical deforestation at scale

There is growing interest in using jurisdictional sourcing (JS) as a hybrid that combines the best elements of jurisdictional planning and producer or sectoral-level sourcing and certification. JS involves bringing together key stakeholders in a given national or sub-national political jurisdiction to agree on a land-use plan that maintains forest ecosystems while promoting enhanced commodity production on degraded lands.

We convened a group of practitioners and experts to develop a theory of change that explicitly defines what JS entails from both the perspective of a given jurisdiction as well as a global markets point of view. We also developed generic objectives and indicators that can be used to measure performance. We then vetted our initial drafts with a wider circle of JS practitioners/experts as well as through a review of relevant literature and against seven case studies.

It is our hope that if practitioners implementing and/or funding JS use this framework to collect and publicly share data about their specific experiences, we collectively will be able to refine this theory of change to represent our enhanced understanding of this emerging tool in the conservationist's toolbox.

Read the paper here: Jurisdictional sourcing: Leveraging commodity supply chains to reduce tropical deforestation at scale. A generic theory of change for a conservation strategy, v 1.0

This is a paper from our Blueprints for Key Conservation Strategies series. The series focuses on the generic ToC for a conservation strategy that has been developed by a group of practitioners and experts who have been intimately involved in using and assessing the effectiveness of this strategy.

How can you contribute? Although we are launching this series with a set of initial strategies, we invite contributions from the community. If you have a generic ToC for a conservation strategy, please contact us. We are happy to receive ideas in any stage of completeness ranging from completed manuscripts to initial concepts that could be refined and developed. To submit a generic ToC for a conservation strategy, please contact us at caml@fosonline.org