GHG Protocol publishes Land Sector and Removals Standard

What happened

On 30 January 2026 GHG Protocol published version 1.0 of its Land Sector and Removals (LSR) Standard. The standard takes effect on 1 January 2027. In June 2026 version 1.1 was published together with implementation guidance, containing minor, non-substantive corrections; users should now work from this version.

The standard covers:

• Mandatory reporting: Land use change emissions, including deforestation and the conversion of natural ecosystems to agriculture; net biogenic CO₂ emissions from land management (for example degradation of agricultural soils); land management production emissions such as livestock, fertiliser use and rice cultivation; and biogenic product emissions such as the combustion of bioenergy.
• Leakage: Companies in activities with a high leakage risk report land use and land carbon leakage separately from the physical inventory.
• Removals (optional): Land management removals, biogenic CO₂ capture with geological storage and technological removals with geological storage can be included in the Scope 1 or Scope 3 inventory, subject to safeguards such as data quality, life cycle accounting, value chain traceability and storage monitoring.

The first version does not cover forestry or non-production land uses; forest carbon accounting has been left to a future update.

Who is affected

Turkish companies that produce, process, buy or sell agricultural products in their operations or value chain: food and beverage producers, textile brands and suppliers using cotton, retailers and exporters of agricultural raw materials. From 2027, these companies' Scope 3 inventories should show land use change and land management emissions separately. SBTi's FLAG (Forest, Land and Agriculture) targets also use this standard as their accounting reference (SBTi FLAG update).

What companies should do

• Collect country and region of origin information for your agricultural raw materials; the land use change calculation depends on it.
• Clarify where items such as livestock, fertiliser and rice sit in Scope 1 or Scope 3.
• If you are planning carbon farming or soil carbon projects, set up monitoring infrastructure that meets the safeguards for removals.

Alalëa supports FLAG emissions calculations and preparation for the LSR Standard: FLAG emissions.