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.

This assessment has been undertaken as part of the ISEAL Innovations Fund project: Streamlining the path towards sustainability in the aquaculture industry, Integration of seafood certification and jurisdictional assurance models. The collaborators in this case are the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC), the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership (SFP), and the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch® program (SFW). This report presents an analysis of the data alignment and complimentary data aspects of the three schemes.  

This report includes a comparison of the International Water Stewardship Standard (AWS Standard) and the Regional Competitiveness Framework of the Sustainable District Association in Indonesia (LTKL), with recommendations to improve alignment for better water stewardship at jurisdictional level.

This report documents ideas for how certifiers can leverage blockchain technology to reduce audit inefficiency, create a single source of truth for chain of custody (CoC) tracking and support sustainability data reporting. 

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.

This document supports the implementation of common data models to facilitate future data aggregation and collective reporting.

This report includes a comparison of the International Water Stewardship Standard (AWS Standard) and the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil Principles and Criteria (RSPO P&C), with recommendations to improve alignment for better water stewardship in the oil palm sector.

This document describes ResponsibleSteel’s methodology for the recognition of input material programmes. It is underpinned by a series of Excel templates, the ‘ResponsibleSteel Recognition Assessment Tool’, that serve to implement the methodology.

The only way to solve the sustainability challenges that we face today – from deforestation to biodiversity loss to inequality and poverty – is through greater collaboration, collective action, and innovation. We believe that sustainability systems are an important part of this solution by driving the sustainable transformation of complex commodity sectors and global supply chains. But to remain effective and add value, sustainability systems need to constantly push boundaries.

This short paper provides high-level summaries of BetterCoal, IRMA and TSM and outlines under which circumstances ResponsibleSteel will recognise mine sites participating in the programmes.

ResponsibleSteel has assessed Bettercoal, IRMA and TSM against a defined recognition benchmark as laid out in the ‘Recognition assessment tool’. The recognition assessments served to determine whether the programmes meet our benchmark and could thus be recognised. This paper provides high-level summaries of the three programmes and outlines under which circumstances ResponsibleSteel will recognise mine sites participating in the programmes

To meet today’s sustainability challenges requires new thinking, collaborations and ways of working. ISEAL's Innovations Fund cultivates this by providing grants to sustainability systems to develop innovative approaches and drive sector transformation.This learning brief:

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.

This Guidance document has been developed to facilitate the use of the Integrated Assessment Protocol (IAP). This macro-enabled Excel Workbook was created to assist the Mining Organization and Operation with an integrated approach to assessing conformity to select responsible mining initiatives. This workbook includes a combined protocol that represents the following standards: Towards Sustainable Mining (TSM) Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance (IRMA) Responsible Jewelry Council (RJC)

Forests are vital to the survival of the natural world. To decouple agricultural supply chains from deforestation, a ‘smart mix’ of policies is needed: a combination of mutually reinforcing measures that provides a framework for all stakeholders to act, both on the ground in producer countries and in consumer countries. This paper discusses how voluntary sustainability standards and certification schemes can play an important role in this smart mix, in particular in terms of supporting supply chain regulation.

This paper discusses how voluntary sustainability standards and certification schemes can play an important role in this smart mix, in particular in terms of supporting supply chain regulation on deforestation.

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.

In this report ISEAL offers insights from three baselines of evaluations that it commissioned in 2015 and were published in June 2016