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Methodology The methodology was developed in collaboration with Preferred by Nature. Preferred by Nature (formerly known as NEPCon) is an international non-profit organisation working with farmers, foresters, businesses, NGOs and governments to support better land management and business practices that benefit people, nature and the climate in more than 100 countries. For nearly 30 years, the organisation has worked to develop practical solutions to drive positive impacts in production landscapes and supply chains through innovative projects, capacity building and sustainability services. In order to identify how the RTRS Standard for Responsible Soy Production contributes to the SDGs, the steps listed below were applied. The materials used in the methodology were 1) the 17 goals, 169 targets, and 244 indicators derived from the SDGs, and 2) the indicators derived from the 5 Principles of the RTRS Standard. The steps of the methodology were as follows:
Step 1. Generate keywords for each SDG indicator. Step 2. The keywords created in step 1 are mapped to the RTRS indicators. Step 3. The SDG indicators and RTRS indicators which shared the same keywords are identified.
Table 1. Examples of SDG indicators and the generated keywords SDGs Indicators
Keyword
16.7.2
Proportion of population who believe decision-making is inclusive and responsive, by sex, age, disability and population group
Inclusive decision-making
16.10.1
Number of verified cases of killing, kidnapping, enforced disappearance, arbitrary detention and torture of journalists, associated media personnel, trade unionists and human rights advocates in the previous 12 months
Human rights
The 89 keywords were then applied to the RTRS indicators, as listed in the 4.0 version of the Standard7 published in 2021. In the case that there was more than one keyword that could be associated with an RTRS indicator, all the keywords were used. Table 2 shows such an example.
7 RTRS Standard for Responsible Soy Production V4.0 https://responsiblesoy.org/documentos/rtrs-standard-for-responsiblesoyproduction-v4-0?lang=en
SDG Materiality Report - The Round Table on Responsible Soy Association (RTRS) - Business Guidance
More specifically, in the first step of the methodology all the SDG indicators were mapped to a specific keyword containing the essence of that indicator (see examples in Table 1). In total, 89 keywords were generated for the 244 SDG indicators. The indicators which address responsibilities and policies of governments were eliminated in this process, as this report is addressed to the business sector.
