The Land Sector and Removals Standard (LSR Standard) is the first GHG Protocol Standard to provide greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting requirements and guidance that equip companies with the methods needed to quantify, report, and track land emissions and CO₂ removals. This Standard offers companies accounting requirements and guidance to report technological CO₂ removals, such as direct air capture, and CO₂ capture with geologic storage. 

While emissions from agriculture and land use change account for roughly a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions, companies have historically lacked a consistent and credible way to account for these impacts. The LSR Standard addresses this gap by enabling companies to account for most land-sector emissions and, where they choose to do so, include CO₂ removals that meet robust integrity safeguards. 

Taking effect on January 1, 2027, the new Standard aims to support companies that own or control land, purchase or sell products produced on agricultural lands, or have other relevant land-based activities in their value chain, to account and report their GHG emissions and removals. It builds on and is used in combination with the Corporate Standard and Scope 3 Standard.  

This first version of the Standard and Guidance applies to agricultural emissions and removals and CO₂ removal technologies but does not apply to forestry or non-productive land uses. More background on decisions related to forest carbon accounting and next steps are detailed below.  

Access the full Land Sector and Removals Standard and Executive Summary.  

Who should use the LSR Standard 

If your company has land sector activities in its operations or value chain, including producing, processing, buying or selling agricultural products, the LSR Standard is essential for credible climate accounting that conforms with GHG Protocol’s voluntary framework.  

If your company seeks to report on CO₂ that is captured and stored in geologic reservoirs (whether from CO₂ removals or captured fossil carbon), the LSR Standard provides clarity and safeguards to optionally include those activities in your GHG inventory. 

The LSR Standard enables companies of any size to track progress toward climate targets with greater consistency, confidence and transparency. 

Key elements of the LSR Standard 

The LSR Standard fills a critical gap in corporate GHG inventory accounting to include emissions that come from agricultural production and land use change. It provides a flexible framework for companies to account for land emissions based on their traceability and data availability, from applying emission factors based on national averages for a known country of origin to farm-specific emission factors where they can trace the products they source to specific farms.   

This Standard requires companies with significant land sector activities to account for and report the following types of land emissions in their GHG inventory: 

• Land use change emissions, including emissions from deforestation and conversion of other natural ecosystems to agriculture 
• Land management net biogenic CO₂ emissions, including CO₂ emissions from soil degradation on croplands 
• Land management production emissions, including emissions from livestock, fertilizer use, rice cultivation, etc. 
• Biogenic product emissions, including emissions from bioenergy combustion (and when to report biogenic product CO₂ emissions within or separately from the physical GHG inventory) 

This Standard also recognizes a company’s contribution to global land pressure and land use change emissions that occur on lands outside their value chain, and requires companies also account for and report the following additional land sector accounting categories: 

• Land use, including the land needed to produce the agricultural products a company sources 
• Land carbon leakage, in cases where companies engage in high leakage risk activities that displace food and feed production to lands outside the company’s value chain 

In addition, the LSR Standard provides a comprehensive framework to account for and separately report CO₂ removals from both land management and emerging CO₂ removal technologies, another critical component of all decarbonization pathways limiting global warming to 1.5°C. While companies are not required to include CO₂ removals in their GHG inventory, this Standard provides critical safeguards to ensure high integrity reporting on CO₂ removals relevant to companies’ operations and value chain, including improved data quality, full lifecycle accounting, value chain traceability, and transparency around monitoring storage over time. 

Companies that choose to account for CO₂ removals in their Scope 1 or Scope 3 inventory must ensure safeguards are met for the following types of removals:  

• Land management CO₂ removals, including agricultural management practices that sequester carbon in biomass or soils 
• Captured biogenic CO₂ with geologic storage, including bioenergy carbon capture stored in geologic reservoirs 
• Technological CO₂ removals with geologic storage, including direct air capture stored in geologic reservoirs 

Land sector mitigation approaches, along with new CO₂ removal technologies, will play an important role in reducing, halting, and ultimately reversing the accumulation of GHGs in the atmosphere.    

