This document summarises a use case piloted as part of the Information and Data Standard for Sustainability project. It is for people interested in increasing the value and integrity of the data and information their organisation curates and manages. The ISEAL Core Metadata Set was developed through the Information and Data Standard for Sustainability project, led by the Forest Stewardship Council in partnership with ISEAL.

This information pack introduces the ISEAL Core Metadata Set - it is for people interested in increasing the value and integrity of the data and information their organisation curates and manages. The ISEAL Core Metadata Set was developed through the Information and Data Standard for Sustainability project, led by the Forest Stewardship Council in partnership with ISEAL.

This document summarises a use case piloted as part of the Information and Data Standard for Sustainability project. It is for people interested in increasing the value and integrity of the data and information their organisation curates and manages. The ISEAL Core Metadata Set was developed through the Information and Data Standard for Sustainability project, led by the Forest Stewardship Council in partnership with ISEAL.

A short paper describing the key learnings from ResponsibleSteel's Recognition Process. 

The ISEAL Innovations Fund and Programme was launched in 2016 to create an enabling environment for innovation, new ideas and strategies to scale the impact, effectiveness, efficiency and inclusiveness of sustainability systems. This learning brief captures some of the key early lessons learned so far.

Sustainability systems are positioned to advance human rights protections in specific geographies and commodities through verification and remediation of human rights violations, such as forced and bonded labor. However to ensure impact, detecting those violations is central and often elusive. This report captures project learnings and shares general recommendations for those working to improve FBL detection in different sectors.

The Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC), together with Sustainable Fisheries Partnership (SFP) and Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch Program (SFW), are piloting an improver programme to implement best management practices with the aim of improving farm and zonal management to mitigate critical production risks. This document identifies key lessons from this project.

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.

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.

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 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.

The ISEAL Innovations Fund will continue supporting innovative projects until 2027. As presented in the overview below, the Fund is open until 8 July to receive collaborative project ideas that respond to the theme: Improving livelihoods and economic well-being for small-scale producers, and small and medium enterprises

The ISEAL Innovations Fund launched a call in July 2023 for Community Members to submit expressions of interest for project ideas responding to the theme: Sustainability systems as tools to support implementation of effective, fair, and impactful due diligence processes.  Please note that the application window is now closed. This public overview explains the type of grants that were available, and the selection process.

This document directs public and private sector stakeholders on deriving sustainability information and messages from the data collected on agricultural commodities production.

This infographic provides a summary on boosting sustainability practice and performance at the landscape level, through Good Water Stewardship project. 

This document summarises the learning from Rainforest Alliance's Hybrid Community-Based Monitoring pilot project. The goal of this 3-year project was to design and develop a Hybrid Community-based Monitoring System (HCMS) that combines GPS and remote sensing with on-the-ground data from the key landscape stakeholders for data management and reporting at a landscape level.

This short paper provides high-level summaries of BetterCoal, IRMA and TSM and outlines under which circumstances ResponsibleSteel will recognise mine sites participating in the programmes.

ResponsibleSteel has assessed Bettercoal, IRMA and TSM against a defined recognition benchmark as laid out in the ‘Recognition assessment tool’. The recognition assessments served to determine whether the programmes meet our benchmark and could thus be recognised. This paper provides high-level summaries of the three programmes and outlines under which circumstances ResponsibleSteel will recognise mine sites participating in the programmes

This document describes ResponsibleSteel’s methodology for the recognition of input material programmes. It is underpinned by a series of Excel templates, the ‘ResponsibleSteel Recognition Assessment Tool’, that serve to implement the methodology.

A compilation of the lessons learned from four pilot projects in remote auditing from Responsible Jewellery Council, LEAF Marque, Beter Cotton Initiative, and Fairtrade USA. LEAF Marque and the Responsible Jewellery Council looked at the extent to which remote auditing could provide an alternative to in-person on-site visits, while the two other pilot projects used a remote phone survey based on worker voice technology to carry out interviews with workers in factory settings (in the case of Fair Trade USA) and in an agricultural setting on cotton farms (Better Cotton Initiative – BCI).

This document summarises the findings from ASC's pilot project exploring remote monitoring within aquaculture certification programmes, over in-person monitoring.  Most aquaculture certification programs are reliant on in-person audits Audits occur just once a year due to cost and have been difficult to conduct because of COVID-19. Tracking improvements is time-consuming and costly with only in-person methods. Emerging technologies can address data gaps in smallholder shrimp farms and help grow farmer participation in ASC.

The ISEAL-funded research project Integrating new data to improve risk assessments and detection of forced labour in agricultural supply chains (2017 – 18) is an attempt to build the evidence base around monitoring and remediating forced labour in agricultural supply chains.