Many financial institutions need to update how they assess their exposure to deforestation and land-use change emissions, and the update points in one direction: a geospatial lens on what is actually happening across the land their portfolios finance, as new net-zero standards are about to require banks and asset managers to measure and disclose the emissions embedded in their portfolios, including those tied to forests, land, and agriculture.

The Science Based Targets initiative published Version 2.0 of its Corporate Net-Zero Standard on 11 June 2026. The shift is from ambition to implementation. For most sectors that means greater flexibility in how targets are set and met. For companies sourcing forest and agricultural commodities, the implications are more specific because the most important changes sit in the treatment of Scope 3 emissions.  The implications also carry a timing imperative: the evidence base the standard rewards takes years rather than months to assemble, so for a company that wants to use the new flexibility when V2.0 becomes mandatory on 1 January 2028, the work that matters should start soon.