This Guidance supports sustainability systems to design and implement good practice greenhouse gas emissions accounting, reporting and disclosure strategies for users of their schemes. The intended users of this Guidance are ISEAL member schemes that are involved in the certification of commodities. The guidance may also be of interest to their communities (certificate holders, applicants, assurance providers, oversight bodies, buyers, governments, civil society and the public).

Sustainability systems represent and support complex supply chains, across a wide variety of commodities, producers and geographies. Emissions reporting is a complex and fast-moving space, so these schemes and their communities may face challenges keeping pace with developments and developing consistent and appropriate good practices that can benefit their communities and climate security.

In the suite of guidance documents, there are four opening guides, for certificate holders/applicants, schemes, assurance and oversight providers and buyers. It is recommended that each stakeholder group begins with their respective opening guidance, followed by the general ‘Introductory Guidance’, which goes into more contextual detail, and finally the ‘Guidance for Sustainability Systems to Design and Implement Credible Greenhouse Gas Reporting systems’ (this document).

Learn more about the project, 'A shared value approach to climate impact at landscape scale' (2020-22), led by Gold Standard, supported by the ISEAL Innovations Fund and Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs SECO.