Annual Report ISEAL Alliance in 2010
Contents Foreword from Andre de Freitas
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Welcome from Sasha Courville
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What does ISEAL do?
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Shaping the Sustainability Standards Movement
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Activities in 2010 Defining Credibility
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Bulding a Learning Community
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Encouraging the use of Sustainability Standards
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Scaling Up
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Growing our Organisation
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Financials
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Funders
36
ISEAL Members
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Our Vision
A world where social justice and environmental sustainability are the normal conditions of business 3
Our Mission We believe that products and services should be created in a fair and sustainable way. ISEAL’s role is to define good practices for standards systems, to distinguish and promote credible standards and to ensure that people understand the difference. We support cooperation among our members and other interested parties to shape an effective standards movement. By building a collaborative movement we aim to achieve a significant and increasing impact on the sustainability of products and services worldwide.
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Our Values We believe that any one affected by a project or enterprise should be directly involved and have the opportunity to influence it. Our experience tells us that what you achieve by that inclusive process secures greater fairness, greater acceptance and a more permanent foundation. We strive to be transparent because only by transparency can you build trust, ensure that processes are legitimate, be accountable and encourage access to freely available information. We aim to be the most credible source of knowledge in our field, to actively acquire, develop and share new ideas, models and experiences. We wish to provide and enable a culture of learning and improvement.
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Foreword
Andre de Freitas, Board Chair The environmental and social standards movement is scaling up rapidly, and ISEAL members across the globe are busy ensuring sustainability on farms, in forests, in fisheries, in factories, and elsewhere. We at the ISEAL Alliance believe that standards systems that are effective and accessible will bring about significant, positive impacts for people and our planet. I feel honoured to serve as Board Chair of this important organisation that is defining credibility in the sustainability standards movement. As many of you know, ISEAL was founded in 2002 by the leading sustainability standards systems at the time. Many of the groups came from completely different sectors, but they recognised that there was a great deal of overlap in how they were building their systems. They met regularly for a few years to find ways to collaborate, and soon ISEAL was born as the formal organisation to represent their common interests and define good practices for emerging standards. In 2004, ISEAL launched the Code for Good Practice for Setting Social and Environmental Standards, which has now become the global reference for good standard-setting. Today, ISEAL has grown to nine full members, and an additional 11 associate members (who have committed to come into compliance with the ISEAL Codes within a defined period of time). With our membership on the rise, 2010 has been another significant year for ISEAL. We realised that there is still a lack of knowledge about the long-term impacts of standards on sustainability. Does certification really
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ISEAL Board of Directors Ken Commins, International Organic Accreditation Services Andre de Freitas, Forest Stewardship Council LuĂs Fernando Guedes Pinto, Rainforest Alliance / Sustainable Agriculture Network Alice Tepper Marlin, Social Accountability International
Rik Kutsch Lojenga, Union for Ethical BioTrade Louise Luttikholt, Fairtrade International Chris Ninnes, Marine Stewardship Council Britta Wyss Bisang, Utz Certified Rochelle Zaid, Social Accountability Accreditation Services
help families, wildlife, or our climate? On the whole, anecdotal evidence and initial studies are quite positive, but more knowledge is greatly needed on the impacts of our members, the factors driving those impacts, and how we can go about measuring them. To address this major challenge, throughout 2009 and 2010 ISEAL facilitated the development of the Code for Good Practice for Assessing the Impacts of Social and Environmental Standards. The Impacts Code provides a kind of roadmap for standards to develop their monitoring and evaluation programmes through learning; understanding that the goal is not only to find out what strategies are working, but also to find out what is not working. With the introduction of the Impacts Code, ISEAL members now have a powerful incentive to invest in impact evaluation. It is a challenging requirement for ISEAL membership, but one that we feel is imperative. Implementation of the Impacts Code will require us to undertake substantial learning together over the next few years. However, we
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feel certain that this will help us improve the quality and impact of our strategies over time. The launch of such a comprehensive tool as the Impacts Code was only possible through the unswerving commitment of our members, supporters, partners and other stakeholders over the last year. While in this annual report we focus on ISEAL’s accomplishments in 2010, the work reflects almost a decade of effort to change the way that business is done. I speak on behalf of the entire ISEAL Board of Directors when I say that being part of an organisation whose members are passionately dedicated to bettering our world, is truly a privilege for all of us.
