This document provides an overview of the development of the ISEAL Code of Good Practice for Sustainability Systems (the ISEAL Code). It includes a summary of the consultations on the first and second drafts of the ISEAL Code, and an overview of key changes from the existing Codes of Good Practice. We would like to thank everyone who provided feedback on the drafts, and to those who supported the consultations by engaging with events and sharing information about the consultations with colleagues and stakeholders.

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 aims to identify opportunities for alignment and collective action to drive improvement in social and environmental performance. This report summarizes lessons learned across four key M3 Projects, including the Integrated Assessment Protocol (IAP) Tool, IAP Pilots, Greenhouse Gas (GHG), and Due Diligence Projects

This report 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.

Benchmarking guide for analysing or evaluating sustainability initiatives or performance.

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.

The document at the bottom of this page provides a high level summary of what polygon location data is and why it is of significant value to sustainability standards. It aims to encourage decision makers within systems to consider the operational collection and use of polygon data within their organisations.

Six years ago, ISEAL published a comprehensive review and synthesis of existing literature and evidence of the business benefits of using sustainability standards.

This 2017 report by Aidenvironment and commissioned by ISEAL, reviews the business benefits that using sustainability standards can deliver to various business entities along the length of the supply chain. It also aims to gain understanding on how benefits materialise and the limitations to the delivery of such benefits.

The presentation given by Kristin Komives and Vidya Rangan at the Global Sutainability Standards Symposium 2019, running through the current state of available evidence on the impacts of sustainability standards and similar systems.

There is now wide recognition that the ongoing pandemic has had a profound impact on women across all dimensions of economic and social activity. From shifting gender roles within the household to effects on women’s active role in the economy and the real health and well-being effects of the pandemic, there is a growing concern that women are ‘losing out’ severely. From the standpoint of sustainability standards and systems, the pandemic has opened up the opportunity to review many streams of work, including how they conduct their assurance activities.

This case study forms part of the Rainforest Alliance project Use of Risk Maps for Child and Forced Labour in Risk-Based Assurance Processes, supported by the ISEAL Innovations Fund. The project sought to test the prototypes of sectoral risk maps for child labor and forced labor in Kenya, Côte d’Ivoire, and Honduras.

This research aims to contribute evidence of the Impacts of Voluntary Sustainability Standards as well as provide a working definition for the concept of systemic impacts.

FPIC-360° is an Equitable Origin initiative in partnership with the Roundtable on Sustainable Biomaterials (RSB) and the Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon River Basin (COICA).  The FPIC-360° Tool for monitoring and verifying free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) is a multi-pronged tool, founded on the premise that FPIC can only be conducted responsibly and successfully if the Indigenous Peoples affected by a proposed project are co-owners and implementers of the entire process, from design, through implementation and monitoring phases.

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.

This document provides practical guidance for sustainability systems to support them in generating valuable and actionable insights from data. Utilizing concepts in data science, it is intended for sustainability systems seeking to maximise the value of their data, combine data sources, and enable improved data-driven decision making procedures.

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 concise document that outlines the key lessons learned from the VIA Initiative.

This document summarises the results of a pilot project coordinated by ISEAL to face the challenge of communicating the impacts of standards. It also reflects on the value of this pilot as a rich learning experience for all the individuals involved.

An introduction to the new GIS self-starter kit, which gives a glimpse of the possibilities of GIS and how the tools can be integrated into audit routines. The self-starter kit explains what GIS is, introduces some commonly used GIS software and applications and describes how to use them.

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

In this webinar, Patrick Mallet, Director of Innovations at ISEAL, presents the newest approaches to data and other tools to build trust in supply chains.

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

A conversation with Danielle Burt on the Gender Equality and Empowerment Benchmark developed by the World Benchmarking Alliance (WBA). Sanjiv Singh (ASI), Chris Grieve (EDGE Certification) and Magali Barraja (BSR), on the discussion panel, will share their thoughts on this initiative.

This webinar explores innovations that ISEAL members are involved in, including projects supported by ISEAL’s new Innovations Fund, such as blockchain and geospatial data.

Voluntary sustainability standards have the potential to deliver impacts that go beyond individual certified operations and effect wider systemic changes, according to new research published by WWF and ISEAL. These ‘systemic impacts’ help to create an enabling environment for production and consumption practices that benefit people and the planet, and contribute toward the Sustainable Development Goals.