The RPLC model promotes sustainable agriculture, ecosystem restoration and community resilience.23 This model supports both climate mitigation and adaptation, through collaborative governance structures that facilitate engagement between governments, businesses and civic organizations at the community, regional and national levels in India, Pakistan, Tanzania and Brazil. Founded in 2021, RPLCs take a landscape-based approach to implement regenerative agriculture. The model aims to address systemic challenges such as degraded landscapes, declining yields and incomes of smallholder farmers, socio-economic issues and limited government funding. The RPLC approach goes beyond individual farm interventions for regenerative agriculture and, instead, focuses on restoring and improving an ecosystem. This is combined with a landscape approach to land management, addressing the unique needs of each landscape with targeted, local solutions. The focus is on sustained ecosystem health, reducing long-term risks and creating more resilient sourcing models. At the core of each RPLC are localized, participatory governance structures called “compacts”, established in key commodity-sourcing areas. Compacts enable direct engagement between private sector companies from the food and fashion sectors, local government representatives, philanthropies and local farmer collectives. Compact members co-design and execute tailored initiatives to meet collectively agreed landscape improvement targets, such as implementing regenerative agriculture practices. For companies that often directly fund these initiatives, engaging with farmer collectives improves supply chain visibility and sustainability and enables implementation of targeted projects while directly supporting local communities and creating landscape-level impact. The RPLC approach originated from various sustainable cotton projects involving the private sector, farmer collectives and other multi-stakeholder organizations, such as the Organic Cotton Accelerator (OCA) in India. This initiative proved the value of creating market links between farmer collectives and the private sector within the cotton supply chain, and encouraged government involvement. It also demonstrated potential in agricultural areas beyond cotton. With seed funding from the Laudes Foundation, the RPLC model was formalized with founding partners including WWF, IDH (Sustainable Trade Initiative) and GIZ (the German government’s principal development agency), which convene these collaboratives in the four countries.Each RPLC provides a forum for stakeholders, who otherwise lack the pathways to connect and address shared challenges. Formal governance – along with a structured, repeatable process across RPLCs that facilitates joint target-setting and ownership – enables a diverse group of stakeholders to collaborate and remain engaged. Landscape and project-level targets for each RPLC are based on initial baseline studies and benchmarks, conducted in partnership with organizations such as the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in India, followed by a member consultation process to ensure collective agreement and accountability. To date, the RPLC model has: –Enabled ongoing restoration of 1 million hectares, affecting more than 300,000 farmers. –Boosted smallholder farmers’ income by 25-30%, including issuing approximately €16 million of premium payments to farmers in India through partners such as OCA for regenerative and organic practices. –Organized more than 500 self-help groups for women and village savings and lending associations to support diversified earning models. With multiple RPLCs underway, the focus is now on standardizing approaches and highlighting shared lessons, to help achieve the project’s ambition of regenerating 50 million hectares globally by 2035. As a founding partner, Laudes Foundation is working to set up a global landscape finance facility with a range of institutional investors and partners to ensure RPLCs can access the long-term sustainable financing they need to grow. Some financial models for scaling-up RPLCs are already being tested: for example, the project is working with the Green Climate Fund in Tanzania on a blended finance and technical assistance facility to enhance climate adaptation and food security for smallholder farmers across landscapes in Sub-Saharan Africa.CASE STUDY Regenerative Production Landscape Collaboratives (RPLCs) – Finalist, 2025 GAEA Award for Catalytic Partnership for the Planet Each RPLC provides a forum for stakeholders, who otherwise lack the pathways to connect and address shared challenges. Formal governance enables a diverse group of stakeholders to collaborate and remain engaged. Making Collaboration Work for Climate and Nature: Practical Insights from GAEA Award Winners 18