Andre de Freitas, Board Chair
Welcome
Sasha Courville, Executive Director The landscape in which sustainability standards operate continued to evolve rapidly in 2010. Despite continuing challenges for the global economy, ever increasing industry commitments to use standards for supply chain management, an increasing appetite on the part of government to use standards as vehicles to achieve policy objectives, and growing demand for standards as tools in emerging economies are a few of the dynamics that have fuelled greater scrutiny, engagement and opportunities for the standards movement around the world. These dynamics ensured that 2010 was a stimulating year for the ISEAL Alliance as we sought to monitor and shape this landscape to strengthen the standards movement in preparation for expected growth. During course of the year, ISEAL made important steps toward achieving the objectives outlined in our 20092013 Strategic Plan. Our membership continued to grow and we made strong progress in expanding our learning community to encompass a broader range of stakeholders, each with a unique contribution to improve the standards movement for greatest impact. Key questions that emerged during the year included whether it is ISEAL’s role to define basic content
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requirements of sustainability standards for its membership or not, and what are the most effective business models for standards systems that will enable them to meet the demands of reaching scale? A continuing challenge for the ISEAL Secretariat is how best to serve our members and the broader community of users of sustainability standards given the ever expanding number of challenges and opportunities facing the movement. The good news is that through expanding our partnerships as well as through our culture of learning and improvement, we have never been more ready to face these challenges and help prepare the standards movement for their contribution to transformative change that will improve the livelihoods of millions of people and safeguard critical natural resources around the planet. I look forward to working with you into the future to continue to ensure that this promise becomes a reality.
Dr. Sasha Courville, Executive Director
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Accomplishments in 2010 Finalisation and launch of the ISEAL Impacts Code First meeting of the Stakeholder Council, a new multi-stakeholder governance body to oversee ISEAL Codes In-depth research and analysis leading to the publication of a Top Ten Trends Document as input to a strategy to scale up the impacts of the collective standards movement Investments in ISEAL’s Human Resources and Monitoring and Evaluation systems to set a solid foundation for our own organisation’s growth
“ISEAL is one of the most exciting change agents in global trade. They are one of the rare institutions that brings together governments, private sector, civil society and academia and even makes them think towards the same direction.” Carsten Schmitz-Hoffmann, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH
“ISEAL support is important for neutrality and credibility in the way our standard is developed.” ISEAL Associate Member, Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels (RSB)
What does ISEAL do? ISEAL defines good practices for credible standards systems, reaches out to governments, businesses and other key actors who use them, and creates a community for shared learning, all with the aim of increasing the social and environmental impacts of sustainability standards. At the heart of the ISEAL Alliance is an active learning community. It brings together ISEAL staff, members, affiliates and businesses, as well as experts from the realms of standard-setting, accreditation, certification, auditor training and a lively research network composed of academics, institutes and consultants. It ensures that all these experts engage in an exchange of ideas, innovation and collaboration so that standards systems can scale up their activities and amplify their positive impact. The more a standards system learns, the more effective it can be. The ISEAL community covers a broad variety of sectors. Members and affiliates deal with social justice, human rights, and environmental sustainability across a range of sectors such as manufacturing, agriculture, fisheries, forestry, and biofuels.
ISEAL Members Full Members of the ISEAL Alliance are a leading group of standards systems that have demonstrated their ability to meet the ISEAL Codes and accompanying good practice requirements. They also embody the commitment it takes to support and unify the movement
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of sustainability standards systems. Associate Members are newer additions to ISEAL and are committed to demonstrating full compliance with the ISEAL Codes within one year of joining.* Associate members are organisations that have robust, operational systems in place that are supported by the ISEAL Secretariat to come into compliance. * This is a new requirement. Previously, Associate Members had three years to comply.
ISEAL Affiliates Affiliates are organisations and individuals – businesses, NGOs, governments, research institutions and consultants – that are committed to scaling up the sustainability impacts of the social and environmental standards movement. Affiliate applicants are required to be aligned with ISEAL’s vision and are given access to ISEAL’s resources on sustainability. They are encouraged to build relationships with the rest of the ISEAL community, and become involved in ISEAL projects and developments.
