This briefing paper complements ISEAL’s Recommendations, released in November 2022, which focus on two main areas of legislative reform for the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD):

This resource reviews the benefits and challenges of metrics alignment and data sharing for organisations, and provides a roadmap and considerations to help think through undertaking them. The guidance builds on learnings from projects by ISEAL and its members, where metrics alignment and data sharing were key.

This form should be completed by sustainability standards and similar systems to apply for ISEAL Community membership.

Six years ago, ISEAL published a comprehensive review and synthesis of existing literature and evidence of the business benefits of using sustainability standards.

There is wide recognition that the ongoing pandemic has had a profound impact on women across all dimensions of economic and social activity. From shifting gender roles within the household to effects on women’s active role in the economy and the real health and well-being effects of the pandemic, there is a growing concern that women are ‘losing out’ severely. From the standpoint of sustainability standards and systems, the pandemic has opened up the opportunity to review many streams of work, including how they conduct their assurance activities.

This methodology aims to support national commodity associations and other relevant public bodies to aggregate producer-level data using the Delta indicators to assess and report on the sustainability performance of the commodity’s production at country level.

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).

This report provides an endline status of the ISEAL-BSR project ‘Improving data and impact measurement for women in supply chains project’, which aimed to support standards in mainstreaming gender equality within their strategy, tools and systems.

This report offers lessons learned on how interoperability of sustainability standards in the metals, minerals and metals (MMM) sectors can help standards systems in other sectors. In particular, it explores how MMM, forestry and agriculture standards can enhance collaboration and improve sustainability impacts through interoperability.

These terms of reference cover the formation, responsibilities, aims and operation of the Steering Group with respect to the revision and approval of ISEAL’s Credibility Principles in 2020.

In response to the EU proposal for a Green Claims Directive, this statement intends to go further in establishing robust credibility criteria, by promoting multistakeholder participation, and supporting clear pre-approval and verification processes for sustainability schemes. 

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

This document sets out how ISEAL works with its Community Members to support them to identify, plan and implement improvements to their system that are feasible and strategically relevant.

This resource explores the concept of adopting a holistic and interconnected framework for managing and utilising data. It highlights how a digital ecosystem approach facilitates collaboration and data sharing across various stakeholders and systems to address complex challenges like ensuring sustainability through origin traceability. 

The Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC), together with Sustainable Fisheries Partnership (SFP) and Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch Program (SFW), are piloting an improver programme to implement best management practices with the aim of improving farm and zonal management to mitigate critical production risks. This document identifies key lessons from this project.

The ISEAL Innovations Fund and Programme was launched in 2016 to create an enabling environment for innovation, new ideas and strategies to scale the impact, effectiveness, efficiency and inclusiveness of sustainability systems. This learning brief captures some of the key early lessons learned so far.

This document presents the details and outcomes of the consultative events carried out in the development of the Delta Framework.

This report explores the relevance of current trends in technology to sustainability standards – from mobile data collection and the internet of things, to open data and blockchains – and proposes a roadmap for development. 

The growth and integrity of the sustainable biofuels industry, as well as the interests it seeks to protect, are in jeopardy due to the vulnerabilities in methods it currently uses for tracking transaction claims and verifying their authenticity — as identified by recent biofuel fraud investigations in the Netherlands.

Please submit your application and CV no later than 11 August 2025 to Eleanor Radford, Manager, Engagement and Events: eleanor@isealalliance.org

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.

The Delta Framework aims to align sustainability monitoring and reporting within and across the cotton and coffee sectors. It provides a common set of indicators to measure and communicate sustainability improvements. This document is a summarized version of the Delta Indicators.

This assessment has been undertaken as part of the ISEAL Innovations Fund project: Streamlining the path towards sustainability in the aquaculture industry, Integration of seafood certification and jurisdictional assurance models. The collaborators in this case are the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC), the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership (SFP), and the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch® program (SFW). This report presents an analysis of the data alignment and complimentary data aspects of the three schemes.  

This report includes a comparison of the International Water Stewardship Standard (AWS Standard) and the Regional Competitiveness Framework of the Sustainable District Association in Indonesia (LTKL), with recommendations to improve alignment for better water stewardship at jurisdictional level.