Framework · Glossary

Land Health Credential

Also: Land Health credential, EcoIntel credential, credential code, supplier credential

Definition

A portable, cryptographically sealed statement of a property's ecosystem condition and carbon, carrying a short code that anyone can resolve at ecointel.io/verify to confirm it is genuine, whose land it describes, and whether EcoIntel still stands behind it.

Scale / units Carries the Land Health Score (1 to 9) and band, the four ecosystem process indices (0 to 100), trajectory, and carbon flux and stocks. Codes are ten characters, formatted XXXXX-XXXXX.

Authority EcoIntel, EcoIntel coined the Land Health Credential to name a portable, re-checkable statement of how a piece of land is functioning, issued to the land's steward and designed to travel with what that land produces. It fills the empty nature attribute in product-level transparency: the digital-product-passport plumbing already exists, but there has been no land-condition figure with a verifiable evidence base to put in it.

Last reviewed August 2026

A Land Health Credential is a statement of how a piece of land is functioning, issued by EcoIntel to the person or business that stewards it, and built so that it can be handed on.

It exists because of a specific gap. A farmer, grower or timber business that has spent years improving the land they manage has, until now, had almost no way to show it that a buyer could check. They can describe their practices. They can point at a certification that attests to a process rather than an outcome. What they cannot do is hand over an independent read of the land itself and invite the other party to verify it.

What it carries

Every credential states, for a named property and a named year:

the Land Health Score, 1 to 9, with its band, measured against what is possible in that land’s own ecoregion
the four ecosystem process indices: the water cycle, how sunlight is converted into energy, how minerals are made available, and the relationships between living things
the trajectory: which way the land has moved across the monitored record
carbon flux and stocks, indicative

Each figure is satellite-evidenced, and each is traceable to the substantiation record behind it.

What makes it checkable

Two independent layers, answering two different questions.

Is this file the one EcoIntel issued? Every credential carries a fingerprint of its own contents and a signature made with a private key only EcoIntel holds. Change a single figure, date or name and the check fails. Anyone can run that check at ecointel.io/verify, in their own browser, without sending the file to us or to anyone else.

Does EcoIntel still stand behind it? A signature cannot answer that, because a sealed file stays sealed long after its figures have been superseded. So every credential also carries a short code that resolves against our register to one of four answers: current, superseded, withdrawn, or not ours. Reissue a property’s assessment and the previous code starts saying “there is a newer version” from that moment, wherever it has already been printed.

The code is deliberately readable by eye as well as by camera. It uses an alphabet with no I, L, O or U in it, so a code read off a printed badge cannot be mistyped into a different valid one.

Two references, for two different jobs

A credential can be reached two ways, and the difference matters as soon as anything is printed.

The code is per credential. It appears on the status badge, it is what the QR square carries, and it changes when the property is reassessed. That is correct for a badge, which shows a score for a particular year and is superseded anyway once a new one exists.

The stable reference is per property: a readable address such as ecointel.io/v/wilder-wood-farm that always resolves to that property’s current credential. This is the one to put on a product, store as an SKU attribute or link from a supplier page, because reassessment updates what it points to instead of invalidating it. Packaging printed today still resolves correctly after the next assessment.

Stable references are issued only to properties publishing in full. A guessable name on a confirmation-only property would reveal that it holds a credential at all, which is precisely what its owner chose not to publish; the opaque code is what protects that case.

Why it is built to travel

The credential is not designed to sit in a folder. It is designed to be attached to things.

Product transparency infrastructure is arriving regardless of us: Digital Product Passports are mandated under the EU’s Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation, and resolvable product identifiers are already standard. What that infrastructure lacks is a nature attribute with anything real behind it. There has been no land-condition figure that a buyer, an auditor or a software agent could independently re-check.

A Land Health Credential is built to be that attribute. A product line can carry its credential code the way it carries a batch number. Follow the code and you reach a page that a person can read and a machine can parse, describing the condition of the land that product came from, and saying plainly whether the issuer still stands behind it.

What it does not claim

A Land Health Credential describes the condition and trajectory of the land. It does not attribute that condition to any particular practice, and it is not a claim that a product is sustainable, regenerative or nature-positive. Those are different claims, requiring different evidence.

It is also not species data. The community-dynamics index is a functional proxy inferred from satellite observation, not a survey of what lives there. Where a claim needs species evidence, it needs a species method.

And it is not assurance. The credential is indicative decision-support, and it is the verification-ready evidence base that a formal assurance process would draw on. Words like “certified” and “verified” stay reserved until such a process has actually been carried out.

A worked example

Wilder Wood Farm is EcoIntel’s public demonstration property and the only one whose data appears publicly. Its credential is live, at full public disclosure, and can be resolved by anyone: ecointel.io/v/wilder-wood-farm. Append ?format=json to the same address for the machine-readable record, which embeds the complete signed credential so it can be re-verified independently.