Gold Standard first climate standard to achieve ISEAL Code Compliant status

As climate and sustainability efforts and commitments and claims increase, Gold Standard becomes the first climate-centred standard to achieve Code Compliant status for ISEAL, a globally-recognised framework for effective, credible sustainability systems.

Amidst growing importance for strong governance as climate and broader sustainability efforts and claims skyrocket, Gold Standard announces that it is now ISEAL Code Compliant. This means the Gold Standard system has been independently evaluated against ISEAL’s Codes of Good Practice.

ISEAL is the global membership organisation for ambitious, collaborative and transparent sustainability systems, focused on driving collective efforts to tackle the most pressing sustainability issues and create a world where markets are a force for good. Other Code Compliant organizations include Fairtrade, Rainforest Alliance, and the Alliance for Water Stewardship.

This achievement is timely given the recent acceleration in the voluntary carbon market, where Gold Standard has been a pioneer for ambition and integrity. It also undergirds the foundation from which Gold Standard is expanding to help drive innovative forms of finance to achieve the ambitions of the Paris Climate Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals.

One of these innovations includes Gold Standard’s programme with ISEAL standards, including FSC and the Better Cotton Initiative, to integrate the added value of lower carbon emission factors into their standards’ sustainability claims. This will allow companies purchasing these certified lower-carbon commodities to credibly report lower emissions to their GHG footprint, creating a greater incentive to source sustainable goods.

“We are delighted to see the progress being made by members such as Gold Standard who are demonstrating a rigorous approach to improving their system by implementing ISEAL’s Codes of Good Practice”, says ISEAL’s Executive Director Karin Kreider, “ISEAL supports ambitious sustainability systems and their partners to deliver real, lasting, positive change.”

“We’re very proud to be first climate-centred standard to achieve ISEAL Code Compliant status,” says Gold Standard Chief Executive Officer Margaret Kim, “Our values of being Pioneering, Rigorous, Collaborative, and Transparent perfectly align with ISEAL’s purpose, and we see tremendous potential in collaborating with like-minded ISEAL standards to catalyse private sector investment in sustainable landscapes.”

About Gold Standard

Gold Standard was established in 2003 by WWF and other international NGOs as a best practice standard to help the world #GrowToZero. All Gold Standard-certified projects and programmes accelerate progress toward the Net-Zero ambition of the Paris Climate Agreement while catalyzing impact toward the broader Sustainable Development Goals. Its standard, Gold Standard for the Global Goals, allows climate and development initiatives to quantify, certify, and maximise their impacts toward climate security and sustainable development. Certification against the standard provides the confidence that these results are measured and verified, enabling credible impact reporting. ISEAL Code Compliant and backed by a broad NGO Supporter Network, Gold Standard has 1900+ projects underway in over 90 countries, creating billions of dollars of shared value from climate and development action worldwide.