In this report ISEAL offers insights from three baselines of evaluations that it commissioned in 2015 and were published in June 2016

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”.

A 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”.

The ISEAL-funded research project Integrating new data to improve risk assessments and detection of forced labour in agricultural supply chains (2017 – 18) is an attempt to build the evidence base around monitoring and remediating forced labour in agricultural supply chains.

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.

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.

This 2014 report, prepared by Centre for Responsible Business with the support of ISEAL, analyses the landscape for the import and use of sustainable palm oil in India, looking at major drivers for and gaps in domestic demand.

The last five years have seen a growing number of initiatives focused on increasing demand for sustainable palm oil in emerging economy markets. This report and case studies summarise key reflections and insights from an ISEAL-led project to understand strategies and activities adopted in key Asian countries to boost the demand for sustainable palm oil over the last five years.

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.

Learn how a partnership between the government of the world’s largest coffee producing state – Minas Gerais – and the world’s largest voluntary standard for coffee, UTZ Certified, enables producers access to high-value markets while scaling-up more sustainable production practices.

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.

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.

This blog outlines a set of key messages on due diligence and standards systems in the context of TFA letter to the European Commission.

With a shift towards outcome-focused sustainability standards and measurement, ISEAL commissioned 3Keel to review different metrics for monitoring sustainability performance.