Beyond unit-level certification: An operational agenda for biodiversity-positive tropical production landscapes

Rising global demand for tropical agro-commodities such as palm oil, cocoa, timber, and soy, intensifies pressure on the forests that hold most terrestrial biodiversity. Unit-level sustainability certification has largely failed to halt biodiversity loss, constrained by three interacting barriers: translating species' persistence requirements into practice, an annual biodiversity financing shortfall near US$711 billion, and fragmented governance. In this perspective, I argue for a shift from certified management units to biodiversity-positive production landscapes, structured around three interdependent domains: ecological requirements and outcome verification, sustainable finance, and integrated governance. Automated sensing can now yield field-validated biological key performance indicators (bio-KPIs) at landscape scale; tying these outcome metrics to financial instruments like concessional debt, first-loss structures, and biodiversity credits, reframes finance as an ongoing return on measured performance. Jurisdictional traceability renders territory-wide claims auditable and aligns them with the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. Together, these domains offer a route to landscapes that sustain both commodity production and biodiversity.