Landscape, jurisdictional and other regional approaches are gaining momentum as potential tools for scaling-up the sustainable sourcing of commodities. This briefing aims to assist sustainability standards in assessing these new approaches by providing background information and five ‘entry points’ for exploring potential engagement.

Report on ISEAL member collaboration on shared impact reporting.

ISEAL has commissioned a systematic review being led by Carlos Oya and Dafni Skalidou on the effects of supply chain sustainability approaches on decent work outcomes in the agriculture, textile, and apparel sectors in low and middle income countries. The review aims at gaining a better understanding of what works to improve labour rights and conditions in these sectors, why, under what circumstances and for whom. For more information, please read the protocol for the review below.

This document presents the performance metrics and data sources included in the Hybrid Community-based Monitoring System (HCMS) that was built by the Tech4Communities project in Ghana, using the LandScale assessment framework. 

This infographic illustrates the research report authored by AidEnvironment and commissioned by ISEAL. The report is a refresher of the 2016 review and synthesis of literature and evidence of the business benefits of adopting sustainability standards. In total 40 credible source research documents, covering seven sectors were reviewed.

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:

A multi-lingual tool to support pest control with less negative environmental and human impact.

The Living Income Community of Practice held a virtual workshop to discuss and debate what needs to be done to ensure a decent standard of living for all. Run over three days, the workshop consisted of various segments held in multiple languages. 

This webinar shares the intentions and key findings behind Kering’s and Textile Exchange’s report ‘A world beyond certification – A best practices guide for organic cotton trading models’ which provides insight on the subject.

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.

Experts from ISEAL, and ISEAL members discuss what our research is telling us about the reach, contribution and impacts of standards on smallholder farmers and what this means for future innovations and partnerships.

The paper provides insights on growth trends and geographic presence of seven ISEAL member schemes that are leading global agricultural standards across seven commodities. We focus on trends and presence in producing and exporting countries where these schemes are adopted, with a specific interest in presence in low and lower-income classified countries.

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).

A Report produced for the ISEAL Alliance Innovations Fund project “Integrating new data to improve risk assessments and detection of forced labour vulnerability in agricultural supply chains”.

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.

This report first examines how standards systems are being applied to landscapes and jurisdictions. It then explores factors that are important to the effective application of sustainability strategies at a landscape level and identifies opportunities to strengthen the role that standards systems can play in implementing those strategies.

This methodological paper from ISEAL shares insights and lessons learned from three ongoing impact evaluations that completed their baseline in 2016 and are due for end line evaluation in 2019.

Moving towards an outcome-based standard creates the opportunity for LEAF to communicate more closely on the impacts of implementing the LEAF Marque Standard, measuring outcomes directly rather than proxying them with practices.

This webinar presents the paper ‘Conservation Impacts of Voluntary Sustainability standards: How Has our Understanding of conservation impacts changed since the 2012 Publication of “Toward Sustainability: The Roles and Limitations of Certification”?’.

This 2022 CGIAR-ISEAL scoping study builds on an evaluation of gender mainstreaming in sustainability standards conducted with ISEAL Community Members in 2020. It provides an update on ISEAL Community Members' efforts on gender equality.