Why this series
Business faces rising climate, nature and supply-chain exposure. Could place-based collaboration - by river basin or bioregion - lower risk, strengthen compliance and build resilient supply?
What this interview covers
In our opening Q&A, founder Liesl Truscott sets out what a landscape approach is, why acting where sourcing happens builds resilience for both business and nature, and how collective action beats isolated projects. As she puts it: “there’s no profitable business on a dead planet.”
Read on for an introduction to the Gerana approach and the case for landscape-level action.
Liesl: “Convene people, learn together, prototype together, then invest together at landscape scale.”
Q: Why the Gerana Initiative - why now?
Liesl: Climate, nature, water and business risks now move together, and most companies still lack practical ways to respond. That’s why Gerana exists - to turn complexity and uncertainty into coordinated action in the landscapes companies source from.
Our focus is shared landscapes. We help peers learn together, and we equip them to act through geographically-specific Discovery Labs - co-designed with experts and local partners. The Labs are where interventions are tested, de-risked, and backed up by decision-ready, compliance-grade data. When a pilot works, we scale it into a multi-year Landscape Partnership. It’s a portfolio approach so capital flows to what works best in that region.
Now is the time to move. The frameworks and building blocks exist; what’s needed is orchestration and a transition path for companies, a way in. We see collective action as the new "competitive advantage", enlightened self interest. Each winning because all do. Gerana channels that into tangible outcomes that build supply resilience and benefit business, communities and nature because there’s no business on a dead planet.
Q: What do you mean by a "landscape approach" and why should companies care?
Liesl: A landscape approach means thinking and acting at the scale where risks and solutions actually play out - a shared place with physical boundaries like a river basin, political boundaries such as a district or jurisdiction, or even cultural boundaries shaped by human connectivity to the land.
A landscape approach recognises that farms, factories, communities, depend on the same freshwater flows, healthy soils, pollinators, wetlands and forests - the real infrastructure that keeps production going.
Why should companies care? Because working collectively in that shared place de-risks supply and makes money go further. Restore a degraded watershed together and you stabilise water availability, cut disruption risk, and often reduce treatment and energy costs. Improve soil and habitat across the mosaic and you build yield stability, reduce fire or flood exposure, and help communities adapt to climate change. Do it together and you can share costs, align incentives with global goals, and produce credible, decision-ready evidence for ESG reporting and claims.
Of course, collective action isn’t magic - it takes trust, clear roles and staying power. That’s why Gerana’s Discovery Labs break this into workable steps: a small task team; a shared baseline, roadmap, finance and monitoring plan; and micro-pilots with clear go/modify gates to scale what works. We don’t start from scratch - we bake in partnership from day one and design so even small and mid-sized firms can participate. Diversity is where the magic happens.
Q: You studied Environmental Assessment & Management in Australia. What did that set in motion?
Liesl: Growing up in Aotearoa New Zealand and studying in Australia in the 1990s during the Mabo land-rights era and the Stolen Generations reckoning, I became aware of how certain inherited worldviews - human dominion over nature, an over-reliance on technical fixes, and privileging a single scientific lens - have shaped education systems and sidelined other ways of knowing. Those assumptions contributed to dispossession and disrupted Indigenous kinship and stewardship practices. For example, Aboriginal cultural burning (a low-intensity mosaic fire practice) - which not only reduce fuel loads and prevents fires getting out of hand, but also recycles nutrients, and stimulates seed germination and dispersal while maintaining habitat diversity.
My years at university, and later with the Environment Protection Authority (NSW), coincided with water-law reforms that opened conversations about environmental flows and helped shift debates about over-abstraction in irrigated agriculture (including cotton) toward longer-term, multi-stakeholder dialogue on shared responsibilities and resilience. It was as much about the dialogue and understanding the story as it was the science. We need both. Back in Aotearoa New Zealand, water has been shaping the conversation too - with a different story; in 2017 the Whanganui River (Te Awa Tupua) was recognised in law as a legal person. There's a lot more to do to heal our relationship with nature and each other - and water is a natural starting point for landscape-level action, because we all have a stake.
As a mother of two young men, I want them to have a relationship with nature and to learn and respect Indigenous ecological knowledge. I want that to be normal. For many of us, that means some unlearning and relearning across our institutions.
Q: What thread connects that to your work today?
Liesl: The thread is always people - and finding common ground.
