LandScale's maturity rubric
The beta version of LandScale's maturity rubric will be piloted with selected partners to assess usability, relevance, and level of effort, and to inform further refinement. We invite partners to contribute to this iterative process. If you are interested in participating in a pilot or accessing the rubric, please contact our Operations Manager, Hannah Grice, at [email protected].
To support a clearer and more consistent interpretation of initiative maturity, LandScale developed a maturity rubric to support reflection, learning, and continuous improvement across landscape initiatives.
The rubric introduces a set of indicative thresholds used to assign maturity levels, helping initiatives understand their current stage of development and identify areas for strengthening. It provides a practical lens for learning, decision-making, and communication, and offers additional insight into the enabling conditions and processes that contribute to landscape outcomes.
Recognizing the diversity of landscape contexts, the rubric is designed to be flexible and adaptable. Its thresholds are intended as guidance and should be interpreted in light of the specific context of each initiative, rather than as strict requirements.
Understanding maturity progress
The maturity rubric provides a structured approach to interpreting a landscape initiative’s progress across the maturity framework's four core criteria:
Scale.
Multi-stakeholder governance.
Collective goals and actions.
Collective monitoring.
Progress across these criteria can contribute to a more resilient initiative, better positioned to deliver sustainability impacts at scale.
This progress is assessed at the sub-criterion level, indicating where a landscape initiative is situated along its maturity journey, and supporting the identification of its current stage of development, gaps, and areas for improvement.
The 12 sub-criteria are assessed against three progress levels, described below. These descriptions provide a general indication of what each progress level represents; however, specific expectations and thresholds vary by sub-criterion.
Maturity progress levels
The rubric sets out three progress levels—Building, Progressing, and Advanced—each representing a different stage of maturity.
Building: The initiative is at an early stage of development, evidenced by meeting a set of minimum requirements for the sub-criterion, though other factors may be taken into account.
Progressing: The initiative has progressed beyond the early stage and is actively working toward meeting all key elements of the sub-criterion.
Advanced: The initiative meets the thresholds for maturity, supported by documented evidence. This indicates that the initiative has addressed the core requirements of the sub-criterion; however, ongoing improvement should remain a continual objective of the initiative in order to maintain this level and progress toward additional good-practice performance.
As initiatives develop, they can move between levels through regular reassessments of their progress.
A range of factors may influence a landscape initiative’s ability to progress against the maturity levels, including but not limited to:
The age and stage of development of the initiative.
The geographical, political, and socio-economic context.
The availability and accessibility of resources, such as financial capacity, staff expertise, and time required to support implementation.
These factors should be taken into account when interpreting progress against the maturity levels.
The thresholds in the beta version of the rubric have been informed by the maturity framework and refined through LandScale’s experience working with landscape initiatives. Ongoing consultation with implementers, along with iterative testing, will be essential to ensure the rubric is robust and widely applicable.
How maturity progress is evaluated
Maturity progress is evaluated based on the extent to which an initiative meets a set of indicative thresholds for each sub-criterion. These thresholds describe each sub-criterion's minimum expected requirements, key elements, and types of supporting evidence associated with different stages of maturity.
Progress levels are assigned by LandScale validators, based on how closely an initiative is operating in line with these thresholds. In some cases, the assigned progress level may be informed by additional, context-specific considerations that are not explicitly captured in the rubric. Where this occurs, detailed validation notes will be provided to clearly document the rationale for the validator’s decision.
For step-by-step instructions on completing the evaluation and understanding what to expect during validation, refer to the how to complete the evaluation section.
For pilot evaluations, submissions will be reviewed based on the completeness of information provided and the quality of supporting evidence. If you are interested in participating in a pilot or accessing the rubric, please contact our Operations Manager, Hannah Grice, at [email protected].
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