Shaping the Sustainability Standards Movement The ISEAL Alliance’s work from 2009 to 2013 is guided by an ambitious Strategic Plan that has set the course for ISEAL to play a pivotal role in shaping the sustainability standards movement and enabling the scaling up of its developmental impacts. The activities identified in the Strategic Plan were designed to allow ISEAL and its members to respond to the demands of rapid growth and increasing stakeholder expectations, so that the movement can reach its full potential to ensure credible and effective systems that deliver on their social and environmental goals. Our strategic plan for 2009-2013 sets out the following desired outcomes: ISEAL defines credibility. This is accomplished though developing a comprehensive suite of Codes of Good Practice addressing key stakeholder needs. Building on the ISEAL Code of Good Practice for Setting Social and Environmental Standards, ISEAL is working to develop two more codes that are addressing the issues of measuring impacts and ensuring dependable yet accessible verification of compliance to credible standards. Standards systems use credible practices. While the ISEAL Codes are critical tools to articulate stakeholder expectations of how credible standards systems should operate, standards systems need to be able to meet them if we are to ensure strong performance. ISEAL is supporting individual members to comply with our Codes and facilitating a learning community to exchange experiences, engender trust and stimulate
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innovation in the standards systems model. Practices of individual systems will be improved as a result of shared learning and compliance with ISEAL Codes. Likewise, an independent evaluation mechanism is being set up to demonstrate members’ compliance with ISEAL Codes. Movement scales up the impact of credible standards systems. In order to reach their full potential in transforming entire industry sectors towards more sustainable practices, sustainability standards need to find ways to work together to build greater effectiveness and efficiencies, ensure producer access, and meet evolving industry needs. ISEAL is developing a collective strategy for scaling up the impacts of the standards movement, and working with members to implement it over the next few years. ISEAL Alliance is strong and sustainable. In order to achieve all of these outcomes, ISEAL needs to invest in its staff, in management systems, information technology and governance structures. By 2013, we expect that financial sustainability will allow ISEAL to grow at its desired pace. ISEAL’s membership will increasingly reflect the diversity and growth of the standards movement, and operating systems will be in place that empower staff and strengthen the organisation. To achieve this, ISEAL is establishing a Stakeholder Council made up of diverse representatives. This Council will provide strategic advice to the ISEAL Board in steering ISEAL’s work into the future. Stakeholders support credibility and credible standards systems. As business, government and civil society
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leaders increasingly recognise and reference Credibility Codes and Principles as fundamental requirements to achieve strong sustainability outcomes, ISEAL Codes become critical points of differentiation in determining what systems to engage with; thereby driving better performance. A first step will be to build broad based awareness of how best to use sustainability standards through the development of a Standards Systems Academy. ISEAL is also in the process of developing dedicated programmes of work to support governments and business leaders to make better use of sustainability standards to achieve their own objectives.
What our members think... When ISEAL asked its members how confident they were that ISEAL codes increase their credibility, all full members answered that they feel this is true. When we asked members what within ISEAL they find most useful for their organisations, they answered: Fostering learning communities Advocating for standards with policymakers Supporting code compliance Developing the Scaling Up Strategy
Activities in 2010
Defining Credibility One of ISEAL’s core functions is to help the voluntary standards movement to define what good practices look like for the operation of a standards system. As a relatively new but expanding movement, there is a real need to understand how standards systems can most effectively deliver on their social and environmental impacts. The ISEAL Codes of Good Practice are broadly recognised tools that provide the foundation for that understanding.
carried out in 2009 and 2010. The new version clarifies the core criteria, streamlines the requirements and provides additional guidance. New and important requirements include mapping stakeholders and offering a public summary of the standards development process. A major new section on the structure of a standard will ensure that standards are developed in a clear and logical way and that the intent of the standard is carried through in its implementation.
2010 was an important year for ISEAL’s work on credibility tools. Not only did we revise the Standards Code, we launched ISEAL’s second major Code of Good Practice, the ISEAL Impacts Code, and we prepared the ground for the development of a new Assurance Code to start in 2011. We also identified the need for a broader framework encompassing the core values that underlie all our Codes of Good Practice and credible standards systems more generally. The resulting Credibility Principles were drafted in 2010 and will be refined through the same rigorous consultation process used for our Codes of Good Practice.
