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. 

There is now wide recognition that the ongoing pandemic has had a profound impact on women across all dimensions of economic and social activity. From shifting gender roles within the household to effects on women’s active role in the economy and the real health and well-being effects of the pandemic, there is a growing concern that women are ‘losing out’ severely. From the standpoint of sustainability standards and systems, the pandemic has opened up the opportunity to review many streams of work, including how they conduct their assurance activities.

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.

In this video, small producers report on the impact sustainability standards have had on their life. 

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.

This webinar provided an opportunity for those working in the palm oil sector in Asia, including on the demand side, to hear about ongoing efforts in China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore that are strengthening demand for sustainable palm oil such as youth engagement, industry platforms, and company rankings.

'The changing nature of trust and the role of credible standards' presented by Karin Kreider, ISEAL’s Executive Director, Joe Wozniak from International Trade Centre and Philip Schleifer from University of Amsterdam.

Joshua Wickerham, ISEAL Policy & Outreach Manager, guides us through key insights from the producer needs survey, with input from Stefano Savi from the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) and Rosario Galan from Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). We also discuss RSPO’s and FSC’s smallholder strategies and lessons learnt from the survey findings.

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

ISEAL works to improve the credibility and impacts of sustainability standards and understanding impacts is an important strategic goal. This paper is the first attempt to draw on internal performance monitoring data of schemes and external research to analyse the reach and characteristics of smallholder farmers within ISEAL member agriculture schemes. This is the third in a series of collective reporting briefing papers researched by ISEAL as part of the ‘Demonstrating and Improving Poverty Impacts’ (DIPI) project. 

We often talk about system-level change to address root causes of poverty and imbalance of risk. This requires us to unite in different and creative ways. The Living Income Community of Practice motivates actors across sectors to help close the income gap, so that smallholders can earn a decent standard of living as a basic human right.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) recently reached a landmark agreement on the definition and operationalisation of a living wage, following its meeting of experts in February.

Ensuring resilient livelihoods and sustained employment for vulnerable communities was already a stretch pre-Covid-19. For those communities lacking a stable income, the impact has been inconceivable.