Sustainability issues
ISEAL works in collaboration with ISEAL Community Members and many others to advance collective solutions on sustainability issues.
We bring stakeholders together to build a common understanding of good practice, to build momentum for promising approaches and to solve critical bottlenecks to progress. We convene collaborative conversations and initiatives and work through cross-cutting technical challenges (e.g. claims, remediation, traceability, data and reporting).
We research what is working and help identify where improvements are needed. ISEAL is the driving force behind Evidensia, a public platform for monitoring, conducting and disseminating research to improve sustainability practice.
We support sustainability systems to innovate and strengthen their role in driving desired impacts. We award grants through the ISEAL Innovations Fund and facilitate peer-to-peer learning within the ISEAL community.
Addressing inequities in value chains and working towards resilient smallholder livelihoods is crucial for ISEAL because these issues lie at the core of sustainable and equitable economic growth.
Equity is fundamental to sustainability, shaping human rights, livelihoods and environmental efforts, while strengthening resilience and impact. Addressing equity ensures fairness and inclusion, making sustainability systems more effective in tackling global sustainability challenges.
Focusing on living income and resilient producer livelihoods is essential for sustainable, equitable global value chains. Small-scale producers across agriculture, fisheries, aquaculture, forestry, mining and other sectors face systemic barriers like poverty and limited access to resources, restricting their ability to earn fair, sustainable incomes.
ISEAL works with sustainability systems and partners to strengthen human rights protection and drive progress on gender equality, living wages and decent work.
FPIC is a fundamental human right and a critical mechanism for businesses to respect indigenous rights. ISEAL actively supports its members to strengthen FPIC implementation through collaborative learning.
Addressing low wages in supply chains is crucial to tackling the labour rights violations that impact millions of workers globally. ISEAL supports action to deliver living wages to workers, notably through the Global Living Wage Coalition, a pre-competitive collaborative platform.
ISEAL and its members are committed to advancing gender equality and women's empowerment throughout global supply chains, recognising that addressing gender disparities is essential to achieving comprehensive sustainability outcomes.
Sustainability systems are increasingly offering new tools and applying innovative approaches to support businesses, governments and civil society with credible action on climate and nature. ISEAL supports innovation and builds understanding of good practice in this area.
Climate change, deforestation and biodiversity loss remain critical and complex challenges that cannot be addressed solely on a farm by farm or enterprise by enterprise basis. Landscape and jurisdictional approaches have emerged as a solution. They recognise the importance of tackling key sustainability challenges at a landscape or jurisdictional scale, working holistically across environmental, social and economic factors and operating collaboratively with local stakeholders taking aligned action towards common goals.
Deforestation and the conversion of natural ecosystems is a significant driver of climate change and biodiversity loss, and the expansion of commodity production is the leading cause of deforestation worldwide. To decouple production from deforestation, a combination of measures are needed, at landscape level and within commodity supply chains.
Trustworthy and ambitious sustainability systems are an important part of the climate solution and of efforts to preserve and protect biodiversity. They are increasingly offering new tools and applying innovative approaches to support businesses, governments and civil society with credible action on climate and nature. ISEAL supports innovation in this area.