In 2025 the ISEAL Innovations Fund commissioned research into how voluntary sustainability systems go about scaling innovative practices. This study explored how to close the 'pilot-to-scale' gap. It identifies six main pathways through which sustainability innovations can scale.

Empowering small-scale seafood producers is a cornerstone of a sustainable seafood future. Small-scale seafood producers have historically been overlooked, yet they are not marginal actors—they are crucial contributors to global food security, ocean governance, and wider sustainability goals.ISEAL is engaging with stakeholders across the seafood sector – producers, companies, investors, researchers and NGOs - to develop understanding and take action to address the inequities in seafood markets and adopt more inclusive approaches.

This report discusses explores challenges the M3 Partnership faced developing a shared approach to stakeholder engagement and the extent to which the objectives of reducing duplicative or competitive communications and reducing stakeholder confusion and fatigue was achieved through the project, and outlines 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.

The aim of the ISEAL Measurement Working Group (MWG) is to advance measurement practices at a landscape or jurisdictional scale and, where feasible, promote alignment of specific indicators and data requirements for three thematic areas related to sustainability assessment: biodiversity and nature; human wellbeing; and human rights. The MWG brings together a variety of organizations that are developing tools and resources for implementing Landscape and Jurisdictional Approaches (LJAs).

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 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 pilots, in Turkey and Pakistan, provided practical insights for these strategic decisions at Better Cotton.

The M3 Partnership is a collaboration of the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance (IRMA), Responsible Jewellery Council (RJC), ResponsibleSteel, and Towards Sustainable Mining (TSM), which aims to identify opportunities for alignment and collective action to drive improvement in social and environmental performance.

This cross-sectoral learning brief distils the in-depth reports and tools from the Mining, metals and minerals (M3) Standards Partnership project, led by Responsible Steel, supported by the ISEAL Innovations Fund and the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs SECO.

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 Technical guidance on due diligence for living income, commissioned by the Living
Income Community of Practice (LICOP), provides a practical and comprehensive framework that supports agribusiness companies in implementing human rights due diligence (HRDD) for living income in line with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs).

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.

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.

Corporate due diligence has been at the core of responsible business practices for decades. In recent years, there has been an increased shift beyond the narrow focus on financial compliance towards a broader concept of due diligence that incorporates sustainability issues.

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.