The Landscape Monitoring Framework of the socio-economic dimension (LMS) is a tool that provides practical guidance to assess the socio-economic status of a landscape to monitor progress and facilitates action for development. The LMS targets the stakeholders of the landscape initiative, and in particular the initiators of the initiative, as the main user group.

ISEAL has developed a good practice guide to help ensure that sustainability claims made by jurisdictions, landscape initiatives, and the companies that source from or support them, are credible. The guidance covers the structural and performance claims a jurisdictional entity may wish to make, along with the supporting action claims of other related stakeholders.

ISEAL developed a framework for credible living wage claims following input from a range of standard setting organisations, companies and trade unions. It focuses on claims about living wages and guides credibility in sustainability communication. Since January 2021, ISEAL has worked with sustainability systems to strengthen their approaches in supporting supply chain action on living wages.

This document provides instruction to aid users in using the ODK tool. The function of the ODK tool within the Blueprint project has been to provide offline data collection capabilities and data that can be stored in SAN’s technology platform the iHub which provides a secure, agile, and scalable backend for the mobile app.

A matrix of indicators for use with farm owners and when using the ODK Mobile App, as part of the Blueprint Project. 

This series of papers was developed as part of an exploratory workstream investigating the role and maturity of monitoring and measurement in different landscape and jurisdictional initiatives. The papers are targeted towards landscape and jurisdictional practitioners and focus on the practicalities of measurement for landscape and jurisdictional initiatives.

A study to identify the prospect on incentive design for the uptake of water stewardship in Indonesia. The report looks at the existing government and financial sector landscape, as well as some best practices of financing mechanisms and incentives in the region and globally. A set of high-level recommendations are provided to support government and financial institutions in Indonesia to drive more incentive for good water stewardship uptake in Indonesia.

A study to identify the prospect on incentive design for the uptake of water stewardship in Indonesia. The report looks at the existing government and financial sector landscape, as well as some best practices of financing mechanisms and incentives in the region and globally. A set of high-level recommendations are provided to support government and financial institutions in Indonesia to drive more incentive for good water stewardship uptake in Indonesia.

Assessing environmental and social sustainability at the landscape level poses significant challenges related to the availability of accurate cultural, economic, and ecological information. In this sector, decision-making must take this intersectional information into account to develop management strategies that enhance the sustainability of the territory, prevent detrimental actions to ecosystem services, and defend against poor socioeconomic management of a region.

This methodology aims to support national commodity associations and other relevant public bodies to aggregate producer-level data using the Delta indicators to assess and report on the sustainability performance of the commodity’s production at country level.

This case study highlights how credible voluntary sustainability standards (VSS) support palm oil companies with regulatory requirements such as the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR). Featuring the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), it explores how VSS enable traceability, ensure legal production, and promote smallholder inclusion - helping businesses build deforestation-and conversion-free (DCF) supply chains that go beyond compliance.

In 2023, the Global Living Wage Coalition commissioned the Anker Research Institute and ISEAL to do a needs assessment aimed at gathering stakeholder views on the readiness to advance on living wages for tea workers in Assam and West Bengal. 

This document represents a short ‘start here’ level introduction to the ‘Accounting & Reporting the Emissions of Certified Commodities’ suite of guidance documents. This document is specifically aimed at buyers of certified commodities as users, stakeholders, participants and license holders of ISEAL member schemes or other sustainability systems.

This document represents a short ‘start here’ level introduction to the ‘Accounting & Reporting the Emissions of Certified Commodities’ suite of guidance documents. This document is specifically aimed at Certificate Holders and potential applicants for certification (henceforth ‘CH/A’) with ISEAL member schemes or other sustainability systems that have or are commencing on a process to align their certification of commodities and chains of custody models with emissions reporting good practices. The CH/A community for each scheme will reflect the nature of the work entailed.

This document is specifically aimed at Oversight and Assurance Providers to ISEAL member schemes or other sustainability systems that have or are commencing on a process to align their certification of commodities and chains of custody models with emissions reporting good practices.

This document represents a short ‘start here’ level introduction to the ‘Accounting & Reporting the emissions of certified commodities’ suite of guidance documents. This document is specifically aimed at ISEAL member schemes or other sustainability systems who have commenced or are considering commencing on a process to align their certification of commodities and chains of custody models with emissions reporting good practices.

An introduction to ISEAL’s Finance Committee, which was established in 2006 to oversee all issues related to the financial management of ISEAL. The Committee reviews for example ISEAL’s quarterly accounts, annual budgets and other issues related to ISEAL’s financial reporting and performance.

An introduction to the Membership Committee, a permanent committee of the ISEAL Board of Directors that is responsible primarily for forming recommendations on new membership applications, deciding on member disputes that may arise as a result of an independent evaluation of Code Compliance, and deciding on appeals decisions of the Secretariat not to recommend ISEAL Community Member status or to suspend or withdraw Code Compliant status.

An introduction to ISEAL’s Technical Committee. The Technical Committee is a permanent sub-committee of the ISEAL Board that is responsible primarily for technical oversight of the ISEAL Codes of Good Practice and other Credibility Tools.

The ISEAL Innovations Fund launched a call in March 2023 for Community Members to submit expressions of interest for project ideas responding to opportunities for innovation. The types of grants available in this round were:

This report assesses leading metrics for measuring and reporting performance over time and across multiple spatial scales. It examines six critical sustainability issues: deforestation, biodiversity, water use, forced labour, poverty, and greenhouse gas emissions. The research supports sustainability systems in making data-driven outcome claims and provides insight into evaluating metric suitability. The report focuses on applicability of metrics and data sources, best practices, and associated limitations and trade-offs.

In recent years, we’ve seen a growing interest from sustainability systems in tackling gender inequalities through their schemes. A 2022 ISEAL-CGIAR Gender Equality Initiative scoping study tried to understand how some of ISEAL's Community Members are integrating gender into their schemes. It highlighted the important role systems can play in reducing gender inequalities and improving women's empowerment.

This paper discusses how voluntary sustainability standards and certification schemes can play an important role in this smart mix, in particular in terms of supporting supply chain regulation on deforestation.

Download below the PowerPoint presentation for the Practicalities of EU Deforestation  Regulation (EUDR) Implementation breakfast session  at the ISEAL Global Sustainability Symposium 2024