Measuring Impacts: Are voluntary standards systems delivering on their sustainability impacts? The answer to this question lies at the heart of a two year process that culminated in the approval of the ISEAL Impacts Code in June 2010. Despite the obvious correlation between the sustainability goals of standards systems and the practices that they require in their standards, we have a relatively limited understanding of the impacts that result from certification, or the conditions under which certification can be most effective. A large part of the reason for this is that measuring impacts is difficult – most of the change that an enterprise undertakes in order to comply with a standard happens before they engage with a certification body; and even when changes are documented, it is difficult to attribute long-term changes to the act of certification, given all the other factors influencing the enterprise. These were among the challenges faced by ISEAL, our members and external experts as we completed the Impacts Code.
Setting Standards: The ISEAL Standard Setting Code is ISEAL’s flagship credibility tool that has become the leading instrument for good standard-setting practices since its launch in 2004. Given the wealth of experience that standards systems have gained since the Code was last revised in 2006, a full review was
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Developing the Impacts Code The process to develop the Impacts Code followed the ISEAL Code Development Procedure, which requires extensive stakeholder consultation. The project commenced by recruiting a Steering Committee to guide the process and two technical committees to provide input on Impacts Issues and Impact Methodology respectively. There were two comment periods (for subsequent drafts) comprising 737 individual comments overall. The content of the Impacts Code went through radical changes in its development. The project began with the notion of proving that standards systems were having positive impact but moved to the idea that learning and improving is the primary goal of the Impacts Code. Thus, the Impacts Code requires standards systems to monitor and evaluate their progress and then use the learning from that activity to improve their programme.
Compliance with the Impacts Code is a requirement for all ISEAL member standards systems and is phased in over three years. Certain benchmarks must be met every year, with formal impact assessments required in the third year.
“ In general, people are very positive about the Impacts Code. They see that a lot of work has gone into it and that the Code provides standards systems with a lot of concrete support in setting-up an Impact Assessment System � .
Rob Van Hout, former Monitoring and Evaluation Manager at Fairtrade International
Assuring Compliance: The statement that “certification should be a model for development, not a hurdle to overcome” suggests the underlying impetus for the development of ISEAL’s third Code of Good Practice. Assurance (of compliance with different standards) has always been an essential part of standards systems but is usually considered a ‘necessary evil’ – where a producer or business owner simply hopes that the benefits will eventually outweigh the costs. The ISEAL Assurance Code will aim to provide standards systems with methods that will allow them to get more from their assurance programmes – lowering the costs and increasing the benefits - so that assurance contributes in a substantial way to the objectives of the system as a whole. During the course of 2011 and 2012, ISEAL will facilitate an extensive multi-stakeholder process that will include at least two rounds of public consultation, led by a nine-member steering committee and assisted by a technical committee, made up of ISEAL members, stakeholder representatives and external experts.
“ ISEAL’s ability to convene organisations involved in standardsetting and implementation creates a climate of collaboration that Mars is not able to accomplish. ISEAL maintains a unique position of expertise and credibility that is of great value in a diverse and often competitive field. ” Jeff Morgan, Director of Global Programs, Mars
Building a Learning Community Shared learning is a central tenet of ISEAL’s approach to increasing the credibility of standards systems and the collective social and environmental impacts of the sustainability standards movement. By learning from each other, and learning together about stakeholder needs, standards systems identify strategies for improving their practices. The interaction spurs collaboration between standards systems - testing, perfecting and then implementing innovative solutions to pressing problems. ISEAL acts as a catalyst for innovation, bringing standards systems together with emerging initiatives and users of standards, in conferences and consultation processes, and through publications and research projects. The core of ISEAL’s learning community has always been its members. In 2010, ISEAL took steps to expand participation in this learning community beyond our members, to bring in views and experience from businesses, governments, donors, researchers and sustainability initiatives. At the end of 2010, 24 organisations had registered as affiliates, including ten standard-setting bodies, eight producer and capacity building organisations, and five research, policy, and advocacy organisations. ISEAL’s research listserv was launched in December 2010 as a vehicle for bringing together the widespread group
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of researchers studying the impacts, effectiveness, and governance of sustainability standards. Within a month of its creation, 136 researchers were participating in active discussions. ISEAL, working with its partner AccountAbility, also facilitated the creation of a network of donors who support standards systems.
Learning in Practice 2010 also saw members working in pairs and small groups on a number of initiatives that could lead to important changes for their organisations: efforts to increase efficiency in auditing, to collaborate on benchmarking, to help each other with standards development, and to experiment with dual certification. When asked how they had applied what they had learned, ISEAL members described improvements to their verification, management, and reporting systems; improvements in governance models and standards development processes; and improvements to their strategic planning exercises.
