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.

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 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.

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.

This resource includes the recording, slides and agenda of the first learning workshop of the remote auditing project.

This resource includes the recording and slides of the second learning workshop of the remote auditing project.

Sustainability systems are market-based tools designed to address the most pressing social and environmental challenges of our time. They define responsible practices, assess the implementation of these practices, and measure and communicate results. Sustainability systems are used in most sectors worldwide to improve social and environmental performance. Download this one page, full description of a sustainability system.

This document sets out what our Code Compliant status recognises for our Community Members and outlines the structure of the ISEAL membership.

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. 

This 2017 report by WWF and ISEAL explores how businesses can use credible voluntary sustainability standards to contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).