This brochure presents a list of critical elements to ensure that comparisons and benchmarking between standards systems are credible

This executive summary offers lessons learned on how interoperability of sustainability standards in the metals, minerals and metals (MMM) sectors can help standards systems in other sectors. In particular, it explores how MMM, forestry and agriculture standards can enhance collaboration and improve sustainability impacts through interoperability.

In 2019, ISEAL carried out a review of the Standard-Setting and Impacts Codes. Through the review, ISEAL gathered information regarding the usability of the Codes, their effectiveness in delivering against their objectives, as well as their scope and objectives. This document details the activities carried out as part of the review and the findings.

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.

Tackling gender inequalities is becoming increasingly important for voluntary sustainability standards (VSS) and similar systems to address. Sustainability systems are looking to integrate gender into their standards and the management of their organisations. Sustainability systems that are not gender-responsive can result in unnecessary health and safety risks for women and girls, and lead to unequal impacts and unintended consequences.

SCOPE is a geo-design tool that enables users to assess multiple outcomes related to commodity production and alternative policies including total production, water availability, water quality, greenhouse gas emissions, and land conversion. The tool allows for examining on-farm policy compliance and explore outcomes at local to landscape levels. This document presents how SCOPE can provide important information to certification stakeholders on how an area could perform against a standard (or is performing against a standard) at the local, landscape, or jurisdictional level.

A document describing the key findings from Training Needs and Landscape  Assessment of Shrimp Sector in East Java, Indonesia, as part of the Innovations Fund project Integration of Seafood Certification and Jurisdictional Assurance Models, supported by the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO).

The ISEAL Innovations Fund and Programme was launched in 2016 to create an enabling environment for innovation, new ideas and strategies to scale the impact, effectiveness, efficiency and inclusiveness of sustainability systems. This learning brief captures some of the key early lessons learned so far.

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.

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.