This report will  discuss the challenges the M3 Partnership faced developing a shared approach to stakeholder engagement, explore the extent to which the higher-level objective of reducing duplicative or competitive communications and reducing stakeholder confusion and fatigue has been achieved throughout the project, and outline lessons learned.

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.

This document discusses core concepts, such as consent and rights, that underpin governance of data use and sharing. It proposes general principles and steps for a reasoned and documented approach to data rights, control and sharing for the ISEAL community. The purpose of this guidance is to help sustainability systems: 1) establish certified entities’ rights to data related to certified activities; and 2) responsibly use and share those data.

This document provides an overview of the development of the ISEAL Code of Good Practice for Sustainability Systems (the ISEAL Code). It includes a summary of the consultations on the first and second drafts of the ISEAL Code, and an overview of key changes from the existing Codes of Good Practice. We would like to thank everyone who provided feedback on the drafts, and to those who supported the consultations by engaging with events and sharing information about the consultations with colleagues and stakeholders.

There are different ways in which sustainability systems can operate at landscape level. The ATLA project was designed to explore some of the key considerations at play in these strategic decisions, such as where to focus efforts, the scale of time and resources needed, how to measure performance at landscape level, and what it means to work in partnership with existing multi-stakeholder initiatives. Two project pilots, in Turkey and Pakistan, provided practical insights for these strategic decisions in the case of Better Cotton.

The Mining, Minerals, and Metals Partnership (M3 Partnership) is a collaboration of the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance (IRMA), Responsible Jewellery Council (RJC), ResponsibleSteel, and Towards Sustainable Mining (TSM). The M3 Partnership aims to identify opportunities for alignment and collective action to drive improvement in social and environmental performance. This report summarizes lessons learned across four key M3 Projects, including the Integrated Assessment Protocol (IAP) Tool, IAP Pilots, Greenhouse Gas (GHG), and Due Diligence Projects

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.

This cross-sectoral learning brief distils the in-depth reports and tools from the M3 Partnership that can be found on the M3 Partnership website or ISEAL website.

In 2019, Gold Standard received a grant from the ISEAL Innovations Fund to develop guidance for accounting and reporting the emissions of certified commodities, in close collaboration with a group of ISEAL Community Members.

Benchmarking guide for analysing or evaluating sustainability initiatives or performance.

There are a myriad of sustainability claims in the market today. The ISEAL Sustainability Claims Good Practice Guide was developed through a multi-stakeholder consultation process to define good practice for scheme owners in setting and managing claims about their standards system.

There are a myriad of sustainability claims in the market today. The ISEAL Sustainability Claims Good Practice Guide was developed through a multi-stakeholder consultation process to define good practice for scheme owners in setting and managing claims about their standards system.

Read about the Living Wage Working Group that ran in 2021 and 2022 for Certification and Auditing Systems.

The document at the bottom of this page provides a high level summary of what polygon location data is and why it is of significant value to sustainability standards. It aims to encourage decision makers within systems to consider the operational collection and use of polygon data within their organisations.

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

Download the PowerPoint presentation for The ISEAL Code breakfast session at the ISEAL Global Sustainability Symposium 2024

This is a standardised metadata set that provides a common code for search and discovery to improve the flow of sustainability information.

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.

Voluntary sustainability standards (VSSs) are increasingly directly and indirectly referenced in trade policy. They are integrated into various policy instruments, including market access and due diligence regulations, FTAs, public procurement policies, and export promotion strategies. This report details the use of VSSs and serves as a practical guide for how to assess the credibility of various VSSs and make informed decisions on which standards to integrate into trade policies.

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. 

This technical paper identifies opportunities for further Guidance that we believe will strengthen an effective implementation of EUDR. ISEAL has been engaging closely with sustainability systems to understand how they are aligning and adapting in response to EUDR. In the process of adapting, sustainability systems have identified outstanding ambiguities in the Regulation and published FAQs (v1.2) which may hinder effective and consistent implementation of EUDR by operators and traders. Our paper identifies three opportunities for further guidance: