BCI and WWF-Turkey collaborated through the ATLA (Adaptation to Landscape Approach) project to create baseline information and get a clear understanding of how farming activities have been interacting with Buyuk Menderes Delta and Lake Bafa over time using Geographic Information Systems (GIS).This report presents results of the GIS analyses, including Land Cover, Agriculture, Geography, Soil Quality, and Environmental Services.

As part of its 2030 Strategy, Better Cotton has committed to strengthen impacts at farm level across the countries where it works and is currently setting ambitious global targets in key impact areas. In parallel, Better Cotton explored whether a landscape approach can deliver better impacts and efficiencies, to facilitate an evaluation of the potential of landscape approaches in the context of the BCSS, Better Cotton developed the Adaptation to Landscape Approach (ATLA) project.This report provides an Executive Summary of the work of the ATLA project towards these aims. 

This document summarises the steps to replicate the land cover analysis system developed by the Blueprint Project in the same pilot area (Zona Bananera) as general guidance to apply it in other productive agricultural regions in tropical or subtropical zones, and facilitate the development of a land use cover monitoring system in accordance with the objective, scale, and level of local studies to be implemented over time.

The ‘first mile’ – the journey from the production farm to the first aggregation or processing point – is a critical yet often overlooked segment of agricultural supply chains. These case studies, produced by Proforest and commissioned by ISEAL, aim to shed light on the actors operating in this space and the dynamics that shape it, drawing on examples from cocoa, coffee, rubber and palm oil across diverse regions.

The Modelling a Path to More Sustainable Landscapes project was a three-year effort, led by Bonsucro, to spatially analyse the baseline risk of commodity production and the role of sustainability policies to mitigate those risks. This document is for people interested in increasing the value and integrity of data and in assessing the potential impacts of policy decisions in terms of agriculture production and environmental outcomes.

The Modelling a Path to More Sustainable Landscapes project was a three-year effort, led by Bonsucro, to spatially analyse the baseline risk of commodity production and the role of sustainability policies to mitigate those risks. This document is for people interested in increasing the value and integrity of data and in assessing the potential impacts of policy decisions in terms of agriculture production and environmental outcomes.

Small-scale producers play a vital role in sustainable production and land use — but too often, they lack the resources and economic resilience needed to adopt more sustainable practices.This case study highlights practical approaches that are helping bridge this gap by creating incentives that bring climate, environmental and social benefits, including premiums, incentives and recognising and rewarding community stewardship.Part of a series exploring promising approaches for enabling small-scale producer market access and shifts to sustainable production:

The Modelling a Path to More Sustainable Landscapes project was a three-year effort, led by Bonsucro, to spatially analyse the baseline risk of commodity production and the role of sustainability policies to mitigate those risks. This document is for people interested in increasing the value and integrity of data and in assessing the potential impacts of policy decisions in terms of agriculture production and environmental outcomes.

Small scale farmers face several structural barriers that limit their power, income and participation in global value chains. Founded in 2009, Producers Direct is a farmer-owned nonprofit which brings together a network of over one million small producers, located across East Africa and Latin America. Recognising these structural barriers, Producers Direct has innovated a platform that enables farmers to co-design the tools and services they need.

The Good Practice, Better Finance project is an ISEAL Innovations Fund project that aims to develop and test methodologies, as well as improve monitoring tools, which would allow for improved access to affordable finance for farmers. This improved access would be through reward systems based on the integration of farmers’ risk management and sustainability strategies with financial institutions’ own risk assessment frameworks.

Equity is defined as ensuring fairness in the distribution of resources, opportunities, and benefits. Equity requires that all members of society, including future generations, have access to the same rights and opportunities to maintain a decent quality of life. Equity is fundamental to sustainability; without equity, it is not possible to effectively and sustainably uphold human rights, improve livelihoods, or protect the environment.

The ‘first mile’ – the journey from the production farm to the first aggregation or processing point – is a critical yet often overlooked segment of agricultural supply chains. This report, produced by Proforest and commissioned by ISEAL, aims to shed light on the actors operating in this space and the dynamics that shape it, drawing on examples from cocoa, coffee, rubber and palm oil across diverse regions.

In 2019, the ISEAL Innovations Fund awarded a grant to Bonsucro to collaboratively develop and test methodologies to help financial service providers improve how they assess their agricultural clients’ sustainability performance, to enable access to better financing opportunities for farmers who produce sustainably. Project partners included the Better Cotton Initiative, and the Alliance for Water Stewardship (AWS).

In 2019, the ISEAL Innovations Fund awarded a grant to Bonsucro to collaborat

Tackling gender inequalities is becoming increasingly important for voluntary sustainability standards (VSS) and similar systems to address. Sustainability systems are looking to integrate gender into their standards and the management of their organisations. Sustainability systems that are not gender-responsive can result in unnecessary health and safety risks for women and girls, and lead to unequal impacts and unintended consequences.

This report presents pilot activities conducted in two separate sites in Söke in 2021, as part of the WWF-Turkey Regenerative Cotton Pilot.Learn more about the ATLA project, led by Better Cotton, supported by the ISEAL Innovations Fund.

This document describes how Blueprint project team selected meaningful secondary sustainability data at local level (communities, municipalities, or similar local jurisdictions), and considers the role of secondary data for future replication in other in other agriculture-dominant tropical regions.

The Impact Alliance is a voluntary collaboration between sustainability initiatives sharing similar goals to provide oversight of and support in the development, maintenance, promotion and claiming of Impact Incentives and Impact Partnerships.The purpose of this policy is to outline the Impact Alliance’s governance structure and mechanisms and can be made available to interested parties upon request.

This document provides a brief summary of the Soy Impact Incentives Pilot from June 2022.This pilot was part of the Impact Alliance: Incentivising better production practices project, led by Textile Exchange (2021-2022), supported by the ISEAL Innovations Fund and Swiss Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO).

This document presents the performance metrics and data sources included in the Hybrid Community-based Monitoring System (HCMS) that was built by the

This is one of three infographics that illustrate how the adoption of sustainability standards can contribute towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The examples, based on research of ISEAL members’ impacts, cover:

SCOPE is a geo-design tool that enables users to assess multiple outcomes related to commodity production and alternative policies including total production, water availability, water quality, greenhouse gas emissions, and land conversion. The tool allows for examining on-farm policy compliance and explore outcomes at local to landscape levels.This document presents how SCOPE can provide important information to certification stakeholders on how an area could perform against a standard (or is performing against a standard) at the local, landscape, or jurisdictional level.

The IPM Coalition created “Pesticides & Alternatives” app in 2019.

In 2016, nine ISEAL members came together to form the Integrated Pest Management (IPM) Coalition. The coalition aims to reduce and eventually eliminate the use of highly hazardous pesticides, and to promote more sustainable alternatives. It also aims to harmonise approaches to pesticides between ISEAL member standards.

This report presents the key findings and recommendations from the Blueprint Project. Blueprint describes the sustainability status of municipalities with a combination of high-precision visual classification of land cover types, and reflects the economic, social, and environmental reality on the ground based on local stakeholder consultation. It illustrates sustainability challenges and flags opportunities from the perspective of the inhabitants of a territory.