BCI and WWF-Turkey have cooperated in the ATLA (Adaptation to Landscape Approach) GIS project. The purpose of the ATLA GIS project is to create baseline information and get a clear understanding of how farming activities have been interacting with Buyuk Menderes Delta and Lake Bafa over time.

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.

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.

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 Modelling a Path to More Sustainable Landscapes project is a three-year effort to spatially analyze the baseline risk of commodity production and the role of sustainability policies to mitigate those risks. This document is for people interested in increasing the value and integrity of data and in assessing the potential impacts of policy decisions in terms of agriculture production and environmental outcomes.

The Modelling a Path to More Sustainable Landscapes project is a three-year effort to spatially analyse the baseline risk of commodity production and the role of sustainability policies to mitigate those risks. This document is for people interested in increasing the value and integrity of data and in assessing the potential impacts of policy decisions in terms of agriculture production and environmental outcomes.

The Modelling a Path to More Sustainable Landscapes project is a three-year effort to spatially analyse the baseline risk of commodity production and the role of sustainability policies to mitigate those risks.  This document is for people interested in increasing the value and integrity of data and in assessing the potential impacts of policy decisions in terms of agriculture production and environmental outcomes.

ISEAL has revised its Chain of Custody (CoC) Definitions and Models Guidance to improve clarity and consistency for stakeholders across sectors, reflecting major shifts in supply chain management. The updated guidance is intended to address new regulatory demands (e.g., EUDR, CSRD), technological advancements like blockchain, and the inclusion of additional CoC models such as Controlled Blending and Controlled Mass Balance.

The Good Practice, Better Finance project is an ISEAL Alliance (ISEAL) funded project that aims to develop and test methodologies, as well as improve monitoring tools, which would allow for improved access to affordable finance for farmers. This improved access would be through reward systems based on the integration of farmers’ risk management and sustainability strategies with financial institutions’ own risk assessment frameworks.

This report presents the findings of a three-year study, funded by ISEAL, of the early impacts of the Better Cotton Initiative on smallholder cotton producers in Kurnool District, Andhra Pradesh, India.

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 report presents the results 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 certification against different sustainability standards. These standards include the Common Code for the Coffee Community (4C) and the Sustainable Agriculture Network/ Rainforest Alliance (SAN/RA) standard.

This document provides a system for replicating the land use cover monitoring and analysis system developed by the Blueprint Project. The document aims to summarize the steps to replicate the land cover analysis in the same pilot area (Zona Bananera municipality, Magdalena, Colombia) as general guidance to apply it in other productive agricultural regions in tropical or subtropical zones, and facilitate the development of a land use cover monitoring system in accordance with the objective, scale, and level of local studies to be implemented over time.

In 2019, the ISEAL Innovations Fund awarded a grant to Bonsucro to collaboratively develop and test methodologies to help financial service providers improve how they assess their agricultural clients’ sustainability performance, to enable access to better financing opportunities for farmers who produce sustainably. Project partners included the Better Cotton Initiative, and the Alliance for Water Stewardship (AWS).

This slide deck provides an overview of the Good Practice, Better Finance project. 

Tackling gender inequalities is becoming increasingly important for voluntary sustainability standards (VSS) and similar systems to address. Sustainability systems are looking to integrate gender into their standards and the management of their organisations. Sustainability systems that are not gender-responsive can result in unnecessary health and safety risks for women and girls, and lead to unequal impacts and unintended consequences.

This report presents pilot activities conducted in two separate sites in Söke in 2021, as part of the WWF-Turkey Regenerative Cotton Project.

This document describes the process that the project team of the Blueprint Landscape Sustainability Assessment system has engaged in from 2020-2022 to select meaningful secondary sustainability data at local level (communities, municipalities, or similar local jurisdictions) and how Blueprint envisions the role of secondary data for future replicas in other tropical regions dominated by agriculture land uses.

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 document provides a brief summary of the Soy Impact Incentives Pilot from June 2022.

This document presents the performance metrics and data sources included in the Hybrid Community-based Monitoring System (HCMS) that was built by the Tech4Communities project in Ghana, using the LandScale assessment framework. 

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:

This is one of three infographics that illustrate how the adoption of sustainability standards can contribute towards achieving 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.