“ Because we are a young organisation, the expertise of ISEAL and other members is really useful for us and for the development of our systems. ” ISEAL Associate Member, GoodWeave
ISEAL Annual Conference 2010 The ISEAL annual conference this year was called Looking Ahead: The Landscape and Future of Social and Environmental Standards and it opened with its first ever “Public Day” for all interested parties. Nearly 150 people attended the conference, including half from organisations outside of the ISEAL community. 85% of ISEAL members attended, showing a strong commitment to learning together, and several standard-setting organisations outside of ISEAL were also present. This year also saw a larger breadth and depth of organisations, with the public day attracting 64 different ones from a variety of sectors. Session topics ranged from GHG accounting to gender issues in certification. The Public Day, for example, kicked off with a lively panel asking three experts from seemingly different worlds - an executive from one of the world’s largest food manufacturers, a programme head from a German company that implements sustainable development programmes globally, and the leader of a Brazilian NGO focused on protection of the Amazon - what they thoughts standards might look like in 2020.
Encouraging the use of Sustainability Standards Strengthening governmental, business and civil society objectives through the use of sustainability standards is the main driver behind ISEAL’s policy and advocacy agenda. Increased recognition by stakeholders of the importance of credibility as a fundamental underpinning of effective and impactful standards systems is crucial to driving continuous improvements and rewarding best practices in sustainability standards. A major focus of ISEAL’s policy and advocacy work is in increasing the use of ISEAL Codes of Good Practice as international criteria to evaluate sustainability standards systems. In early 2010, the European Commission compiled best practice guidelines for the operation of certification schemes relating to agricultural products and foodstuffs and invited comments. ISEAL was able to engage during the year long consultation process and as a result ensured that the final guidelines were largely consistent with ISEAL’s own guidelines for what makes for a credible system. Similarly, the revised version of the UK Government’s Timber Procurement Policy, published in 2010, makes explicit reference to ISEAL’s Standard-Setting Code, while a statement published by the European Commission on voluntary schemes in the context of biofuels legislation references ISEAL’s guidelines on group certification models. A major topic of discussion in 2010 focused on the question of how to ensure credible and truthful claims in the “ethical” or “green claims” landscape. Here, policy makers focused on tightening up the guidance they give
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to marketing departments on how to make accurate and credible product claims. In March 2010, The UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), published a draft version of their “Updated Guidance on Green Claims” and referenced ISEAL. In the US policy landscape, ISEAL coordinated submissions with its members to the US Federal Trade Commission on proposed revisions to the guidance that it gives to marketers to help them make a truthful environmental claim as well as to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on what their role should be in overseeing and guiding the ecolabel landscape. The issue of unsubstantiated product claims is something that is of concern to the whole standards community. In 2007, the ISO Committee on Consumer Policy (ISO COPOLCO) held a workshop to explore the question – “Can consumers rely on fair trade claims?” Out of this workshop the Ethical Trade Fact-Finding Process (ETFP) was established to investigate how consumer confidence in purchasing ethically traded products could be strengthened. The Steering Group included representatives from Consumers International, the French National Standards Body AFNOR, the Brazilian National Standards Body ABNT, the ISEAL Alliance and the Fair Trade organisations FLO and WFTO (represented by the Fair Trade Advocacy Office) with the Secretary of ISO COPOLCO as an observer. After two years of research and engagement, the ETFP was officially concluded at the end of September 2010
with the Steering Committee formulating a number of recommendations on how the potential for consumer confusion caused by inaccurate and unreliable claims could be reduced. From ISEAL’s perspective, the findings highlighted the need to build broad based global agreement on what makes for a credible “green” or “ethical” claim and to develop an easy way to organise the sustainability claims landscape. This would help users to understand the differences between a wide variety of claims in the market place, from industry self-declared claims, to life cycle based claims, to multi-stakeholder developed standards with independent third party certification. Together with partner BigRoom, ISEAL developed initial drafts of what such tools could look like, to prepare the ground for global multi-stakeholder processes to define common credibility principles and a common taxonomy of sustainability claims in the future. The implementation of these two processes will allow ISEAL to respond to the recommendations of the ETFP that emphasised the need to strengthen the quality and meaningfulness of sustainability claims and improve the accuracy of communications to consumers. Finally, work to establish a Standards Systems Academy that would fill a critical capacity building gap in supporting government, business and civil society representatives to better understand and make use of sustainability standards began in 2010 with a feasibility study to explore how best to proceed.
