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Environmental Risk Assessment tool being demonstrated to community forest technicians in Guatemala.
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Environmental Risk Assessment (ERA) |  Electronic waste |  ISEAL Training Manuals | Water Stewardship Initiative |  Carbon and Greenhouse Gases |  Marine Stewardship |  Sustainable Agriculture |
Sustainable Forest Management |  Sustainable Tourism | 
Responsible Mining

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Environmental Risk Assessment (ERA) for FSC Certification in the Selva Maya

Environmental monitoring can be an important element of responsible forest management. But it can also require considerable technical expertise and become a significant cost. For community forest managers in the tropics it is important to know whether scarce technical and financial resources should be allocated to monitoring, or whether they could be better deployed to other more critical tasks. OneWorldStandards and Estudios Forestales Synnott were contracted by ICCO, the Netherlands-based interchurch organisation for development cooperation, to develop an Environmental Risk Assessment (ERA) tool to provide a robust, cost-effective method to help managers decide when monitoring is needed.

In the first phase of the project a regionally applicable tool has been developed for the Selva Maya (Maya Forest) of south-east Mexico, northern Guatemala and Belize. The system uses Microsoft Excel and is designed for use by local community forest technicians. Additional information, together with the draft project report and Excel spreadsheet tools for download is available at:

http://www.oneworldstandards.com/ERA.html

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E-Stewards™ Certification Program

For the past five years the the Basel Action Network (BAN) has administered the "Electronic Recyclers' Pledge of True Stewardship". The program builds on the UN treaty controlling the trade in hazardous waste and aims to ensure that hazardous electronic waste is not exported to developing countries to end up in landfills, incinerators, or prison labor systems. In 2008 OneWorldStandards worked with BAN to transition "the BAN Pledge" into a formal 3rd party independently audited certification program, based on a clear, auditable standard, and backed up by an authoratative global accreditation capacity. The new e-Stewards™ Certification Program is scheduled for launch in 2009.

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ISEAL Training Manuals

OneWorldStandards Director Matthew Wenban-Smith has co-authored a series of training manuals for the ISEAL Alliance, covering standard setting, verification, governance and revenue generation for social and environmental standards initiatives. The manuals provide practical information for setting up effective social and/or environmental standards in any sector and include examples from established certification schemes such as Fairtrade, Organic and the Marine Stewardship Council. The five training manuals are available free of charge on the ISEAL Alliance website at www.isealalliance.org/emerginginitiatives. Together with ISEAL Alliance staff OneWorldStandards delivered a two-day training workshop on standards development and verification for ISEAL's Emerging Initiatives programme.

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The Water Stewardship Initiative

OneWorldStandards Ltd is a founding partner of the Water Stewardship Initiative - a multi-stakeholder initiative to identify and reward responsible water users. Australian National Water Commission CEO Ken Matthews welcomed the initiative at the 2nd Water Stewardship Forum in Melbourne, Australia in June 2007, describing it as "a channel for committed individuals, companies and organisations to exercise leadership in water management".

During 2008 the Water Stewardship Initiative teamed up with The Nature Conservancy (TNC), The Pacific Institute, the WorldWideFund for Nature (WWF), Water Witness and the Water Environment Federation (WEF) to establish the Alliance for Water Stewardship. The Alliance is developing global standards and a certification program for responsible water users around the world. Field testing will take place during 2009. Download the AWS fact sheet (0.5 Mb) for more information.

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Carbon and Greenhouse Gases

The United Nations Integovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2007 Assessment Report found the evidence for human induced global warming to be unequivocal. World temperatures are likely to rise between 1.1 and 6.4 degrees Centigrade during the 21st century. However, the likely temperature rise and associated increase in sea level will vary greatly depending on the continuing level of emissions of Carbon dioxide and other Greenhouse Gases (GHGs).

An increasing number of companies are announcing their intention to go ‘carbon neutral’ – reducing and/or offsetting their carbon emissions so that their net impact is neutral.  Although many individual offset providers operate their own proprietary standards there is no single, independent, industry standard to which all adhere. OneWorldStandards advised The Climate Group on a process to establish a set of globally recognised international standards and an associated verification system for claims relating to ‘carbon neutral’ products and services.

