GPSNR Working Groups Update: March 2021

The COVID-19 pandemic is impacting the entire natural rubber supply chain. It has triggered car and tire manufacturing companies to operate with a reduced workforce, or temporarily halt production plants altogether. Strict lockdown measures have caused a drastic fall in the sales of consumer tires across Europe. Global demand for natural rubber has dropped, the effects of which will be felt by the 6 million natural rubber smallholders in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Many smallholders live in poverty, depending on daily wages to feed their families. Their situations will only be exacerbated by the COVID-19 crisis. Already, the Association of Producers and Processing Plants of the State of São Paulo (APABOR) has estimated that for Brazil alone, the subsistence of around 100,000 natural rubber farmers and their direct relatives is at risk.

While COVID-19 exposes the vulnerabilities of smallholders, it also reveals the potential they have to be agents of change and drivers of transformation. The pandemic has reminded us of the connections between human health, resilient landscapes, economic stability and livelihoods; the post COVID-19 world is more likely to devote greater attention to tackling environmental, social and economic impacts of its many supply chains. Smallholders, who produce 85% of the world’s natural rubber supply, are thus key to advancing GPSNR’s vision of a fair, equitable and environmentally sound rubber value chain.

One of GPSNR’s major outcomes for this year has been welcoming our new smallholder members. As of today, a total of 27 smallholder members (with additions from Myanmar) have joined GPSNR. The inclusion of smallholders into the fabric of the Platform provides them the opportunity to drive the agenda for sustainable natural rubber and, in the long-term, realize the social, economic and environmental benefits that sustainability brings. 

We encourage GPSNR members to communicate this outcome through the communication channels of their respective organizations. To this end, we launched a quarterly Members’ Communication Toolkit which outlines the suggested key message and provides ready-to-use content for communicating the message. GPSNR Members may access the Members’ Communication Toolkit for Q2 2020 in the GPSNR Forum.  

More is being done to fully include these smallholders in the Working Groups and Executive Committee. The Smallholders Representation Working Group continues with its efforts in designing a programme for onboarding smallholders prior to the General Assembly. In the meantime, some of our new smallholder members are already actively involved in Working Group discussions. Additionally, having recognized the urgency to address the impacts of COVID-19 on smallholders, the Equity sub-Working Group is developing a position paper on the issue.

By James Chang Wen Jie, Michelin

In February 2022, the Global Platform for Sustainable Natural Rubber released its Theory of Change (ToC), a document which articulates how the platform aims to positively impact the supply chain and achieve its desired states.  As a representative of my company Michelin at the platform, I have been part of this intensive, fulfilling task for the last year.

While I had some previous experience with ToC frameworks for individual projects, this was the first time I was engaged in one at a multi stakeholder platform level. The major difference here, and one emblematic of the ‘GPSNR multi-stakeholder experience’, was that we needed to integrate as many perspectives and expertise as we could, from all of GPSNR’s working groups and member categories. After all, bringing this theory of change to life is a task that will eventually fall on every stakeholder represented in GPSNR. If we wanted a document that the platform could truly rally around, we needed a co-creation process built on inclusivity as well as accountability.

My fellow task team members Martin Hollands (BirdLife International) and James Laimos (Goodyear) can attest to the fact that the journey was hard work. Yet, over the two half-day platform workshops and numerous additional consultation sessions with working group chairs and interested members, the strength of the platform showed itself in the depth of insights provided during discussions, and in the rigor of the final document. I am confident we would not have arrived where we did without the unique mix of experiences and operating contexts that members had. As a representative of my organization, the exposure to a wide range of perspectives from all along the natural rubber value chain is also a valuable input to our own sustainability journey, alongside and in addition to GPSNR.

The most visible output of this work is this interactive web-document accessible on the GPSNR website. While it is an easy and simple introduction to our work, it is nonetheless a result of a rigorous and intensive process, which required the investment of many stakeholders (including many hours of hard deliberation by the task team!). This of course belies the question:

Does theory matter and was this time really worth it?

It’s a question the task team asked itself a number of times as well. However, my own journey in sustainability has taught me that while it is tempting to jump straight to action, issues on the ground are often more complex than they seem, and well-meaning actions can lead to unintended outcomes. We therefore not only need to know where we are going, but also need to map and understand the series of events or actions that will get us there. A theory of change exercise allows us to dig deep into the root causes of the current situation, leveraging on the experience and expertise we have across working groups and stakeholder categories to work on plans that tackle issues at their core.

Articulating the theory of change at this juncture in GPSNR’s journey also allows for a ‘stock take’ before the platform accelerates into implementation. The journey towards sustainability in the natural rubber supply chain is a complex one which requires a careful balance of environmental, social, and economic spheres. It also requires coordinating work on multiple action areas (i.e., the work of GPSNR’s many working groups) to make sure that our activities truly address identified root problems without any major gaps.

In fact, these conversations did end up identifying some gaps, and spurred us to explore solutions. For example, a member brought up the point that real impact across the world’s 6 million smallholders would mean that GPSNR would need some way to multiply its impact beyond farmers benefited through direct involvement in GPSNR or its capacity building programmes. Further conversation and the sharing of case studies from experiences in other commodities identified that a key intervention to tackle will be to empower networks of farmers that can promulgate good practices in, and beyond their communities.

As the world emerges from the aftermath of the pandemic and unprecedented supply chain disruptions, being clear on what we need to do to truly make an impact is more important than ever. I hope that interacting with GPSNR’s Theory of Change will give you a good idea of where we’re headed, and how we hope to get there!