The State of Sustainability Initiatives: A Window into the World of Voluntary Sustainability Initiatives

Initiated by Aidenvironment, IIED, IISD, UNCTAD, and the ENTWINED research consortium, the State of Sustainability Initiatives, or SSI, is a reporting service that aims to improve access to information on the impacts, effectiveness and scope of voluntary initiatives for sustainable supply chains.

With detailed research and analysis, the SSI's flagship product "The State of Sustainability Initiatives Review" provides a regular snapshot and comparison of the performance of major voluntary initiatives operating across different commodity sectors. The first edition considers the relationship between transparency and sustainable development across voluntary sustainability initiatives active in the forestry, coffee, cocoa, tea and banana sectors.

SSI reports are designed to cater specifically to a business and policy decision-making audience. Reports will also assist other stakeholders to make more informed choices with respect to standards and other market-based approaches to sustainable commodity production and trade. The SSI Review aims to challenge initiatives and other stakeholders to strive toward best practices while helping supply chain decision-makers make investments in those initiatives that best suit their sustainable development goals.

SSI Donor Support and Key Partnerships
The SSI is a partnership between IISD, IIED, Aidenvironment, UNCTAD and the ENTWINED research consortium. A defining aspect of the SSI project relates to a set of approximately 100 indicators identified by the SSI's high-level advisory panel as being of importance for external decision-makers seeking to understand the reach and depth of the many different voluntary sustainability initiatives available on the market. The SSI indicators are grouped into three categories: 1. System Information (related to the size, scope, financials, governance and monitoring systems); 2. Content Information (related to the scope and depth of criteria within an initiative) 3. Market information (related to market growth and other statistics). The full list of indicators can be found here.

The SSI works in direct partnership with the International Trade Center's T4SD initiative which seeks to provide a data-hub on voluntary sustainability standards. The full SSI indicator set has been incorporated within the International Trade Center's T4SD database and can be referenced from the online T4SD portal. The draft version of the database, a beta version of which has already been completed, contains more than 700 different fields of information on the costs, benefits and social, economic and environmental effects brought by voluntary sustainability standards.

The ITC has a long history of providing market information for global trade and is widely recognized for the quality and consistency of its data. The collaboration between the SSI and the ITC is a major step towards the establishment of a global reference point for monitoring and assessing the sustainability of supply chain initiatives, allowing readers to better understand the facts and formulate their own conclusions.

The SSI has been made possible through the generous contributions of a number of donor agencies. The SSI management team would like to thank all of those institutions making contributions to date including:.

Advisory Panel Ensures Relevant Content
The SSI's multi-stakeholder advisory panel was brought together to oversee the project's design and implementation. The expertise and advice of the panel helps ensure the relevance and efficiency of the SSI's activities. See the full list of advisory panel members.

The SSI Review 2010: Sustainability and Transparency
The theme of the SSI Review 2010 looks at the relationship between transparency and sustainable development across ten voluntary sustainability initiatives in the forestry, coffee, cocoa, banana and tea sectors. Access to information about how goods and services are produced and how initiatives set and implement rules is a key step in efforts to improve participatory governance in international commercial relations and supply chains. As voluntary sustainability initiatives become more important players in international supply chains, they are facing increasing demands to provide information on impacts, market trends and other system characteristics. The SSI provides a window into key aspects that can distinguish systems from each other.

Meet the SSI Project Development Team
This project brings together the institutional expertise of four organizations with a long standing history in the promotion of sustainable commodity production and trade - Aidenvironment, IIED, IISD and UNCTAD. The SSI project development team includes: