Co-developed with ISEAL Alliance, this guide identifies tools and approaches that can support voluntary sustainability standards, certification schemes, and other market-led sustainability initiatives and their partners. It focuses on helping organizations know where to start and how to continue to better understand producer priorities, build trust, and support more meaningful participation in decisions. 

The guide is structured around five core strategic objectives essential for scaling reach and impact:

• identifying who to engage: understanding the full landscape of actors, including household members, youth, and marginalized producers typically excluded from formal networks.
• understanding priorities and constraints: grounding initiatives in the lived realities and capacities of producers to ensure support programs create enabling conditions rather than additional burdens.
• gathering input and building trust: implementing transparent, accessible, and responsive avenues for input that strengthen accountability between producers and market actors.
• supporting meaningful influence: creating opportunities for producers to co-design initiatives and shape decisions that affect their lives.
• sustaining relationships: moving toward long-term collaboration and learning, supported by frameworks for data equity and sovereignty.

Protecting and strengthening the well-being of workers and communities through the economy-wide transition away from fossil fuels is an incredibly complex challenge. Canada's federal sustainable jobs legislation sets up some key governance mechanisms to advance an equitable transition and create good, long-term jobs in low-carbon industries. Ensuring that policies are effectively progressing toward sustainable jobs goals and learning lessons to course-correct along the way are essential.

Climate change is impacting Belize's ecosystems and local communities, including those that depend on natural resources in and around protected areas, such as the Maya Forest Corridor and Glover's Reef Marine Reserve, for their livelihoods. 

These comic booklets follow the lives of two fictional protected area managers working in Belize's marine and terrestrial ecosystems. They highlight the impacts of climate change on ecosystems and communities and show how protected area managers support communities to adapt using climate adaptation strategies such as nature-based solutions. 

The booklets build on Belize's Climate Risk Profile, developed under the Climate Adaptation and Protected Areas Initiative, offering a practical guide to understanding climate impacts and how communities and protected areas are adapting. The content of the booklets was shaped through close collaboration, as well as invaluable insights and feedback from the initiative’s implementing partner, WCS Belize.

Every year, governments worldwide spend at least USD 1 trillion dollars on subsidies to fossil fuels. This spending puts a strain on government budgets, contributes to climate change and air pollution, and distorts the markets in favour of fossil fuels and against other, cleaner energy sources. 

As early as 2009, G20 leaders agreed to phase out “inefficient” fossil fuel subsidies over the medium term, and at COP 26, parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change called for phasing out “inefficient fossil fuel subsidies.” However, these commitments have not translated into tangible progress on subsidy reform. 

In response, COFFIS was launched at COP 28 in 2023 and has since seen 17 countries committing to work on fossil fuel subsidy reforms both collectively and through domestic action. In their Ministerial Statement launching the coalition, COFFIS member states committed to providing transparency on their fossil fuel subsidies by publishing an inventory.

Creating transparent and comprehensive inventories of fossil fuel subsidies is an important step toward reform. This guidance paper is intended to assist COFFIS members and other governments—including at the subnational level—in producing such an inventory. 

Countries should follow the following steps in compiling their inventory: 

• Step 1. Apply a whole-of-government approach
• Step 2. Work under a comprehensive subsidy scope and definition
• Step 3. Choose an appropriate method to measure subsidies
• Step 4. Consider evaluating subsidy measures from an environmental or otherwise broader socio-economic perspective
• Step 5. Plan for transparent and regular publication and update of the inventory 

For countries that do not yet have fossil fuel subsidy inventories, compiling one is a low-hanging fruit for improving transparency. Even a simple inventory can trigger important conversations, and an inventory based on the best practices can both unlock pathways for reform action plans and serve as an effective communication tool with different audiences.

In Dire Dawa, Ethiopia, flash floods, soil erosion, and water scarcity pose serious climate threats, especially for people living in flood-prone urban and rural areas. Through the SUNCASA initiative, the International Institute for Sustainable Development, the World Resources Institute (Africa), and local partners and communities are restoring the Dechatu River catchment with NbS to reduce flooding and erosion, enhance groundwater recharge, and expand agroforestry and urban green spaces. 