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Scaling Up Imagine a world where all textiles are produced without child labour, where billions of people can continue to depend on wild capture fisheries as their main protein source, where the Brazilian Amazon is preserved through sustainable management of soy, cattle and forestry operations, and where consumers from Minneapolis to Mumbai can legitimately expect that all products and services they buy reflect agreed upon societal values. This world is possible through a massive scaling up of one of the most innovative approaches in addressing development challenges: sustainability standards.
Scaling Up Sustainability Standards Sustainability standards have the potential to transform global markets but in order to achieve this they must scale up with unprecedented speed and efficiency. In 2010, with the support of the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) and AccountAbility, ISEAL began to turn this concept into reality. Our focus has been to identify ways that sustainability standards can have a greater impact by working collectively, than they would have working individually, and how ISEAL members can continue to play a leading role in global sustainable development solutions. Development of the Scaling Up Strategy included research to identify the key trends affecting the sustainability standards movement and the opportunities and barriers to increasing the use of sustainability standards. The research included interviews and focus groups with companies in the US, Europe, Brazil, India and China, with producer capacity building groups, ISEAL members, and donors that are engaged with sustainability standards. It resulted in a list of 10 key trends along with analysis of how they affect standards systems and why they are important to scaling up. Following the trends analysis, ISEAL held meetings with the Boards of Directors and senior management teams of our members to discuss the Top 10 Trends. The meetings were important opportunities for ISEAL members to increase their understanding of barriers and opportunities for scaling up. Many
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members reported that they were incorporating this information into their strategic planning. Some trends have also informed the design of new ISEAL-led projects that are getting underway, such as one to empower public and private sector leaders in emerging economies such as Brazil, India and China to understand and contribute to the further development of sustainability standards. Another involved the creation of a network of the rapidly growing global information systems (such as BigRoom, GoodGuide, Trade for Sustainable Development – T4SD, and others) to foster cooperation with the standards community and ensure that consumers are not receiving mixed messages about what is credible in terms of sustainability claims. The Scaling Up Strategy will be launched in 2011 and offer a coordinated approach to expanding the implementation and acceptance of sustainability standards on a global level, in order to increase the number of producers and enterprises that benefit.
“ The low hanging fruits are in. The more difficult cases are coming now. They start from scratch and are unorganised; they need more attention and time. �
Technical Assistance Provider (Forestry Sector)
Top Trends 1. Continued proliferation of sustainability standards systems 2. Business developing additional tools 3. Consumer facing umbrella initiatives 4. Business recognition that long-term access to supply depends on a sustainable value chain 5. Emerging economies as standards takers and standards makers 6. Explosion of global information/ transparency initiatives 7. Climate change as a core cross-cutting issue 8. Increasing engagement from governments 9. Supply as a major bottleneck to scaling impact 10. Limits of current standards system model in scaling up
Growing our Organisation 2010 saw ISEAL building a solid foundation for the expected continued growth of our organisation. We filled crucial new positions in monitoring and evaluation, human resources, and finance. We also invested in those same areas: tracking and analysing our programme data, developing staff policies and procedures, and upgrading our information technology platform. These improvements will allow us to be a more nimble, efficient organisation that can respond to emerging issues in the coming years. This year also marked the creation of ISEAL’s Stakeholder Council, an important new development as we put formal structures in place to ensure that we not only respond to our members but also to the users of standards, so that change can be driven from both directions. The ISEAL Stakeholder Council brings together influential leaders who have in-depth knowledge and experience with sustainability. A first meeting in December of 2010 began the process whereby the Stakeholder Council will provide oversight on the development of ISEAL Codes, and in the future offer strategic recommendations to the ISEAL Board of Directors on a range of critical issues and trends. A major focus will be to expand the
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Council in the coming years to include producers and other stakeholders, especially from the global south.
