As global expectations to eliminate deforestation and land conversion from supply chains intensify, companies recognise that progress depends on robust protection of Indigenous Peoples’ rights, including their right to Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC).

BCI and WWF-Turkey collaborated through the ATLA (Adaptation to Landscape Approach) project to create baseline information and get a clear understanding of how farming activities have been interacting with Buyuk Menderes Delta and Lake Bafa over time using Geographic Information Systems (GIS).This report presents results of the GIS analyses, including Land Cover, Agriculture, Geography, Soil Quality, and Environmental Services.

Small-scale producers play a vital role in sustainable production and land use — but too often, they lack the resources and economic resilience needed to adopt more sustainable practices.This case study highlights practical approaches that are helping bridge this gap by creating incentives that bring climate, environmental and social benefits, including premiums, incentives and recognising and rewarding community stewardship.Part of a series exploring promising approaches for enabling small-scale producer market access and shifts to sustainable production:

This learning brief was produced by FSC as part of their Creating partnerships for research and testing impact verification frameworks in Indigenous and traditional communities project. 

The power of landscape initiatives lies in aligning interests and priorities of key stakeholders, including local communities, practitioners, market actors, and local governments around collective goals, actions, and investment so that they are better able to finance and address the system conditions needed to achieve long-term sustainability impacts at a landscape scale.

Le principal avantage des initiatives paysagères réside dans l’harmonisation des intérêts et des priorités des parties prenantes, notamment des communautés et autorités locales, des professionnels du secteur et des acteurs de marchés, autour d’objectifs, d’actions et d’investissements communs leur permettant de financer et de remplir les conditions nécessaires afin d’avoir des impacts de durabilité à long terme à l’échelle paysagère du système mis en place.

Landscape initiatives are increasingly emerging as an effective route to support the environmental and economic resilience of landscapes and smallholder farmers producing raw materials for global supply chains. ISEAL has been exploring the role of landscape and jurisdictional approaches in addressing livelihoods and income challenges for smallholder farmers. This paper forms part of ongoing research to understand to what extent existing landscape initiatives are integrating livelihoods and living income considerations.

The Good Practice, Better Finance project is an ISEAL Innovations Fund project that aims to develop and test methodologies, as well as improve monitoring tools, which would allow for improved access to affordable finance for farmers. This improved access would be through reward systems based on the integration of farmers’ risk management and sustainability strategies with financial institutions’ own risk assessment frameworks.

In 2016, nine ISEAL members came together to form the Integrated Pest Management (IPM) Coalition. The coalition aims to reduce and eventually eliminate the use of highly hazardous pesticides, and to promote more sustainable alternatives. It also aims to harmonise approaches to pesticides between ISEAL member standards.

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.

This guidance document offers suggestions as input for consideration for the recent EUDR guidelines on the use of certification. ISEAL has built a broad-based consensus around what constitutes credible operating practices for sustainability certification schemes. Our Code of Good Practice captures this consensus in a publicly available normative document against which all ISEAL Code compliant members have been evaluated.

On Friday, 7th November 2025, we co-hosted the Landscape Practitioner Network in-person workshop in Jakarta alongside LTKL. This workshop aimed to strengthen collaboration among landscape practitioners by sharing experiences, exchanging learning, and exploring practical solutions to systemic challenges, such as deforestation, tenure, and resilient livelihoods, through landscape and jurisdictional approaches.

ISEAL has developed a good practice guide to help ensure that sustainability claims made by jurisdictions, landscape initiatives, and the companies that source from or support them, are credible. The guidance covers the structural and performance claims a jurisdictional entity may wish to make, along with the supporting action claims of other related stakeholders.

This case study highlights how credible voluntary sustainability standards (VSS) support palm oil companies with regulatory requirements such as the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR). Featuring the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), it explores how VSS enable traceability, ensure legal production, and promote smallholder inclusion - helping businesses build deforestation-and conversion-free (DCF) supply chains that go beyond compliance.

This report assesses leading metrics for measuring and reporting performance over time and across multiple spatial scales. It examines six critical sustainability issues: deforestation, biodiversity, water use, forced labour, poverty, and greenhouse gas emissions. The research supports sustainability systems in making data-driven outcome claims and provides insight into evaluating metric suitability. The report focuses on applicability of metrics and data sources, best practices, and associated limitations and trade-offs.

The Smart Assurance project supported by the ISEAL Innovations Fund until July 2024 developed and tested a new type of oversight process that combines the use of satellite data, analytical methods, and ground verification supported by Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs or drones) with assessment practices to provide enhanced oversight both at scale and with a new level of granularity.

Moving towards an outcome-based standard creates the opportunity for LEAF to communicate more closely on the impacts of implementing the LEAF Marque Standard, measuring outcomes directly rather than proxying them with practices.

Project outputs from Sustainable Fibre Alliance's STEPPE Project, funded by the ISEAL Innovations Fund. 

Juan Isaza, Program Manager, explains what the IPM Coalition is and how this initiative will accelerate the elimination of highly hazardous pesticide usage throughout the world.

El poder de las iniciativas de paisaje radica en alinear los intereses y prioridades de las partes interesadas clave, incluidas las comunidades locales, los profesionales, los actores del mercado y los gobiernos locales en torno a objetivos, acciones e inversiones colectivas, de modo que puedan financiar y abordar mejor las condiciones del sistema necesarias para lograr impactos de sostenibilidad a largo plazo a escala de paisaje.

A força das iniciativas de paisagem está em alinhar os interesses e as prioridades dos principais atores — incluindo comunidades locais, profissionais, agentes de mercado e governos locais — em torno de metas, ações e investimentos coletivos, de modo que estejam mais bem preparados para financiar e enfrentar as condições sistêmicas necessárias para alcançar impactos de sustentabilidade de longo prazo em escala de paisagem.

Kekuatan inisiatif lanskap terletak pada penyelarasan prioritas para pemangku kepentingan utama, termasuk masyarakat lokal, para praktisi, pelaku pasar, dan pemerintah daerah sehubungan dengan sasaran, rencana aksi, dan investasi bersama. Hasilnya akan memungkinkan mereka lebih mampu membiayai dan menciptakan kondisi sistem yang diperlukan untuk mencapai dampak keberlanjutan jangka panjang pada skala lanskap.

Regulatory pressure is growing for companies to have more sustainable supply chains. Such rules have great potential. They could change the incentive structure of the market, allowing companies to overcome competition hurdles that have hampered sustainability action in the past. But beyond the right market conditions, companies also need credible solutions that enable efficient compliance with the rules and help realise the intended sustainability impacts.