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.

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 document provides guidance to users in using the ODK Mobile App, a tool that supports offline data collection. Data is stored in SAN’s technology platform the iHub which provides a secure, agile, and scalable backend for the mobile app.

This document provides a matrix of indicators for use with farm owners and when using the ODK Mobile App, a tool that supports offline data collection. Data is stored in SAN’s technology platform the iHub which provides a secure, agile, and scalable backend for the mobile app.

This report highlights lessons from pilot projects  across five supply chains in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific between 2024 and 2025, and cover sugar, cocoa, cotton and flowers. It captures Fairtrade’s approach, key lessons learned, and practical considerations, when Fairtrade facilitated direct dialogue between companies and farmers/workers. It also offers practical guidance for businesses and third-party facilitators. It is aimed at companies and (potential) facilitators of meaningful rightsholder dialogue.

This brief presents practical strategies for strengthening monitoring approaches within voluntary sustainability systems, with a focus on promoting inclusion and equity. Drawing on experiences from ISEAL members, it provides actionable insights and examples that can inform more effective and inclusive monitoring and evaluation practices. These learnings are also relevant for businesses, governments, and civil society organisations aiming to support more just and equitable markets.

From mid-2022 – mid-2024, ISEAL led a stream of work focused on Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) for landscape and jurisdictional approaches. As part of this endeavour, we committed to supporting three sustainability systems and related organisations through pilot project funding. The goal was to explore the practicalities of measuring landscape and jurisdictional level performance improvement to tackle sustainability issues at scale, with a particular focus on biodiversity and nature, human well-being, and human rights.

A study to identify the prospect on incentive design for the uptake of water stewardship in Indonesia. The report looks at the existing government and financial sector landscape, as well as some best practices of financing mechanisms and incentives in the region and globally. A set of high-level recommendations are provided to support government and financial institutions in Indonesia to drive more incentive for good water stewardship uptake in Indonesia.

This report outlines an approach for producing land-cover maps at different cartographic scales, aiming to facilitate analysis, and ultimately evaluate which scale and method combinations offer the best balance between precision of data generated and resources invested.

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.

This case study is part of a series that looks at how credible VSS are responding to one of the most important legislative developments: the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), which aims to prevent products associated with deforestation from being sold on the EU market. Featuring Rainforest Alliance and Fairtrade International, it explores how credible VSS drive not only compliance but also meaningful transformation across the cocoa sector.

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 case study looks at how credible voluntary sustainability standards (VSS) are responding to one of the most important legislative developments: the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), which aims to prevent products associated with deforestation from being sold on the EU market. Featuring the Round Table on Responsible Soy (RTRS) and ProTerra,  it explores how credible VSS drive not only compliance but also meaningful transformation across the soy sector.

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 document is a short ‘start here’ level introduction for buyers of certified commodities as users, stakeholders, participants and license holders of ISEAL member schemes or other sustainability systems.

This document is a short ‘start here’ level introduction for Certificate Holders and potential applicants for certification 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.

This document is a short ‘start here’ level introduction for 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 is a short ‘start here’ level introduction for 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.

ISEAL engaged consultancy ANC Ltd to understand the strategic implications of sustainability reporting for VSS. To date, the opportunities for mutual benefit from collaboration between sustainability reporting frameworks and VSS were underexplored and underdeveloped.This summary report details the strategic pathways and implications of deeper collaboration between VSS and sustainability reporting frameworks for bigger sustainability impacts.

An introduction to ISEAL’s Finance Committee, which was established in 2006 to oversee all issues related to the financial management of ISEAL. The Committee reviews for example ISEAL’s quarterly accounts, annual budgets and other issues related to ISEAL’s financial reporting and performance.

An introduction to the Membership Committee, a permanent committee of the ISEAL Board of Directors that is responsible primarily for forming recommendations on new membership applications, deciding on member disputes that may arise as a result of an independent evaluation of Code Compliance, and deciding on appeals decisions of the Secretariat not to recommend ISEAL Community Member status or to suspend or withdraw Code Compliant status.

An introduction to ISEAL’s Technical Committee. The Technical Committee is a permanent sub-committee of the ISEAL Board that is responsible primarily for technical oversight of the ISEAL Codes of Good Practice and other Credibility Tools.