Report produced for the ISEAL Alliance Innovations Fund project “Integrating new data to improve risk assessments and detection of forced labour vulnerability in agricultural supply chains”.

A Report produced for the ISEAL Alliance Innovations Fund project “Integrating new data to improve risk assessments and detection of forced labour vulnerability in agricultural supply chains”.

The ISEAL-funded research project Integrating new data to improve risk assessments and detection of forced labour in agricultural supply chains (2017 – 18) is an attempt to build the evidence base around monitoring and remediating forced labour in agricultural supply chains.

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.

This report explores the relevance of current trends in technology to sustainability standards – from mobile data collection and the internet of things, to open data and blockchains – and proposes a roadmap for development. 

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 is a research report published by ISEAL and authored by Dr Emma Wilson. The report was developed as part of a collaboration between ISEAL and GIZ to support the work of sustainability standards in the metals, mining and minerals sector.

This report has been developed to support voluntary sustainability standard setting organizations (VSS organizations), businesses, or industry groups that operate, or are seeking to partner with local third-party organizations to develop company or multistakeholder grievance mechanisms in accordance with the principles set out in the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGP).This document will illustrate how third-party partners can support these organizations in the design and implementation of grievance mechanisms, and provide a practical framework for selectin

This one-hour session hosted by the Living Income Community of Practice (LICOP) explored how retailers are rethinking their role in advancing living income for smallholder farmers. Drawing on insights from existing retailer coalitions, like the German Retailers Working Group on Living Income and the Banana Retailers Group, this session reflected on how these initiatives have approached influencing change across complex commodity systems.

In 2019, we launched a review of the principles to find out how they have been used and adopted. The outcome of the review will decide whether the principles need to be revised to adapt to new international frameworks and norms, changing stakeholder expectations or innovations in sustainability tools, and, if so, the scope of the revision. This document contains information about the review objectives, process and opportunities for involvement.

In 2019, ISEAL launched a review of both the Impacts Code and Standard-Setting Code. The results of the review will inform the revision of the codes in 2020. This document contains information about the review objectives, process and opportunities for involvement.

This is a consultation draft for the revised good practice guide for benchmarking of voluntary sustainability systems. The consultation runs from 31 October to 15 December 2024. More details on the consultation.

We are excited to launch the revision of the ISEAL Chain of Custody (CoC) Definitions and Models Guidance. The revision process will include:

In 2025 ISEAL Innovations Fund commissioned research into how voluntary sustainability systems go about scaling innovative practices. This study explored how to close the 'pilot-to-scale' gap. It identifies six main pathways through which sustainability innovations can scale. These include integrating an innovation into public policy or industry standards, embedding it within organisational operations, expanding it through partnerships or open platforms, driving uptake through market incentives, or embedding it in widely used digital systems and platforms. 

Empowering small-scale seafood producers is a cornerstone of a sustainable seafood future. Small-scale seafood producers have historically been overlooked, yet they are not marginal actors—they are crucial contributors to global food security, ocean governance, and wider sustainability goals.ISEAL is engaging with stakeholders across the seafood sector – producers, companies, investors, researchers and NGOs - to develop understanding and take action to address the inequities in seafood markets and adopt more inclusive approaches.

Experts from ISEAL, and ISEAL members discuss what our research is telling us about the reach, contribution and impacts of standards on smallholder farmers and what this means for future innovations and partnerships.

This report will  discuss the challenges the M3 Partnership faced developing a shared approach to stakeholder engagement, explore the extent to which the higher-level objective of reducing duplicative or competitive communications and reducing stakeholder confusion and fatigue has been achieved throughout the project, and outline lessons learned.

In 2022, CGIAR's HER+ initiative researchers partnered with ISEAL to explore how sustainability systems are able to contribute to advancing gender equality and women’s empowerment. Gender is a crosscutting theme in ISEAL’s strategic priority to power solutions to sustainability challenges.

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

In general, in a territory the social actors work collaboratively, they themselves define the channels and mechanisms of participation in accordance with their cultural framework and the roles recognized for each one.

This document discusses core concepts, such as consent and rights, that underpin governance of data use and sharing. It proposes general principles and steps for a reasoned and documented approach to data rights, control and sharing for the ISEAL community. The purpose of this guidance is to help sustainability systems: 1) establish certified entities’ rights to data related to certified activities; and 2) responsibly use and share those data.