ISEAL Global Sustainability Standards Conference

Marieke van der Mijn attended the ISEAL Global Sustainability Standards Conference in Washington, DC, from May 10-12. Over 250 sustainability leaders and experts from business, governments, NGOs and academia came together to explore the role of standards in driving greater positive social and environmental impact.

The theme this year was ‘Growing Impacts: Innovation and Evolution’ and over two days, ISEAL Members and the wider standards and certification community addressed key questions on how standard systems can improve impact and scale-up; what are the emerging trends, challenges and criticisms of standards and certification and how to deal with these; what are new tools for innovation and opportunities for collaboration, and should the concept of credibility be widened to organisations and not just standards systems?

Within this context of innovation and change, Bettercoal, as a relatively young organisation, has the opportunity to learn from the more established standard systems on the lessons they have learnt over the last 20 years on effective implementation, measuring impact on the ground and driving change within the supply chain. At the same time, the current work on the Assessment Program gives Bettercoal an exciting opportunity to be innovative in its approach and incorporate risk-based assurance, outcome-based approaches for measuring impact and continuous improvement mechanisms into its system.

Bettercoal looks forward to continue its engagement with the ISEAL Community and other standard systems on these areas and aims to work collaboratively with related initiatives where possible.

For more information on the ISEAL Alliance please visit the ISEAL website.