In 2019, ISEAL carried out a review of the Credibility Principles to determine if the Credibility Principles require revision. This document outlines the findings from the review, which determined that there is a need to revise the Credibility Principles.

Sustainability systems are uniquely positioned to advance human rights protections for workers in global supply chains through the identification and verification of risks and instances of forced labour. This core and often elusive step of due diligence is critical to ensure compliance with emerging human rights legislation and credibility of sustainability labels and claims in the global market. 

Global sustainability challenges are complex problems and determining the best strategies to bring about lasting improvements in sustainability performance remains a core challenge for sustainability systems. Many are increasingly experimenting with a wide range of strategies to reach their sustainability goals. However, the effectiveness of these strategies is highly dependent on the context in which they are applied. 

The framework can help sustainability standards and other sustainability initiatives navigate the types and intensity of collaboration and interoperability using the metals, minerals and mining sectors as examples.

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).

This paper presents the findings of a structured review of the GHG aspects of the standards of the four members of the M3 Standards Partnership1—the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance (IRMA), Responsible Jewellery Council (RJC), ResponsibleSteel and Towards Sustainable Mining (TSM)—as well as a variety of other organizations in the mining, minerals and metals sector. It also reports on the responses to a detailed survey of leading mining companies drawn from the M3 Partnership’s memberships.

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 guide lays out good practices for developing and implementing benchmarks of voluntary sustainability systems (VSS).

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.

Tackling gender inequalities is becoming increasingly important for voluntary sustainability standards (VSS) and similar systems to address. Sustainability systems are looking to integrate gender into their standards and the management of their organisations. Sustainability systems that are not gender-responsive can result in unnecessary health and safety risks for women and girls, and lead to unequal impacts and unintended consequences.

This guidance document provides guidance for sustainability systems looking to collect or improve the collection of polygon location data. It was developed with the support of experts and ISEAL members with advanced experience, and includes a variety of different options and technologies.

The COVID-19 pandemic severely impacted the ability of many sustainability systems to perform on-site audits. Many have had to implement new policies and adapt to new ways of working. In many ways, this forced many sustainability systems to rapidly innovate during the pandemic, by embracing novel technologies and piloting new approaches to assess sites remotely.  

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.

ISEAL submitted feedback into the Canadian Competition Bureau's public consultation on the Competition Act's new greenwashing provisions that will inform future enforcement guidance about environmental claims.

This guide supports sustainability systems and their assurance partners make decisions about when remote auditing practices are appropriate and desirable, and how to use new technology and data to both inform and then operationalize that choice. It aims to give practical advice based on experiences to date, both on the types of tools and data sources available, as well as some key considerations for successful integration of remote audit technology into assurance processes.

Guidelines, which have been prepared to serve as the basis for discussion on standardized procedures and protocols for the collection and management of certificate location data with the goal that these data will eventually become part of an ISEAL member Certification Atlas (CA).

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.

The Impact Alliance is a voluntary collaboration between sustainability initiatives sharing similar goals to provide oversight of and support in the development, maintenance, promotion and claiming of Impact Incentives and Impact Partnerships. The purpose of this policy is to outline the Impact Alliance’s governance structure and mechanisms and can be made available to interested parties upon request.

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.

The Impact Alliance project was designed to test the feasibility of “Impact Incentives” and “Impact Partnership Incentives” as innovative market-driven working models to scale and improve sustainability performance at landscape levels. The aim was to have a validated model that can be scaled up and offered for use with other commodities and other ISEAL standards, becoming an important sustainability impact accelerator for the sourcing areas of a growing number of industries. This document provides lessons learnt and insights gained over the course of the project. 

This guidance equips sustainability systems with practical tips on how they can make their impact claims more meaningful and effective with confidence and accuracy.

Download the notes from the Inclusion & empowerment breakout session at the ISEAL Global Sustainability Symposium 2024.

The Independent Evaluation Procedure for ISEAL Accreditation Members defines how organisations apply for, and maintain, ISEAL Accreditation Member status under ISEAL’s compliance programme.

ISEAL Community Members can claim to be ISEAL Code Compliant only when they have demonstrated adherence to the baseline and improvement criteria of each of ISEAL’s Codes of Good Practice in accordance with the processes and definitions in this procedure.

This document presents the performance metrics and data sources included in the Hybrid Community-based Monitoring System (HCMS) that was built by the Tech4Communities project in Ghana, using the LandScale assessment framework.