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.
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).
In this report ISEAL offers insights from three baselines of evaluations that it commissioned in 2015 and were published in June 2016
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”.
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.
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.
In 2022, CGIAR's HER+ initiative researchers partnered with ISEAL to explore how sustainability systems are able to contribute to advancing gender equality and women’s empowerment. Gender is a crosscutting theme in ISEAL’s strategic priority to power solutions to sustainability challenges.
In general, in a territory the social actors work collaboratively, they themselves define the channels and mechanisms of participation in accordance with their cultural framework and the roles recognized for each one.
The last five years have seen a growing number of initiatives focused on increasing demand for sustainable palm oil in emerging economy markets. This report and case studies summarise key reflections and insights from an ISEAL-led project to understand strategies and activities adopted in key Asian countries to boost the demand for sustainable palm oil over the last five years.
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  • The last five years have seen a growing number of initiatives focused on increasing demand for sustainable palm oil in emerging economy markets. This report and case studies summarise key reflections
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  • The last five years have seen a growing number of initiatives focused on increasing demand for sustainable palm oil in emerging economy markets. This report and case studies summarise key reflections
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    1.51 MB
  • The last five years have seen a growing number of initiatives focused on increasing demand for sustainable palm oil in emerging economy markets. This report and case studies summarise key reflections
    PDF
    1.38 MB


This case study forms part of the Rainforest Alliance project Use of Risk Maps for Child and Forced Labour in Risk-Based Assurance Processes, supported by the ISEAL Innovations Fund. The project sought to test the prototypes of sectoral risk maps for child labor and forced labor in Kenya, Côte d’Ivoire, and Honduras.
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  • This case study forms part of the Rainforest Alliance project Use of Risk Maps for Child and Forced Labour in Risk-Based Assurance Processes, supported by the ISEAL Innovations Fund. The project
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    244.78 KB
  • This case study forms part of the Rainforest Alliance project Use of Risk Maps for Child and Forced Labour in Risk-Based Assurance Processes, supported by the ISEAL Innovations Fund. The project
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    226.21 KB


This report looks at the issues facing small certified producers and their expectations and experiences of certification, and explores how standards can address producers’ needs and priorities.
In this video, small producers report on the impact sustainability standards have had on their life. 
Juan Isaza, Program Manager, explains what the IPM Coalition is and how this initiative will accelerate the elimination of highly hazardous pesticide usage throughout the world.
ISEAL works to improve the credibility and impacts of sustainability standards and understanding impacts is an important strategic goal. This paper is the first attempt to draw on internal performance monitoring data of schemes and external research to analyse the reach and characteristics of smallholder farmers within ISEAL member agriculture schemes. This is the third in a series of collective reporting briefing papers researched by ISEAL as part of the ‘Demonstrating and Improving Poverty Impacts’ (DIPI) project. 
We often talk about system-level change to address root causes of poverty and imbalance of risk. This requires us to unite in different and creative ways. The Living Income Community of Practice motivates actors across sectors to help close the income gap, so that smallholders can earn a decent standard of living as a basic human right.
Ensuring resilient livelihoods and sustained employment for vulnerable communities was already a stretch pre-Covid-19. For those communities lacking a stable income, the impact has been inconceivable.
This blog outlines a set of key messages on due diligence and standards systems in the context of TFA letter to the European Commission.