In 2019, the ISEAL Innovations Fund awarded a grant to Bonsucro to collaboratively develop and test methodologies to help financial service providers improve how they assess their agricultural clients’ sustainability performance, to enable access to better financing opportunities for farmers who produce sustainably. Project partners included the Better Cotton Initiative, and the Alliance for Water Stewardship (AWS).

This document includes considerations and a set of guiding questions designed to support the inclusion of the indicators in the Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) systems of Voluntary Sustainability Standards (VSS) and other organisations.

This infographic provides a summary on boosting sustainability practice and performance at the landscape level, through Good Water Stewardship project. 

This Guidance supports sustainability systems to design and implement good practice greenhouse gas emissions accounting, reporting and disclosure strategies for users of their schemes. This approach affords several opportunities for the ISEAL community. The intended users of this Guidance are ISEAL member schemes that are involved in the certification of commodities. The guidance may also be of interest to their communities (certificate holders, applicants, assurance providers, oversight bodies, buyers, governments, civil society and the public).

Sustainability systems represent and support complex supply chains, with a wide variety of commodities, producers and geographies included. Emissions reporting is a complex and fast-moving space. Thus, these systems and their communities may face challenges keeping pace with developments and developing consistent and appropriate good practices that can benefit their communities and climate security.

This document represents a short ‘start here’ level introduction to the ‘Accounting & Reporting the emissions of certified commodities’ suite of guidance documents. This document is specifically aimed at ISEAL member schemes or other sustainability systems who have commenced or are considering commencing on a process to align their certification of commodities and chains of custody models with emissions reporting good practices.

Bonsucro and Responsible Jewellery Council engaged Business & Human Rights consultancy twentyfifty to conduct a research project into Grievance Mechanisms within Voluntary Sustainability Standards (VSS). The research investigated how grievance mechanisms have been set up and how grievances are managed and remediated within their memberships.

Bonsucro and Responsible Jewellery Council engaged Business & Human Rights consultancy twentyfifty Ltd to conduct a research project on learning and good practice from the experience of ISEAL Community Members in implementing Human Rights Due Diligence (HRDD) in line with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs). This briefing note is intended to give a summary of the key findings from this.

This document is specifically aimed at Oversight and Assurance Providers to ISEAL member schemes or other sustainability systems that have or are commencing on a process to align their certification of commodities and chains of custody models with emissions reporting good practices.

This document represents a short ‘start here’ level introduction to the ‘Accounting & Reporting the Emissions of Certified Commodities’ suite of guidance documents. This document is specifically aimed at Certificate Holders and potential applicants for certification (henceforth ‘CH/A’) with ISEAL member schemes or other sustainability systems that have or are commencing on a process to align their certification of commodities and chains of custody models with emissions reporting good practices. The CH/A community for each scheme will reflect the nature of the work entailed.

This report has been developed to support voluntary sustainability standard setting organizations (VSS organizations), businesses, or industry groups that operate, or are seeking to partner with local third-party organizations to develop company or multistakeholder grievance mechanisms in accordance with the principles set out in the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGP).This document will illustrate how third-party partners can support these organizations in the design and implementation of grievance mechanisms, and provide a practical framework for selectin

The ASC have developed an Improver Programme (IP) comprised of a set of procedures and tools to ensure that ASC standards or best practice improvements are consistently and effectively implemented by the producers. The IP model encourages uptake by groups of farmers and provides processes for group engagement in the improvement project. This document summarises joint efforts from ASC and SFP to develop a joint monitoring and evaluation framework for this new IP model. 

The ISEAL-funded research project Integrating new data to improve risk assessments and detection of forced labour in agricultural supply chains (2017 – 18) is an attempt to build the evidence base around monitoring and remediating forced labour in agricultural supply chains.

The Landscape Monitoring Framework of the socio-economic dimension (LMS) is a tool that provides practical guidance to assess the socio-economic status of a landscape to monitor progress and facilitates action for development. The LMS targets the stakeholders of the landscape initiative, and in particular the initiators of the initiative, as the main user group.

Aquaculture improvement projects (AIPs) have recently emerged as a new form of market-based and non-state governance in the aquaculture sector (Bottema, 2019). They embody multi-stakeholder efforts that leverage the influence of the private sector to drive improvements in aquaculture production and ensure that these changes endure through improved policy and management strategies (Sustainable Fisheries Partnership (SFP), 2019).

This report summarizes the key lessons learnt by each of the key stakeholder groups from participation in the ASC Improver Programme pilot. The ASC standards set principles, criteria, indicators, and measurable performance levels for environmentally and socially responsible aquaculture. However, producers carry the responsibility to implement these standards at their farms, where smaller operations may have financial or technical constraints.

This document outlines the approach taken by the LIA Impact Partnership Pilot project, exploring Impact Partnership Incentives. While Impact Incentives work in a similar way to existing book & claim systems by rewarding already certified producers, Impact Partnership Incentives allow brands and retailers to support on-the-ground Program Partners to help producers transition towards best practices and certification.

This publication was prepared for the M3 Partnership to facilitate integrated assessment to their respective standards and assurance frameworks.

This document presents the set of 15 indicators, the rationale for their selection, definitions, methodological notes, and main references for each indicator. It also includes the learnings from pilot testing the indicators in different countries and settings.

This document outlines the desktop research conducted at the start of the project and explains the process how the Delta Framework was developed.

This paper explores how Voluntary Sustainability Initiatives (VSIs) for the mining sector can be used to demonstrate that companies have appropriate due diligence systems and processes in place, to ensure that due diligence has been carried out, and to verify due diligence. While VSIs and related verification processes are not a substitute for rule of law and the role of government in establishing requirements and oversight, they can serve as a complementary tool for due diligence.

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).

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

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.