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.

This paper presents the findings of a structured review of the GHG aspects of the standards of the four members of the M3 Standards Partnership1—the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance (IRMA), Responsible Jewellery Council (RJC), ResponsibleSteel and Towards Sustainable Mining (TSM)—as well as a variety of other organizations in the mining, minerals and metals sector. It also reports on the responses to a detailed survey of leading mining companies drawn from the M3 Partnership’s memberships.

In 2019, the ISEAL Innovations Fund awarded a grant to Bonsucro to collaboratively develop and test methodologies to help financial service providers improve how they assess their agricultural clients’ sustainability performance, to enable access to better financing opportunities for farmers who produce sustainably. Project partners included the Better Cotton Initiative, and the Alliance for Water Stewardship (AWS).

Bonsucro and Responsible Jewellery Council engaged Business & Human Rights consultancy twentyfifty to conduct a research project into Grievance Mechanisms within Voluntary Sustainability Standards (VSS). The research investigated how grievance mechanisms have been set up and how grievances are managed and remediated within their memberships.

This guidance document provides guidance for sustainability systems looking to collect or improve the collection of polygon location data. It was developed with the support of experts and ISEAL members with advanced experience, and includes a variety of different options and technologies.

This methodology aims to support national commodity associations and other relevant public bodies to aggregate producer-level data using the Delta indicators to assess and report on the sustainability performance of the commodity’s production at country level.

Guidelines, which have been prepared to serve as the basis for discussion on standardized procedures and protocols for the collection and management of certificate location data with the goal that these data will eventually become part of an ISEAL member Certification Atlas (CA).

Bonsucro and Responsible Jewellery Council engaged Business & Human Rights consultancy twentyfifty Ltd to conduct a research project on learning and good practice from the experience of ISEAL Community Members in implementing Human Rights Due Diligence (HRDD) in line with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs). This briefing note is intended to give a summary of the key findings from this.

The Impact Alliance is a voluntary collaboration between sustainability initiatives sharing similar goals to provide oversight of and support in the development, maintenance, promotion and claiming of Impact Incentives and Impact Partnerships. The purpose of this policy is to outline the Impact Alliance’s governance structure and mechanisms and can be made available to interested parties upon request.

This document outlines the approach taken by the LIA Impact Partnership Pilot project, exploring Impact Partnership Incentives. While Impact Incentives work in a similar way to existing book & claim systems by rewarding already certified producers, Impact Partnership Incentives allow brands and retailers to support on-the-ground Program Partners to help producers transition towards best practices and certification.

The Impact Alliance project was designed to test the feasibility of “Impact Incentives” and “Impact Partnership Incentives” as innovative market-driven working models to scale and improve sustainability performance at landscape levels. The aim was to have a validated model that can be scaled up and offered for use with other commodities and other ISEAL standards, becoming an important sustainability impact accelerator for the sourcing areas of a growing number of industries. This document provides lessons learnt and insights gained over the course of the project. 

This guidance equips sustainability standards with practical tips on how they can make their impact claims more meaningful and effective with confidence and accuracy.

ISEAL Community Members can claim to be ISEAL Code Compliant only when they have demonstrated adherence to the baseline and improvement criteria of each of ISEAL’s Codes of Good Practice in accordance with the processes and definitions in this procedure.

This document presents the performance metrics and data sources included in the Hybrid Community-based Monitoring System (HCMS) that was built by the Tech4Communities project in Ghana, using the LandScale assessment framework. 

This roadmap is developed to provide a pathway for all members of the IWSN to achieve the vision and mission of the network which has been aligned with the vision and mission of AWS Global Strategy. The roadmap acts as work program of IWSN which is set in 3 years timeline. The roadmap will help to: Provide clear result framework for IWSN Provide SMART milestones for IWSN

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.

The M3 Partnership Integrated Assessment Protocol (M3 IAP) is a tool designed to allow mine sites to be assessed against multiple site-level standards in a single audit, supporting identification of alignment across standards, and promoting demonstration of conformity with multiple standards with greater efficiency and reduced cost. This document describes the M3 IAP.

This Guidance document has been developed to facilitate the use of the Integrated Assessment Protocol (IAP). This macro-enabled Excel Workbook was created to assist the Mining Organization and Operation with an integrated approach to assessing conformity to select responsible mining initiatives. This workbook includes a combined protocol that represents the following standards: Towards Sustainable Mining (TSM) Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance (IRMA) Responsible Jewelry Council (RJC)

The Mining, Minerals, and Metals Partnership (M3 Partnership) is a collaboration of the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance (IRMA), Responsible Jewellery Council (RJC), ResponsibleSteel, and Towards Sustainable Mining (TSM). The M3 Partnership, made possible by the ISEAL Innovations Fund with support by the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs, aims to identify opportunities for alignment and collective action to drive improvement in social and environmental performance.

This publication was prepared for the M3 Partnership to facilitate integrated assessment to their respective standards and assurance frameworks.

This document includes considerations and a set of guiding questions designed to support the inclusion of the indicators in the Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) systems of Voluntary Sustainability Standards (VSS) and other organisations.

This methodology aims to support national commodity associations and other relevant public bodies to aggregate producer-level data using the Delta indicators to assess and report on the sustainability performance of the commodity’s production at country level.

Sustainability systems represent and support complex supply chains, with a wide variety of commodities, producers and geographies included. Emissions reporting is a complex and fast-moving space. Thus, these systems and their communities may face challenges keeping pace with developments and developing consistent and appropriate good practices that can benefit their communities and climate security.

With our new strategy, we’re aiming to increase our impact in tackling the biggest sustainability challenges of our time.

This document describes the requirements Accreditation Organisations need to meet to be ISEAL Accreditation Members.