How the LSR Standard was developed 

The LSR Standard was developed through a rigorous, transparent, and inclusive five-year effort involving broad global participation. This consultation involved more than 300 external reviewers with pilot testing by 96 companies and supporting partners. GHG Protocol is grateful to all organizations and individuals that contributed to this effort including members of the LSR Advisory Committee, LSR Technical Working Group, Forest Carbon Accounting Technical Working Group, and the companies that participated in the pilot testing in 2022. 

Through subgroup meetings and workshops involving 138 international experts, the LSR Technical Working Group proposed revisions to the draft Guidance to address more than 4,000 public comments. That proposal was then reviewed, refined and approved by the LSR Advisory Committee. Two issues the AC was unable to reach consensus on, agricultural leakage and forest carbon accounting, were brought to the Independent Standards Board (ISB) for decisions.    

On Agriculture Leakage 

Agricultural leakage refers to how displacing food or feed production drives agricultural land expansion, leading to land use change beyond the lands in a company’s operations or value chain. The ISB concluded that agricultural leakage presents a significant risk of emissions that would be systematically undercounted if accounting for high leakage risk activities was not required.  

The ISB discussed the main drivers of agricultural leakage and how growing demand for food and other land-based products is resulting in increased pressure to convert natural lands for agriculture. Because total land area is finite, and competition for land is increasing, there is a high potential for “leakage.” Given that such land use change emissions occur outside of a company’s operations and value chain, the ISB decided that the LSR Standard would require companies to separately report land carbon leakage outside of the physical GHG inventory when they engage in specific high leakage risk activities.  

On Forest Carbon Accounting 

Much appreciation is due to the large amount of time and technical work undertaken by many stakeholders on this complex component of the LSR standard. Both the LSR Standard Technical Working Group and the Independent Standards Board, which also convened a Technical Working Group in 2025 specifically for Forest Carbon Accounting, fully recognized the differences of perspective that currently exist both within and across the academic and practitioner communities on forest carbon accounting, from both a scientific and a feasibility perspective.  

The LSR Standard Technical Working Group surfaced and debated many critical issues and the GHG Protocol Independent Standards Board (ISB) also worked hard on this issue. The Forest Carbon Accounting Technical Working Group in fact developed two proposals for how to account for GHG emissions from forests.  

When discussing the two proposals, ISB members noted that recent scientific publications (for example, see 1, 2, 3) raise questions about forest carbon accounting approaches, particularly the different ways these approaches account for anthropogenic CO₂ removals in forests and how they could be adapted to apply to a company’s management or purchasing activities. In addition, it was clear that these approaches have not yet been pilot tested. 

Both science and feasibility are core design principles of GHG Protocol standards, and more time is required to ensure that both are appropriately met. 

To avoid delaying the release of the wider LSR Standard, the GHG Steering Committee decided that forest carbon accounting would not feature in this version of the LSR Standard. Instead, a Request for Information will soon be issued to gather stakeholder input on how forest carbon accounting can best feature in a future update of the LSR Standard, which would be preceded by further field testing around the world.  

Until the release of an updated LSR Standard that includes forest carbon accounting, companies choosing to disclose forest carbon impacts should be transparent about their chosen methodology. 

Given the different views, and to allow for adequate stakeholder input and pilot testing, an updated LSR Standard that includes forest carbon accounting may take considerable time.     

What’s next 

In the second quarter of 2026 (April-June), GHG Protocol plans to publish accompanying guidance which will complement the Standard by providing users with more information on how to implement the requirements and recommendations in the Standard, complete with equations, examples, and case studies from pilot testing companies.  

Together, the LSR Standard and forthcoming Guidance are designed to strengthen the credibility, consistency, and comparability of corporate climate reporting by ensuring land-sector sources and sinks are fully and transparently accounted for. Throughout 2026, GHG Protocol will support companies in implementing the LSR Standard through trainings, events and other stakeholder engagement to facilitate adoption of the Standard across diverse land-sector value chains.  

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