This slide deck provides an overview of the Good Practice, Better Finance project. 

This report reports on the pilot phase of the Landscape Assessment Framework in the context of the Sustainable Cocoa Landscapes project in San Martin, Peru. The social indicators that have been proposed by Max Havelaar / Flocert based on the prioritized social issues for the landscapes (see documents "social study of the landscapes" and "social issues in the Mariscal Caceres landscape") have been applied as a test in the landscape. The process followed for this pilot phase is summarized in paragraph 2, and the process of validation of the indicators is presented in paragraph 3.

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. 

Between 29 September and 5 October 2021, Helvetas conducted a stakeholder consultation of the project "Sustainable Cocoa Landscapes in San Martin". The consultation was carried out through face-to-face workshops in the different districts of the province. This resulted in the prioritization of social issues to be taken forward by the project. 

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.

In this report ISEAL offers insights from three baselines of evaluations that it commissioned in 2015 and were published in June 2016

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 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.

This briefing note shares insights and learnings from a series of semi-structured interviews ISEAL conducted with fourteen leading, global companies engaged in living wage actions.

In this video, small producers report on the impact sustainability standards have had on their life. 

A working paper for the project “New data to detect forced labour in agriculture”.

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.

Funded by the Ford Foundation, the Demonstrating and Improving Poverty Impacts Project (DIPI) seeks to understand the contribution that certification systems can make to poverty alleviation and pro-poor development.