The Carbon Trust contracted OneWorldStandards and Arup Consulting to develop and manage a consultative process to define rules for companies claiming that they are reducing their carbon emissions. The process ran in parallel with the Bristish Standards Institute (BSI) work to develop a Publicly Available Specification for the assessment of the life cycle greenhouse gas emissions of goods and services. The final "Code of Good Practice for Product Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Reduction Claims" can be downloaded from the Carbon Trust website.

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Marine Stewardship

The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) is an independent non-profit organisation that promotes responsible fishing practices. MSC’s role is to recognise well-managed and sustainable fisheries via a certification programme, and to harness consumer preference for seafood products bearing the MSC eco-label. OneWorldStandards Director, Matthew Wenban-Smith, serves on the MSC’s technical advisory board contributing advice on a range of issues relating to standards and certification under the MSC scheme.

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Sustainable Agriculture

The Sustainable Agriculture Network (SAN)
Sustainable agriculture is at the centre of the Rainforest Alliance’s efforts to conserve ecosystems by protecting healthy soils, rivers and wildlife and by promoting dignified living conditions for farm workers and neighboring rural communities. 

The Rainforest Alliance is the international secretariat of the Sustainable Agriculture Network (SAN), a coalition of leading conservation groups that links responsible farmers with conscientious consumers by means of the Rainforest Alliance Certified seal of approval. The SAN seeks to transform the environmental and social conditions of tropical agriculture through the implementation of sustainable farming practices. SAN's collective vision is based on the concept of sustainability, recognizing that the well-being of societies and ecosystems is intertwined and dependent on development that is environmentally sound, socially equitable and economically viable.

OneWorldStandards is working with the Rainforest Alliance to develop and streamline SAN's international standardization procedures and policies, so that it can optimise its impacts on the conditions of tropical agriculture.

Organic certification
IFOAM is the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements. IFOAM’s mission is to lead, unite and assist the organic movement in its full diversity. IFOAM's goal is the worldwide adoption of ecologically, socially and economically sound systems that are based on the principles of organic agriculture. OneWorldStandards is assisting IFOAM with a study of strategic options for its international accreditation programme, in order to facilitate market access whilst protecting the integrity of and assuring consumer confidence in organic products.

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Sustainable Forest Management

The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) exists to promote environmentally appropriate, socially beneficial, and economically viable management of the world's forests.  FSC's scheme is based on compliance with its international standard, the FSC Principles and Criteria of Forest Stewardship.  More than 90 million hectares of the world's forests and plantations are currently certified to the standard in more than 75 countries. FSC contracted OneWorldStandards to develop its procedures for the review and revision of the FSC Principles and Criteria, and to develop a set of ‘international generic indicators’ to allow for their worldwide implementation. The work involved reviewing around 10,000 separate indicators from accredited FSC national and certification body standards to come up with a single set of recommended indicators for further consultation and development.

OneWorldStandards has also carried out work on the development of national FSC indicators for the FSC Regional Office in Africa, and FSC national initiatives in Australia and Brazil.

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Sustainable Tourism

Tourism is one of the world's largest industries and one of its fastest growing economic sectors. It has a multitude of impacts, both positive and negative, on people's lives and on the environment.

“Sustainable tourism development guidelines and management practices are applicable to all forms of tourism in all types of destinations, including mass tourism and the various niche tourism segments. Sustainability principles refer to the environmental, economic, and socio-cultural aspects of tourism development, and a suitable balance must be established between these three dimensions to guarantee its long-term sustainability.”
(World Tourism Organisation, 2004)

The Sustainable Tourism Stewardship Council (STSC) is a proposed global accreditation body for sustainable tourism and ecotourism certification programs.

The need for such a body was publicly endorsed at the World Ecotourism Summit (WES) and incorporated in its final communiqué. OneWorldStandards is helping the Rainforest Alliance Sustainable Tourism Division and its partners develop detailed business and implementation plans for the establishment of the STSC.

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Responsible Mining

OneWorldStandards is working to develop options for a responsible mining assurance system on behalf of the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance (IRMA). The project, in collaboration with Spencer Consulting Group, is reviewing key elements of existing international systems, and is recommending options for governance, verification, site-level reporting, revenue generation and branding.

 

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