A new integrated cost-benefit analysis, which follows the Nature-Based Infrastructure Global Resource Centre's Sustainable Asset Valuation (SAVi) methodology, highlights the tangible impacts of these NbS interventions. By 2050, they are projected to

• save USD 1.35 million in avoided flood-related infrastructure damage,
• avoid USD 930,000 in climate-related health costs, and
• create nearly 6,900 jobs.

SUNCASA's NbS are strengthening resilience for over 220,000 people in one of Ethiopia's most climate-vulnerable regions. The infographics offer a visual overview of the long-term benefits of SUNCASA's NbS in Dire Dawa, with values presented in U.S. dollars and Ethiopian birrs. Read the full report here.

Despite long-standing global commitments, progress on reform has been slow, often hindered by political pressures, institutional fragmentation, and the absence of actionable roadmaps. This publication offers clear, practical guidance to translate commitments into implementation through robust fossil fuel subsidy phase-out plans. 

The guidance is grounded in country-specific realities and is structured around a three-step framework. Step 1 sets out how to establish a whole-of-government approach that ensures coherent planning, alignment with national priorities, and effective stakeholder engagement. Step 2 introduces a systematic method for categorizing subsidies by phase-out timelines—quick phase-out, phase-out with a robust strategy, and time-limited exemptions—supported by a decision tree that evaluates energy security, socio-economic and environmental impacts, and political feasibility. Step 3 outlines how to turn these classifications into concrete action plans with clear responsibilities, milestones, mitigation measures, and annual review cycles. 

This guidance equips governments with a structured, adaptable, and politically informed approach to make fossil fuel subsidy reform a success. It supports early wins, builds public trust, and helps avoid reversals by embedding reforms into stable policy processes.

This guide explains what conflict-sensitive NbS are and why they matter. It also provides practical tips for designing and implementing conflict-sensitive NbS in climate adaptation projects. 

This guide is a knowledge product of the Climate Adaptation and Protected Areas (CAPA) initiative.

This guide supports ACs and their partners in Cambodia to develop business plans that strengthen sustainability and resilience. 

ACs were created by Cambodia's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries to help farmers shift from traditional family-based farming to stronger, more competitive enterprises. While Cambodia has 1,200 cooperatives with 170,000 members, less than a fifth are performing well due to challenges such as limited leadership, financing, competitiveness, and climate risks. 

A business plan is a key tool to address these barriers. This template helps cooperatives and supporting organizations improve operations, integrate sustainability, and align with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations' guidelines on responsible investment and voluntary sustainability standards—unlocking new opportunities for markets and investment.

This plan is the result of profound reflection, collaborative discussions, and a shared commitment to ensuring IISD remains a leader in our field. 

It focuses on five key areas of sustainable development: climate, nature, social equity, sustainable economies, and international governance. Within these, we outline top priorities in specific sectors where we see the greatest potential to make an impact, allowing us to harness the full extent of our expertise and address the root causes of problems rather than only providing end-of-the-line solutions. There is plenty of overlap, but that’s intentional: complex challenges demand integrated, multidimensional solutions, and that's where IISD excels. 

Above all, this represents a commitment to action. It positions us to lead, innovate, and work together to create a world where people and the planet thrive.

Plastic pollution has emerged as one of the most pressing environmental crises of our time, affecting ecosystems, human health, and economies worldwide. Recognizing the urgency of this issue, countries at the United Nations Environment Assembly adopted a resolution in March 2022 to initiate negotiations on an international legally binding instrument to end plastic pollution, including in the marine environment. The resolution established an Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC), which has met multiple times to try to determine an agreement.

This guide serves as a resource for understanding the ongoing negotiations, key issues at stake, and roles of different stakeholders in shaping the future agreement. It provides insights into the political, scientific, economic, and legal dimensions of the treaty process, drawing from past multilateral environmental agreements and the lessons learned from the INC sessions. The guide is structured to help policy-makers and stakeholders navigate the complexities of these talks and contribute meaningfully to an effective treaty on plastic pollution.

Written in the intersessional period between INC-5.1 in Busan and INC-5.2 in Geneva, the report unpacks the history of the talks to end plastic pollution, reviews key parts of the instrument under discussion, and identifies stakeholders shaping the talks. Finally, it offers negotiating "tips and tricks" to help those at the final INC take these discussions over the finish line.