At The Partnership Collective, we couldn’t agree more. We also hear the quiet question that follows that rallying cry: whose power? And designed by whom?
The farms, forests, and landscapes at the base of global supply chains are already under pressure from poverty, marginalisation, and inequitable access to land, water, and markets. Climate change compounds all of that. Yet decarbonisation strategies, nature commitments, and net-zero targets, are too often being designed by individual actors without the stakeholders, rightsholders and partners who are key to turning these targets into a sustainable reality.
CASE STUDY: Diaconia — Agroecology as a design principle
Diaconia works with farming families in the semi-arid northeast of Brazil, supporting cotton production in agroecological intercropping systems combined with food crops. They don’t use the language of regenerative agriculture. For Diaconia, agroecology is an organisational philosophy — one that holds climate, nature, livelihoods, and equity as inseparable.
The Cotton in Agroecological Intercropping project, delivered in partnership with Veja and GIZ, supports 2,000 farming families to achieve a living income, with a particular focus on gender equity and the participation of young people. Organic certification is led by grassroots family farming associations, keeping ownership within the community.
The project is also measuring soil carbon stock and emissions, understanding the climate mitigation value of agroecological intercropping compared to conventional methods.
Climate. Nature. Livelihoods. Equity. One strategy, by design.
While climate and nature strategies themselves are increasingly common, their long-term impact and integration remain a challenge. The World Benchmarking Alliance has found that most nature action remains confined to pilots and individual programmes rather than becoming embedded across sourcing and business strategy.
These strategies frequently leave out the social and economic realities of the people and communities on whose land and labour they depend. This doesn’t just undermine impact, it undermines the strategy itself.
Why this requires intentional design
Climate and nature programmes are often designed through a specific lens; emissions reduction, biodiversity enhancement or habitat restoration for example. This narrow vision means they miss the broader intersecting issues, particularly the social and economic realities of the people at the base of supply chains.
Biodiversity commitments are a good example. As expectations on farmers grow, more certifications, more reporting, more practice change, the burden falls disproportionately on the smallholders least equipped to absorb it, without the income, support, or recognition to match.
The Partnership Collective’s Landscape by Design starts with intention, to understand the landscape in the broadest sense. Ecological, social, economic, and human.
Landscape by Design
Landscape by Design supports brands, retailers, and multistakeholder initiatives to develop integrated programmes and strategy at the intersection of climate, nature, livelihoods, and gender. Each phase is designed to produce something you can use.
It starts with a Landscape Diagnostic — a structured integrated assessment of your strategies, programmes, and approaches that surfaces what is driving outcomes, where the gaps are, and where investment will have the greatest impact.
From there, Landscape Partnership Design builds the community asset maps, partnership frameworks, and co-designed programme principles that allow organisations to work coherently at landscape level — with the farming associations, community organisations, and local knowledge that already exist.
And Landscape Evidence System provides the measurement and reporting tools that track whether programmes are creating change for people and place, making integrated progress visible and giving stakeholders credible, consistent evidence.
Interested in exploring what Landscape by Design could mean for your organisation? We’d love to talk.
The Partnership Collective is a specialist impact consultancy. We work with global organisations to design the frameworks, strategies and evidence systems that turn sustainability commitments into measurable change, built to work across complex, market-led operations. Find out more at https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-partnership-collective/
