Vietnam is the world’s second largest coffee exporter, with smallholders earning relatively high incomes. This is the result of a steady development of the coffee sector over several decades. This case describes how it came about, and yields valuable lessons for living income practitioners in other contexts.

Jointly commissioned by Evidensia, The Living Income Community of Practice (LICOP), and ISEAL, this report examines three in-depth case studies to examine how prominent living income policy initiatives have evolved, what motivated key actors to support or resist them, and what practitioners can draw from these experiences to apply in their own work. It also proposes an analytical framework that researchers can use to construct comparable cases.

This round is now closed. In August 2025 The ISEAL Innovations Fund invited Expressions of Interest for projects that respond to the theme: Market mechanisms for transferring value to small-scale producers and SMEs.This Call for EOIs document contains all the information our members need to apply. Please note: EOIs must be submitted by an ISEAL Community Member, though non-member organisations can be named as project lead. Please also find links to download a brief Summary of this Call, as well as additional guidance documents for this funding round.

The newly developed EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) requires companies to track and address human rights issues in their supply chains – including living income. The case describes the process of negotiation around the CSDDD and shares lessons on advocacy and policy development.

In 2021, ISEAL worked with seven different sustainability schemes to conduct ten field-based pilot audits in different country-sector combinations around the world. The objectives of these pilot audits were two-fold: to provide participating schemes the opportunity to test the use of the Salary Matrix and accompanying IDH Verification Guidelines with certified entities and to provide IDH learnings and recommendations for these pilots to improve these Roadmap’s tools.

The Living Income Community of Practice has designed a series of infographics that aids in the visualisation of the living income concept, measurement as well as the objectives of the community of practice. We encourage all within the community to use these infographics to keep the conversation going. ​Conditions for use: All the images are downloadable in a pdf format. It is advisable to use the graphics in its entirety. Also, we kindly request you credit the Living Income Community of Practice.

In 2023, the Global Living Wage Coalition commissioned the Anker Research Institute and ISEAL to do a needs assessment aimed at gathering stakeholder views on the readiness to advance on living wages for tea workers in Assam and West Bengal. 

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 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 Living Income Differential (LID) was the result of a joint initiative of the Ivorian and Ghanaian governments to address the sharp drop in world market cocoa prices which reduced farmers’ income and governments’ revenues from cocoa. The LID is a $400 per ton premium on cocoa exports, to be paid on top of the world market price. This case study describes the process of the LID development from a planned price floor, which was changed into a premium on the export price and which initiated public-private discussions about an Economic Pact.

This briefing note shares insights and learnings from a series of semi-structured interviews ISEAL conducted with fourteen leading, global companies engaged in living wage actions.

We often talk about system-level change to address root causes of poverty and imbalance of risk. This requires us to unite in different and creative ways. The Living Income Community of Practice motivates actors across sectors to help close the income gap, so that smallholders can earn a decent standard of living as a basic human right.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) recently reached a landmark agreement on the definition and operationalisation of a living wage, following its meeting of experts in February.

Ensuring resilient livelihoods and sustained employment for vulnerable communities was already a stretch pre-Covid-19. For those communities lacking a stable income, the impact has been inconceivable.