The Rainforest Alliance is committed to measuring and assessing our impacts on the ground, so we can continuously improve the effectiveness of our certification program and landscape management work.
This page features information about the Rainforest Alliance's monitoring and evaluation work and links to related content and resources.
Learn more about how we measure, analyze, and communicate our impacts on livelihoods, human rights, biodiversity, and climate.
Read about planned and ongoing research studies and monitoring and evaluation of our landscape projects.
This page describes our approach to research partnerships and contains a list of priority research topics for interested researchers.
Evidensia provides easy access to credible research on the sustainability impacts of supply chain initiatives and tools, including certification.
This evaluation study, conducted by the Wageningen Economic Research and commissioned by the Rainforest Alliance, compared certified banana farms to similar non-certified farms in the region of Magdalena, one of Colombia’s main banana producing regions. The research found that wages and working conditions on certified farms are slightly better, that certified farms take more safety […]
Women cocoa farmers throughout the developing world face a host of barriers to achieving their potential. Such challenges include restrictive cultural practices, discriminatory laws, and a lack of access to land, education, as well as credit and markets. But research shows that empowering women in cocoa-growing communities leads to positive impacts on the well-being of […]
The UTZ hazelnut certification program was launched in 2014. This evaluation compares the situation of certified hazelnut producers in 2018 against a baseline taken at the start of the program in 2014. Between 2014 and 2018 the Hazelnuts certification program grew considerably. In 2018 it had over 4,300 farmers enrolled, members of 14 group-certificate holders, […]
Bananas as a commodity have a tumultuous history, particularly when it comes to labor practices and environmental degradation. While there have been many improvements over the last few decades, trade unions and NGOs continue to report concerns, including that low wages on plantations are insufficient for workers and their families to achieve a decent standard […]
This report provides a comprehensive assessment of the Rainforest Alliance certification program as evidenced by independent research, audit findings for certified farms and groups, and interviews with farmers and leading sustainability researchers. The theme of this Impacts Report – “Partnership, Learning, and Change” – highlights the Rainforest Alliance’s collaborative approach to tackling the most critical […]
This independent evaluation study assesses the strategies and needs of coffee certificate holders (CHs), businesses that implement the UTZ standard, in Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. The study aimed to understand the businesses’ experiences with UTZ implementation, the benefits they derived from UTZ, the challenges they faced to deepen engagement and how UTZ fits into the […]