Using evidence to inform sustainability action

Jurisdictional approaches (JAs) have emerged as a promising governance model for promoting sustainable forest and land management in agro-commodity production zones. Through a global, cross-commodity review of academic literature and policy publications, the article finds that an inductive analysis helped identify key research questions and critically evaluate existing work on JAs.

Achieving gender equality in supply chains remains a significant challenge. Although organisations and initiatives worldwide have committed to promoting gender equality, turning these commitments into concrete actions is still a work in progress.

This report focuses on developments in due diligence regulatory initiatives in global trade governance for sustainability and their interactions with voluntary sustainability standards.

The World Benchmarking Alliance’s 2024 Social Benchmark finds that the world’s 2,000 most influential companies are failing to fulfil societal expectations to foster a more equal and inclusive world.

Voluntary supply chain tools have also had a strong focus on driving decent work and wages in supply chains and been in operation for several decades. Understanding the impacts of such tools is essential to make them more effective and guide how voluntary and mandatory measures can work in tandem to achieve decent work.

ISEAL, IDH, Rainforest Alliance, and Evidensia commissioned an independent systematic review to identify effective supply chain sustainability approaches for improving decent work in agriculture and apparel production in Low- and Middle-income Countries.

Mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence has become the word of the day in policy-making targeting agriculture-driven tropical deforestation. The EU has led such efforts, approving a deforestation regulation (EUDR) that requires businesses to prove that agricultural commodities do not come from lands deforested after 2020. Policy-makers’ explicit expectation is that companies trading with forest-risk commodities are not willing to forgo the European market and will, therefore, streamline these standards across their operations. In other words, we would witness a so-called “Brussels Effect,” referring to the EU’s ability to set regulatory standards that end up becoming the global norm, as seen in other domains such as data privacy, consumer protection, and AI technology. However, a reality check regarding Europe’s ability to accomplish that in the case of agriculture-driven deforestation is needed.

This report offers an overview of voluntary standards and initiatives for carbon management (VSICM), delving into their drivers, development, and implementation. It discusses various VSICMs, emphasizing their utility for private sector companies striving for net-zero emissions.

The briefing identifies three main categories of constraints impacting gender equality within agrifood systems: structural barriers, land tenure, and resource access. Through case studies from Guatemala, Indonesia and Kenya, it explores initiatives aimed at addressing these issues.

Coffee is one of the most traded and consumed commodities in the world – around 125 million people depend on coffee for their livelihoods. Whilst actions have been taken over several decades to address sustainability challenges in coffee exporting countries, they have rarely succeeded in creating sector-wide, lasting change.