The September UNTP meetings covered a range of updates and discussions on governance, technical progress, and sector engagement across the UNTP community. Here's the wrap-up.
What's Changing
- UNECE Takes the Mic
The UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) will now coordinate the UNTP general update meetings. Expect larger, monthly forums held in EU time zones with invitations extended to other UN agencies, IGOs like ISO, and national governments. In short: the room's about to get bigger.
- Taxonomy Gets a Promotion
A new version of the UNTP sustainability topic taxonomy is in development. It will make the UNTP spec more compatible with ESG reporting frameworks like SASB and ESRS, and help implementers roll up verifiable claims to corporate disclosures.
- Worker Voice Gains Ground
The community backed the idea that not all performance evidence should come from the top down. Bottom-up, "worker voice" approaches — like those used by Open Supply Hub and Wikirate — could provide complementary, verifiable inputs for human welfare claims in the UNTP ecosystem.
Other Highlights
- General meetings may soon swell to 100–200 participants
That's a sign of increasing institutional attention and a reason to improve how working group outputs are surfaced and shared.
- Market Authorities Want Full Data
EU surveillance authorities are asking for full digital product passport (DPP) bodies, not just IDs. UNTP's architecture supports this shift, allowing decentralised, data-driven compliance without requiring centralised databases.
- Use Cases
From tracking subsidies and circularity schemes to enabling livestock microcredit and verifying Scope 3 emissions, the ecosystem is hungry for pilots. A master spreadsheet of proposed applications is in the works.
- Tech Update Incoming
The newly launched Technical Working Group is working to finalise v0.7 of the spec. Expect progress on identity resolvers, decentralised access control, and rules for interpreting transparency graphs.
Want to contribute?
Feedback is open on the sustainability vocabulary draft. If you have relevant expertise on that front or would like to participate in pilots, working groups, or sector extensions, you're welcome to join the conversation on UNTP Slack or GitHub. Contributions—whether technical, operational, or business-focused—are useful as the project continues to scale. More on the UNTP site.