Strong Governance for Credible Climate Action: What ISEAL Community Membership Means for the SBTi

Effective and credible sustainability systems depend on strong governance. Clear accountability and well-defined processes are essential to ensure decisions are made independently, transparently and in the public interest. Together, these foundations build trust in the standards that guide corporate climate action.

Year on year, the SBTi has systematically strengthened its governance to meet rising expectations, reinforce trust in science-based targets and respond to the rapidly evolving global landscape. Key steps include:

• Becoming an independent organization and registered charity, recognized by the Charity Commission for England and Wales, with a clearly defined target validation subsidiary.
• Establishing a legally constituted Board of Trustees, composed of experienced leaders and subject-matter experts.
• Implementing a publicly available Standard Operating Procedure for the Development of SBTi Standards, which sets out a rigorous, transparent, and inclusive process with formal opportunities for stakeholder input and clear decision-making parameters for technical content.
• Appointing an independent Technical Council, which oversees and approves normative technical developments, and which operates in the public interest.

Each of these developments reinforce the SBTi’s independence, impartiality, and accountability, and support its role as a trusted driver of ambitious, science-based corporate climate action.

Upholding principles

Strong governance is not a one-time achievement. It requires continuous learning, adaptation, and improvement. The SBTi’s governance structure is designed to translate established principles into day-to-day best practice.

Collaboration and multi-stakeholder engagement

Collaboration is a key tenet of the SBTi’s governance system. A structured and publicly documented standard development process ensures that any interested or affected party, e.g. companies, academics, civil society organizations and other experts, has the opportunity to be involved throughout the lifecycle of SBTi’s Standards. This includes public consultations, expert working groups, pilot testing, and evidence-based decision-making by the Technical Council. This approach supports learning, system improvement, and alignment with best practice while upholding the SBTi’s charitable purpose, mission, and vision.

Continuous improvement and measurable impact

The SBTi publicly reports on companies with commitments and targets through tools like the Target Dashboard. Through the ongoing revision of the Corporate Net-Zero Standard Version 2, the SBTi is also exploring approaches to incentivize continuous improvements and support more consistent measurement and disclosure of progress over time.

Impartiality and independence

Impartiality and independence are safeguarded through clear decision-making protocols, governance roles, and oversight. In particular, the independent Technical Council oversees and approves normative technical developments, helping ensure that technical decisions are consistent and made in the public interest, and safeguarding the integrity of SBTi Standards. All Technical Council minutes are available on the website.

Transparency, truthfulness, and reliability

The SBTi publicly documents how its system operates and what participation in the SBTi represents, including its governance, standard development processes, and key decisions. Consistent application of defined procedures, independent oversight, and structural separation between standards development and validation services help ensure the SBTi system operates in a robust, predictable, and credible way over time. The SBTi welcomes feedback from stakeholders at any time through feedback forms available across the website on project pages, and hosts a transparent, public process for submitting complaints and concerns.

Value creation

The SBTi provides a globally recognized, science-based framework that enables companies to set credible science-based targets. Through its Standards, guidance, and tools, the SBTi supports the integration of climate considerations into business strategy, risk management and long-term planning. Companies have reported numerous benefits as a result of using the SBTi’s Standards and tools to set targets, spanning from improved investor relations, to better financing terms, and more alignment with suppliers.

What ISEAL Community Membership means for the SBTi

As part of its evolution into a formal standard setter, the SBTi has now been approved as an ISEAL Community Member. ISEAL is a global membership organization that defines and promotes good practices for sustainability systems and standards. Its work supports innovation, peer learning and collaboration to enhance the effectiveness and impact of efforts to address critical global challenges, including climate change.

Approval as an ISEAL Community Member demonstrates the SBTi’s commitment to continuous improvement and ISEAL Credibility Principles for sustainability systems. As an ISEAL Community Member, the SBTi commits to improving its systems and impacts through learning and innovation; collaborating with stakeholders and peers; and being transparent and truthful about how its systems operate and how impact is measured. 

For the SBTi, ISEAL Community Membership provides a clear, credible, and well-established pathway for continued system strengthening over time. It supports ongoing participation in learning, collaboration and innovation activities that help ensure the SBTi system continues to evolve in line with best practice.

The SBTi’s work to further improve its governance is not a fixed goal. It is an ongoing commitment to continued evolution, independence, transparency, and accountability on behalf of the public interest. ISEAL Community Membership marks an important step in the SBTi’s journey as a formal standard-setting organization, and signals dedication to credible, robust, and trusted science-based standards to drive corporate climate action at scale.