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 research briefing aiming to inform practice is based on primary research by ISEAL over the last two years and is part of ISEAL’s project with IDH on strengthening sustainability standards to advance living wage goals. This report was written by Kate Robinson of The Outcome Gap, with editorial support from Vidya Rangan, at ISEAL.

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.

Low wages persist in the banana sector, and workers struggle to make a decent living. Even in contexts of certified value chains, workers can experience a gap between their earnings and living wage benchmarks. In 2023, Fairtrade International launched three mechanisms to contribute to closing living wage gaps for banana workers (see page 3 for details). In addition, the Fairtrade Minimum Price and Fairtrade Premium benefit both farmers and workers. Together, these tools aim to increase incomes for banana producers and workers in certified value chains.

ISEAL developed a framework for credible living wage claims following input from a range of standard setting organisations, companies and trade unions. It focuses on claims about living wages and guides credibility in sustainability communication. Since January 2021, ISEAL has worked with sustainability systems to strengthen their approaches in supporting supply chain action on living wages.

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.

Read about the Living Wage Working Group that ran in 2021 and 2022 for Certification and Auditing Systems.

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 case study forms part of the Rainforest Alliance project Use of Risk Maps for Child and Forced Labour in Risk-Based Assurance Processes, supported by the ISEAL Innovations Fund. The project sought to test the prototypes of sectoral risk maps for child labor and forced labor in Kenya, Côte d’Ivoire, and Honduras.

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.