As part of its 2030 Strategy, Better Cotton has committed to strengthen impacts at farm level across the countries where it works and is currently setting ambitious global targets in key impact areas. In parallel, Better Cotton is exploring whether a landscape approach can deliver better impacts and efficiencies, to facilitate an evaluation of the potential of landscape approaches in the context of the BCSS, Better Cotton developed the Adaptation to Landscape Approach (ATLA) project.

Landscape, jurisdictional and other regional approaches are gaining momentum as potential tools for scaling-up the sustainable sourcing of commodities. This briefing aims to assist sustainability standards in assessing these new approaches by providing background information and five ‘entry points’ for exploring potential engagement.

Report on ISEAL member collaboration on shared impact reporting.

ISEAL has commissioned a systematic review being led by Carlos Oya and Dafni Skalidou on the effects of supply chain sustainability approaches on decent work outcomes in the agriculture, textile, and apparel sectors in low and middle income countries. The review aims at gaining a better understanding of what works to improve labour rights and conditions in these sectors, why, under what circumstances and for whom. For more information, please read the protocol for the review below.

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

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.

ISEAL has developed a good practice guide to help ensure that sustainability claims made by jurisdictions, landscape initiatives, and the companies that source from or support them, are credible. The guidance covers the structural and performance claims a jurisdictional entity may wish to make, along with the supporting action claims of other related stakeholders.

This report first examines how standards systems are being applied to landscapes and jurisdictions. It then explores factors that are important to the effective application of sustainability strategies at a landscape level and identifies opportunities to strengthen the role that standards systems can play in implementing those strategies.

This methodological paper from ISEAL shares insights and lessons learned from three ongoing impact evaluations that completed their baseline in 2016 and are due for end line evaluation in 2019.

This desk research is an output from the Delta Framework, an ISEAL Innovations Fund supported project that is developing a cross-commodity framework for sustainability monitoring and reporting.

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.

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

This ISEAL Community webinar introduces the draft Verification of Jurisdictional Claims guide and the good practices that should underpin claims made about progress in jurisdictional initiatives. It touches on why jurisdictional verification is relevant for sustainability standards and potential synergies.

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.

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.

International trade is often overlooked as a driver of global biodiversity loss and climate change. More than 80 industrial sectors in over 180 countries actively employ voluntary sustainability standards to protect biodiversity and food security. Global dialogue is needed to advance green commodity value chains, increase coordinated ecological practices, scale-up good practices and build consensus.