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 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 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 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.