This resource reviews the benefits and challenges of metrics alignment and data sharing for organisations, and provides a roadmap and considerations to help think through undertaking them. The guidance builds on learning's from a number of ISEAL, and ISEAL member projects that either focused on metrics alignment and or data sharing as an ultimate goal, or where metrics alignment and or data sharing were key activities within the project.

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.

This is a conceptual framework which outlines the justification and process for the development of the ISEAL Common Core Indicators. This work began as part of ISEAL's Developing and Improving Poverty Impacts project (DIPI).

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.

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

This infographic illustrates the research report authored by AidEnvironment and commissioned by ISEAL. The report is a refresher of the 2016 review and synthesis of literature and evidence of the business benefits of adopting sustainability standards. In total 40 credible source research documents, covering seven sectors were reviewed.

This series of papers was developed as part of an exploratory workstream investigating the role and maturity of monitoring and measurement in different landscape and jurisdictional initiatives. The papers are targeted towards landscape and jurisdictional practitioners and focus on the practicalities of measurement for landscape and jurisdictional initiatives.

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.

Experts from ISEAL, and ISEAL members discuss what our research is telling us about the reach, contribution and impacts of standards on smallholder farmers and what this means for future innovations and partnerships.

The paper provides insights on growth trends and geographic presence of seven ISEAL member schemes that are leading global agricultural standards across seven commodities. We focus on trends and presence in producing and exporting countries where these schemes are adopted, with a specific interest in presence in low and lower-income classified countries.

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”.

Moving towards an outcome-based standard creates the opportunity for LEAF to communicate more closely on the impacts of implementing the LEAF Marque Standard, measuring outcomes directly rather than proxying them with practices.

In this webinar, Mark Oorschot (PBL) presents the findings of the report ‘The Impact of International Cooperative Initiatives on Biodiversity’.

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

Webinar on key concepts in the development of a Theory of Change (ToC) for standard systems.

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.

The recently released UN 2020 Sustainable Development Goals Report makes clear that there is a long way to go before the global goals are achieved. Although a sobering read, it does note a silver lining in that the pandemic is a ‘wake-up call for governments and businesses to formulate the kinds of transitions needed to build a healthier, more resilient and more sustainable world’. 

Polygon data can provide huge benefits to sustainability systems if collected and used effectively. Recognising this, we have produced a package of tools and guidance on the benefits of polygon data and how to collect it.

The Challenge the Label webpage is a tool to help buyers understand sustainability claims and how to dig deeper into the claims they encounter.