ISEAL Stakeholder Council Rob Cameron, Fairtrade International Daniela Mariuzzo, Rabobank Brazil Mireille Perrin Decorzent, WWF International Carsten Schmitz-Hoffmann, Deutsche Gesellschaft fĂźr Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH Alice Tepper-Marlin, Social Accountability International* Jan Kees Vis, Unilever Tensie Whelan, Rainforest Alliance * Designated Board Liaison
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Financials ISEAL saw significant financial growth in 2010, with income rising almost 50% from 2009 figures. Strong support came from governments and foundations, while membership fees continue to finance approximately 8% of the ISEAL annual budget. We ended our year with a surplus, and also reached an important target by the end of 2010 to have reserves in place for approximately three months of costs. Despite our growth, we had expected to move forward with a number of critical activities and to see even more growth than was reality, and we continue to be challenged by the increasing need to diversify our funding sources as we grow. While donor organisations will likely remain our mainstream funding source for the foreseeable future, we also hope to leverage as much as we can from these contributions by diversifying revenue streams where possible. This will become a priority for ISEAL in future years.
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Financial Summary As of 31 December 2010 (with comparative totals for fiscal year 2009) in Euros.
INCOME
2010
2009
Membership
113,000
74,000
Government*
718,000
557,000
Foundation
544,000
294,000
1,375,000
925,000
2010
2009
Credibility Tools
131,000
147,000
Learning Community
122,000
81,000
Policy
152,000
130,000
Scaling Up
156,000
49,000
100,000
67,000
199,000
107,000
99,000
69,000
157,000
108,000
1,116,000
758,000
190,000
138,000
1,306,000
896,000
Total income
EXPENDITURE
Organisation ››
Monitoring & Evaluation, Information Technology
››
Communications
››
Fundraising
››
Finance, Operations and Governance
Total Overhead Costs Total expenditure Surplus
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69,000
29,000
Reserves at Starts of Year
189,000
160,000
Reserves at End of Year
258,000
189,000
EXPENDITURE
12%
14%
• Credibility Tools • Learning Community
11%
9%
• Policy • Scaling Up • Monitoring & Evaluation, Information Technology
13%
18%
• Communications • Fundraising
9%
• Finance, Operations & Governance
8%
INCOME • Membership • Government* • Foundation
14%
40% 52%
* The Government category includes income from the Humanist Institute for Development Cooperation (Hivos), the Hivos - Oxfam Novib Biodiversity Fund, and the Interchurch Organisation for Development Cooperation (ICCO). These are non-government organisations in the Netherlands that receive core funding mainly from the Dutch government (Hivos and Oxfam Novib), and the European Commission and Dutch Foreign Office (ICCO).
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Funders We are extremely grateful to our donors, partners and other supporters, whose funding, ideas and encouragement is crucial to everything that we do. For the 2010 financial year we received generous support from the following institutions: The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) Ford Foundation Deutsche Gesellschaft f端r Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH Humanist Institute for Development Cooperation (Hivos) Hivos - Oxfam Novib Biodiversity Fund Interchurch Organisation for Development Cooperation (ICCO) The Overbrook Foundation The David and Lucile Packard Foundation State Secretariat for Economic Affairs, Switzerland (SECO) The Walton Family Foundation
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Our Members ISEAL Members as of 31 December 2010 Associate Members
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Full Members
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Photography We would like to thank all members that provided photography for this report. Inside cover and pages 4, 17, 24, 26 and 29 © Charlie Watson | Rainforest Alliance. Page 2 © Nathalie Bertrams | Fairtrade International. Pages 7 and 19 © Rainforest Alliance. Page 9 © FSC A.C. Pages 13, 21 and 33 © Robin Romano | GoodWeave. Page 15 © Noah Jackson | Rainforest Alliance. Page 23 © Jessica Sethi. Page 31 © UTZ CERTIFIED. Page 37 © Aid by Trade Foundation
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Our Cover Irene Atieno, 13, is a student at Kericho HQ Primary School on the Kericho Estate in Kenya. She hopes to become a manager one day. Owned by Unilever – which aims to source 100 percent of its Lipton tea sold in tea bags from Rainforest Alliance Certified farms by 2015 – Kericho was the first-ever tea estate to earn Rainforest Alliance certification. On certified farms, worker’s children must have access to school -- a requirement easily met by the Unilever-owned estate, long a model of sustainable farm management. Photo by Caroline Irby, 2009. © Rainforest Alliance. Editors Lara Koritzke and Sasha Courville. Design Michelle Doust
ISEAL Alliance The Wenlock Centre 50-52 Wharf Road London N1 7EU United Kingdom Tel: +44 (0)20 3246 0066 Fax: +44 (0)20 3176 0950 info@isealalliance.org twitter.com/isealalliance www.isealalliance.org