This guidance document offers suggestions as input for consideration for the recent EUDR guidelines on the use of certification. ISEAL has built a broad-based consensus around what constitutes credible operating practices for sustainability certification schemes. Our Code of Good Practice captures this consensus in a publicly available normative document against which all ISEAL Code compliant members have been evaluated.

This report assesses leading metrics for measuring and reporting performance over time and across multiple spatial scales. It examines six critical sustainability issues: deforestation, biodiversity, water use, forced labour, poverty, and greenhouse gas emissions. The research supports sustainability systems in making data-driven outcome claims and provides insight into evaluating metric suitability. The report focuses on applicability of metrics and data sources, best practices, and associated limitations and trade-offs.

On 17 November 2021, the European Commission published its Proposal for a Regulation on Deforestation-free Products
(hereafter “the Proposal”). This position paper outlines how ISEAL believes this draft legislation should be adjusted to have a deeper impact on preventing deforestation.

This paper discusses how voluntary sustainability standards and certification schemes can play an important role in this smart mix, in particular in terms of supporting supply chain regulation on deforestation.

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 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.