IDH, The Sustainable Trade Initiative

Proforest is one of the supporters to IDH in developing their VSA Compact model for jurisdictional approaches. The VSA Compact is a multi-stakeholder agreement, including local government, private sector and civil society organisation, to collaborate on improving sustainability across a jurisdictional sourcing area. Proforest helped to develop guidance on how to design a Compact, including guidance on the governance structure, the engagement and consultation of stakeholders and developing goals and interventions for each of the 4 impact themes of the VSA; these include Forest and Natural ecosystems, Labour, Land Tenure and Livelihoods. To ensure initiators of a Compact also integrate opportunities to address human rights issues by being involved landscape programmes, Proforest and IDH, in collaboration with LandScale, also developed a discussion paper presenting an overall framework for assessing and addressing human rights at landscape level.