Strategic collaboration in the supply chain: Co-investment and co-claiming models

To effectively tackle shared Scope 3 emissions in the food and agriculture sector, companies need to collaborate with supply chain partners. With many companies sourcing goods from the same producers, this is crucial to fairly distribute the needed investments and claim the resulting benefits.

Powerful new models for co-investment and co-claiming can catalyze a move to a shared-value model, where contributing organizations can benefit from joint climate action. Sharing financial risks, aligning incentives, and working with suppliers to design and implement science-based solutions can help scale resilient, low-carbon agricultural systems.

However, making these collaborative models work in practice also requires reliable ways to track mitigation outcomes, allocate them, and manage claims across value chain partners.

Learn what this collaboration in the supply chain could look like below.

Co-investing in value chain emissions reductions

A report from the Food and Land Use Coalition warns that, while the costs of mitigating agricultural emissions are manageable for the sector as a whole, the costs and benefits tend to fall unequally across the value chain. Co-investing can address this problem by pooling funding from multiple value chain actors, for example, a retailer brand investing in farm-level interventions together with farmers, mills, or aggregators.

This can benefit all actors: by sharing costs, the contribution of each entity is lower. Farmers are able to get a much-needed boost to bridge the gap of initial investments, as interventions such as regenerative agriculture may take multiple seasons before yields stabilize or increase. It also gives a longer-term demand signal that assures farmers that companies are willing to buy their low-carbon produce. Mid-level suppliers and retailer brands benefit from lower Scope 3 emissions, which can support their reporting and progress toward Science-based targets. This can create market opportunities for low-carbon goods, as well as lead to preferential sourcing agreements and improved reputation among customers.

Co-investment is especially suitable when a company only sources a fraction of its produce from a certain supplier; when multiple companies sourcing from the same supplier share a desire to collaborate on emissions reductions; or when a large amount of upfront capital is required for a producer to invest in new equipment or practices. Co-investing can support joint projects as well as projects financed by one actor and implemented by another.

Co-claiming mitigation outcomes

Once companies have co-invested in a project, they can co-claim the resulting reductions or removals. Co-claiming in Scope 3 refers to when two or more organizations in different tiers of the same value chain make claims associated with the same emission reductions or removals, subject to appropriate accounting rules and safeguards. It is a crucial lever to create shared incentives for financing large-scale decarbonization and recognizing the contributions of multiple value chain actors.

Co-claiming is relevant in situations where multiple companies along the value chain are contributing to a decarbonization program with the same suppliers, and therefore would like to include the resulting emissions reductions in their reporting. This is especially pertinent in the food and beverage sector, where the same farm may have multiple crop rotations, intercropping, or the resulting benefits are divided between different co-products.

Co-claiming is a relatively nascent concept, and while it creates new incentives for co-investment in decarbonization through the value chain, it also presents challenges that must be addressed by market standards and registries. Historically, interventions have been driven or coordinated by one actor in the value chain (e.g., supplier, buyer or broker). Where mitigation outcomes are shared or transferred among eligible co-claimants, a centralized registry or system of record is needed for verifying, tracking, and transferring intervention data. Similarly, accounting frameworks have traditionally focused on individual organizations’ efforts, which has led to a gap in understanding who has the "right to claim" shared interventions or investments, or the equitable attribution of the mitigation outcomes.

To ensure there is no double counting in the system, some safeguards are needed. These are discussed for example in the Value Change Initiative guidance for enabling credible co-claiming of impact and investments. Misleading or unsubstantiated claims not only risk a company's reputation but also undermine consumer trust and endanger compliance with developing regulations like the European Commission's Directive on Green Claims.

Benefits of supply chain collaboration

Collaboration creates shared benefits which can ripple through the value chain.

Collaboration can help:

• Share costs and financial risks: Reduce the investment burden on individual companies and farmers, making decarbonization interventions more accessible.
• Strengthen supply chain resilience: Boost long-term resilience and secure a more reliable supply as climate impacts on crop yields intensify.
• Improve coordination: Identify emerging risks and opportunities earlier through stronger communication between partners.
• Improve Scope 3 data and reporting: Enable better data sharing between suppliers and buyers, supporting more accurately accounting and credible climate claims.

To realize these benefits at scale, companies need digital solutions that make it easier to manage mitigation data and collaborate across complex value chains.

Enable credible co-claims with SustainCERT’s Carbon Management Platform

Managing Scope 3 emissions reductions across multiple value chain partners can be complex. Data, certificates, and mitigation outcomes are often spread across spreadsheets, suppliers, registries, and internal systems, making it difficult to track contributions, allocate benefits, and ensure consistent claims.

SustainCERT’s Carbon Management Platform helps companies turn collaborative climate action intro traceable, manageable mitigation outcomes.

The platform provides a centralized system of record to manage GHG data and mitigation outcomes across the value chain. It enables companies to register, attribute, allocate, and share GHG records with eligible partners, supporting transparent claims management and reducing the risk of double counting.

This supports structured claims management and reporting aligned with evolving requirements under the GHG Protocol Actions and Market Instruments guidance and SBTi Corporate Net-Zero Standard V2.0.

Through GHG records companies can manage mitigation outcomes and allocate them across value chain partners, supporting co-claiming and collaborative Scope 3 strategies.

The platform enables companies to:

• Manage mitigation outcomes in one place: Bring together verified and unverified GHG data from interventions, external registries, and other sources in a centralized system.
• Allocate and share outcomes: Attribute GHG records to eligible claimants across different tiers of the value chain, including through Impact Units.
• Support credible co-claiming: Track allocations and maintain a clear record of how mitigation outcomes are shared and claimed by value chain partners.
• Improve claims governance: Manage GHG records and supporting information to facilitate transparent reporting and claims management.

The platform's five-layer impact model represents different stages of the value chain, allowing records to be attributed to claimants at each layer, subject to registered goods volumes. Companies can also allocate emissions to products, account for co-products, or transfer records to partners to manage their own claims.

By combining digital traceability, allocation, and claims management, SustainCERT helps companies operationalize collaborative Scope 3 strategies while supporting alignment with evolving GHG accounting and reporting requirements.