GPSNR Working Groups Update: December 2020

Strategy and Objectives Working Group: ASI finished the initial draft of the Assurance Model proposal and presented it to Working Group (WG) members in December for their feedback. To gather more specific insights, feedback calls were arranged with various categories. Based on the feedback received, ASI plans to revise the draft and present it for further discussion at the February in-person meetings.

Smallholders Representation and Capacity Building (SCB) Working Group: Smallholder representatives attended the 5th Sustainable Rubber Plantation and International Conference in Buriram, Thailand, from December 13-15, 2023, to discuss sustainable practices. A consultation on the assurance model was held on January 25, 2024. Both SNV-Proforest’s Indonesia GAP and SNV-IRRI’s Disease Fighting project concluded in December 2023, with final reports submitted. Koltiva’s Indonesia GAP project, extended until September 2024, received additional funding from Goodyear. 

The Thailand agroforestry project signed a supplemental agreement for more projects. Southland and Sri Trang joined the Thailand GAP project as processors, with training material under review. 

The Digital Knowledge Sharing Platform (KSP) task force completed its user acceptance test, releasing the Rubber Wiki app on the Google Play Store. Koltiva was awarded the third phase of KSP for content development with the task force’s content development phase kicking off on January 25, 2024.

Continental pledged funds for capacity-building in Cote d’Ivoire. The Cote d’Ivoire subgroup will discuss new Continental-funded projects.

Two SCB WG meetings were scheduled on December 26 and 31 for final presentations and updates on various projects, including endorsements. The Thailand Agroforestry project plans training for late January 2024, and the Thailand GAP project aims to start training in late January or February 2024. The Income Diversification and Rubber Agroforestry task force is planning its third agroforestry workshop in Liberia from May 22-24, 2024.

Shared Responsibility Working Group: The Working Group is initiating initial steps to explore ways to develop a value transfer mechanism in GPSNR. The Secretariat has discussed possible paths with the co-chair, who will present these plans to the EC in the near future.

Executive Committee: The EC convened for an in-person strategy planning session in Paris, where they identified and outlined key strategic priorities in a Gantt chart. he Secretariat, along with members and WGs, will collaborate to implement these strategic priorities set forth by the EC.

Here are all their updates from the last month:

Strategy and Objectives Working Group

After conducting a gap analysis of GPSNR’s current activities based on the platform’s Theory of Change, the strategy and objectives working group is working on a strategy to address the gaps found, which they will soon present to the Executive Committee. The gaps found include government engagement and the enhancing the enablers mentioned in the Theory of Change. You can read the Theory of Change here. At the same time, the risk sub working group continues to develop GPSNR’s approach to evaluating and mitigating risk.

Smallholder Representation Working Group

Having onboarded 23 new smallholders into the platform this month, the working group continues to build on other aspects of its scope, including planning workshops for Liberia, Ghana and Malaysia, developing country-specific smallholder engagement activities with smallholders and Country Champions and appointing a consultant to develop the smallholder policy equivalent.

Policy Toolbox Working Group

This group is continuing discussions among its three subgroups: Transparent reporting roadmap, Implementation Guidance and RR Guidance & Tools. In the coming months, they will finalise guidance for the reporting requirements and share it with members.

Capacity Building Working Group

The group is currently busy in the development of GPSNR’s knowledge sharing platform, which includes smallholder interviews, compiling and assessing responses of member surveys and holding focus group discussions in May 2022. At the same time, they are working on advancing Capacity Building plans for Indonesia, Thailand and Côte d’Ivoire. For capacity building efforts in Indonesia, the group has formed two Task Forces under the Indonesia Subgroup to advance Budwood Garden and Disease Fighting strategies.

Shared Responsibility Working Group

The Shared Responsibility has completed a draft of Shared Responsibility Framework and presented it to the membership at two member consultation webinars. In case you missed these, you can watch the recordings here. It has also opened the draft framework to member feedback till 2nd May. Take a look at the framework here and fill in your inputs here.