I’ve worked on sustainability and raw materials, across dairy, viticulture, state and local government, and later cotton and textiles. It always comes back to creating the conditions for honest conversation: being open to other views, comfortable with not always being right, and taking time to reflect and grow. From a systems-change perspective, it’s a journey: building trust, widening awareness, and finding constructive pathways for change. At Business in the Community, and later at Textile Exchange, I focused on dialogue that changes practice - roundtables, benchmarking, and commercial models that move us from transactional to relational. That collective work helped catalyse the Organic Cotton Accelerator - flourishing today. At Gerana, we carry that thread forward: convene the right partners, learn together, prototype together, then invest together at landscape scale.
Q: You’ve said there was a hard lesson about markets. What does that mean?
Liesl: Yes, the hard lesson is that trying to bake “good” straight into the commodity price doesn’t work reliably.
Markets still underprice the true costs of extraction and under-reward regeneration. Externalities such as water degradation, biodiversity loss and soil decline show up as real, system-level costs running to hundreds of billions globally each year, yet they’re rarely reflected in prices. According to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, the combined effects of drought, land degradation and desertification cost the global economy an estimated US$878 billion annually. Meanwhile, the value of healthier ecosystems and more resilient communities is often invisible on the P&L. That mispricing entrenches short-term gains over durable value creation, compounded by price signals and some subsidies that reward volume and can even drive ecological or human harm.
The good news is market innovation is happening. Carbon and emerging nature markets are beginning to incentivise restorative outcomes, not just yields. It’s not perfect - there are challenges - but methodologies, safeguards and claims guardrails are improving fast. For producers, the transition is partly about diversification: complementing commodity income with “nature revenues” (e.g., soil or agroforestry carbon, water-replenishment outcomes, habitat stewardship payments). Done with robust monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) and fair benefit-sharing, these streams can reduce volatility, attract blended finance, and create durable value.
That’s the space Gerana operates in: orchestrating collective action, aligning incentives, mobilising blended finance, and building decision-grade evidence so capital flows to what works and where it’s needed.
Q: So where does Gerana come in?
Liesl: We’re rewiring how value flows in the places companies source from. Over recent months we’ve listened to companies and land stewards and shaped Discovery Labs and the Gerana Gathering around what’s needed.
Our role is to convene the right partners, co-design practical pilots, and turn learning into action. We help find common ground between corporates, supply networks and local stakeholders; align incentives and responsibilities; and identify innovative finance pathways (e.g., insetting, nature credits) that complement commodity markets. We also align with disclosure and reporting standards and put in place monitoring, so evidence is compliance-grade. We want to see more resources go to land stewards, greater supply resilience for companies, and a credible path to nature goals and compliance.
Q: What is the tangible plan - how do you make this real?
Liesl: It’s three steps to impact:
- Step 1: Learning Communities: Curated peer dialogues that build a common language and surface where collaboration makes business and social sense.
- Step 2: Discovery Labs: Place-based pilots co-designed with local partners, building on existing good work; proportionate baselines and monitoring, targeted interventions, and investable briefs with clear claims guardrails.
- Step 3: Landscape Partnerships: Scale what works with blended finance, shifting leadership to place-based partners.
We’re starting in three to four landscapes that provide vital raw materials to multiple business sectors… different ecologies, same logic: place-based resilience that benefits people and business continuity.
Q: What are you doing to engage decision-makers?
Liesl: Our Market Opportunity Scoping research distils insights from 35 interviews across fashion, food, beauty, household goods, and pharmaceuticals. These findings will inform dialogue with participants, a live working session at the Gerana Gathering in November, and a public Market Insights Briefing. The aim is to move stakeholders across business, finance and land stewardship from insights to coordinated action, while learning from each other and together shaping the Gerana Initiative's next phase.
Q: That's a lot to consider. How can interested businesses learn more or get involved with Gerana?
Liesl: The challenges are significant and can feel overwhelming. The opportunity can, too. Our mission is to help companies find a way in by turning climate and nature commitments into landscape-level partnerships. Together, we can regenerate ecosystems, strengthen communities, and build business resilience.
If you’re committed to - or curious about building resilience through collective action, explore the Gerana Initiative and reach out. You’ll find more on our approach at geranainitiative.earth, or contact me directly at connect@geranainitiative.earth.
Q: What will tell you it’s working?
Liesl: Healthier rivers and habitats, more reliable water, stronger livelihoods and companies staying the course because the business case is real, not just reputational. Most of all, people saying: this is useful, respectful, and ours to carry forward.