The sustainability landscape is evolving; sustainability challenges are increasingly prevalent, and new regulatory and reporting requirements are impacting operational approaches of companies and businesses across the globe.

Sustainability systems have an important role in addressing these critical sustainability challenges and in supporting companies and businesses to achieve their own sustainability objectives. To ensure this potential is achieved, ISEAL has been supporting Community Members to strengthen the integrity of their assurance programmes.

This year, this has included seeking solutions to improve identification and mitigation of integrity risks (e.g. conflicts of interest, insufficient auditor competence) and recognising when and how data can be used to inform decisions.

Specifically, ISEAL has supported Community Members' progression towards these aspirations by establishing working groups focused on particular integrity risks. This is made possible thanks to donor support from the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO). Key learnings from these working groups are described below.

Auditor competence

Auditors are responsible for assessing compliance against defined sustainability performance levels (e.g. a standard). The credibility and integrity of a sustainability system relies on skilled auditors who can make accurate and impartial assessments, and who have a strong understanding of relevant environmental and social topics.

In ISEAL’s risk mitigation working groups, a topical issue was the challenge of ensuring auditors are equipped to assess an increasing number of sustainability issues (e.g. human rights issues, labour rights violations).

It was recognised that capacity building and training is an essential part of ensuring that auditors are able to improve their skills and adapt to new requirements, and that sustainability systems need to be proactive in identifying where this support is most needed, developing or adapting existing measures to ensure this is available.

For instance, 4C is leading an ISEAL Innovations Fund project, supported by the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) and UK International Development from the UK government, which aims to increase auditors’ capacity to detect social risks and human rights violations in the coffee sector.

Using data and technology to strengthen assurance

The availability of new data and technology has the potential to rapidly change the way sustainability systems approach assurance and risk management.

Digitising and centralising audit data, which includes audit reports as well as information on audit staff, can enable sustainability systems to identify trends, track improvements and create efficiencies in their risk management approach.

Yet despite these innovations, ISEAL’s risk mitigation working groups also recognised that defining measures to improve the quality and accessibility of existing data is foundational to the uptake of any technology or data innovation, and an essential consideration for any sustainability system seeking to improve their risk management approach.

Strategies to improve and maintain sufficient data quality ranged from small, stepwise improvements (e.g. staff training), to change at an organisational level (e.g. revised data governance strategy).

Some Community Members have also invested in developing bespoke assurance platforms to improve data management and reporting among producers, auditors and other stakeholders.

Mitigating risks through partnerships

Sustainability systems operate in a global context, which means that integrity risks can occur across multiple regions and supply chain actors. Yet despite the range of contexts in which sustainability systems operate, there are often similarities in the types of integrity risks that arise.

In cases such as these, taking a collaborative approach to building partnerships across sustainability systems can improve awareness of risks on a wider level, as well as foster innovative approaches.

Within the risk mitigation working groups, members identified opportunities to align when defining competency and training requirements for auditors, and to collaborate on the delivery of training or implementation of technological solutions.

Another example of collaboration among ISEAL Community Members can be seen with The Risk Information Alliance (RIA), an ISEAL Innovations Fund-supported project led by the Sustainable Biomass Programme.

This is an initiative that enables organisations to produce credible risk data in a variety of commodities, sectors and regions, and set shared indicators for risk assessments across sectors.

Founding members of the RIA also include Forest Stewardship Council, Preferred by Nature, Roundtable of Sustainable Biomaterials, and Global Platform for Sustainable Natural Rubber.  

In conclusion

Through open dialogue, collaboration and a commitment to continuous improvement, ISEAL Community Members have collectively identified strategies to support more effective identification and mitigation of integrity risks.

This has ranged from identifying measures to improve processes that underpin effective risk management (e.g. identifying relevant datasets and measures to improve data quality), to recognising opportunities for collaboration across sustainability systems.