The International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) is an umbrella organisation that seeks to harmonise organic standards worldwide.
The IFOAM Organic Guarantee System (OGS)
The Basic Standard Main Principles:
The Global Reporting Initiative's (GRI) declared mission is to promote sustainability reporting so that it is of an equivalent standing to financial reporting in rigour, comparability, auditability and general acceptance.
CDP is a non-profit organisation that works to transform the way the world does business so as to prevent climate change and portect natural resources. As part of this mission, CDP's forests program helps companies and their investors to understand and address the risk of deforestation by requiring companies to provide data so that investors can judge how they are managing their exposure to deforestation.
The CDP (formerly known as Carbon Disclosure Project) is a non-profit organisation that works with market forces to disclose their impact on the environment. In this, CDP claims to motivate action to prevent climate change and protect natuarl resources.
As part of its mission, CDP has 6 programs - these are:
TruCost is a sustainability reporting MGM that helps organisations to measure and manage the environmental impacts associated with their operations, supply chains and investment portfolios. As part of this, they collect data on carbon, water, waste, metals and chemicals. But they don't only focus on reporting on the physical environmental impact in quantitative terms; they also place a monetary value on any impacts found.
The services supplied by TruCost help its clients to:
The Dow Jones Sustainability Indices comprise a number of indices all focused around the same methodology covering leading companies in markets across the globe in terms of sustainability performance.
Standard & Poor are major providers of worldwide financial information provision and today operate in 23 countries. They currently provide information and ratings ranging from equity markets to the risk of national bonds. Standard & Poor offer four indices related to Carbon and Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance (ESG):
ISO 14001 is a “generic management system standard” that has a set of requirements for implementing an environmental management system (EMS).
It can be applied to any organisation, whatever its product or service, in any sector of activity, and whether it is a business, public administration or government department.
The EMS should enable an organisation to develop and implement a policy and objective that takes into account legal requirements, specific requirements of the organisation, and environmental aspects.
Fairtrade is a tool for development that ensures disadvantaged farmers and workers in developing countries get a better deal through the use of the international FAIRTRADE Mark. By complying with standards set by the Fairtrade Labelling Organisation (FLO) producers receive a guaranteed minimum price as well as the Fairtrade premium.
Producer Standards
Kiva is a non-profit organisation that uses lending to alleviate poverty around the world.
Using the internet, Kiva allows individuals to loan as little as $25 to people who then use it to build opportunities for themselves. Kiva then distributes the money to the borrowers through a global network of field partners.
