This baseline report presents the initial stage of a research project with the overarching goal to examine the impact on farmer livelihoods and poverty alleviation within Indonesian coffee-growing communities as a result of processes of verification or certification against different sustainability standards. These standards include the Common Code for the Coffee Community (4C) Code of Conduct, the Sustainable Agriculture Network/ Rainforest Alliance (SAN/RA) standard, and Utz Certification.

In this podcast, Jeffrey Neilson from the University of Sydney discusses the research report on the Evaluation of the Impacts of Sustainability Standards on Smallholder Coffee Farmers in Southern Sumatra, Indonesia published in 2019.

In this podcast, Carlos de los Rios from COSA discusses the final research report from an impact evaluation on the Impacts of Certification on Small Coffee Farmers Western Kenya, 2014-2017. The report was published in 2019. ISEAL and its members are working together on the Demonstrating and Improving Poverty Impacts (DIPI) program, to understand the contribution that certification systems can make to poverty alleviation and pro-poor development. ISEAL commissioned an evaluation to identify whether and how certification contributes to improving farmer livelihoods.

This is one of three infographics that illustrate how the adoption of sustainability standards can contribute towards achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The examples, based on research of ISEAL members’ impacts, cover:

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 report summarises an assessment of a range of leading metrics that can be used to credibly measure and report on performance over time and across multiple spatial scales. The research focuses on six critical sustainability issues: deforestation, biodiversity, water use, forced labour, poverty, and Greenhouse Gas emissions.

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.

This ISEAL commissioned report, carried out by 3keel and the University of Oxford, aims to understand the effectiveness of sustainability standards and certification tools in driving the adoption of more sustainable practices in certified entities, thereby contributing to the achievement of key sustainability outcomes

In this webinar, the results at the mid-point of a 5-year mixed methods study that considers the impacts and perceptions of certification-linked sustainability programs and market access in smallholder coffee value chains in the southern regions of Sumatra, Indonesia are presented.

There is growing commitment from supply chain and policy actors to advance action towards delivering living wages for workers around the world. Voluntary sustainability standards continue to be widely adopted by businesses (upstream and downstream) as approaches to advance on decent work and living wage goals. Read our one project to learn about the ISEAL-IDH project on living wage. 

This report looks at the issues facing small certified producers and their expectations and experiences of certification, and explores how standards can address producers’ needs and priorities.

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.

The Wage Auditing Working Group sought to explore this potential by providing opportunities for sustainability systems to discuss the topic of wages, including auditing and verification of wages, to support their efforts to measure and bridge living wage gaps. The working group ran from May 2021 to June 2022. It was set up as part of a 1.5-year project led by ISEAL on supporting effective measurement, verification and improvement of living wage gaps.

A working paper for the project “New data to detect forced labour in agriculture”.