GPSNR Working Groups Update: February 2021

Share This Post

Strategy and Objectives Working Group

Further to the receipt of several submissions in response to the Environmental Risk Study request for Proposals, the Strategy and Objectives Working Group has now  selected the Proforest team, together with consultant Liza Murphy, to conduct the environmental risk study. The team will be reaching out to GPSNR members to have initial scoping conversations in support of the study.

The Equity Sub-Working Group has drafted a summary for the Living Income studies undertaken in Thailand and Indonesia next year. Pending approval from the Sub-Working Group and S&O Working Group Members, the summary will be released to all GPSNR members and a webinar will be held to present the responses.

Representatives from each of the platform’s other Working Groups have started to draft their Working Group’s Theory of Change. At the end of the month, the Strategy and Objectives Working Group will consolidate this information and develop a platform-wide Theory of Change.

‘Policy Toolbox’ Working Group

The Policy Toolbox Working group has received initial proposals for the development of Implementation Guidance request for proposals (RFP) and will be meeting to discuss and select a proposal.

The Working Group will be setting up focus groups for category members to participate in the development of the implementation guidance. The call to join will be in the newsletter and also in the other article to be published.

In the next weeks, the Working Group will also be developing a new RFP for a consultant to help refine the reporting requirements based on the BRR pilot done last year. The consultant will work to bring the questions into alignment with other reporting systems (e.g. CDP and Ecovadis) and ensure that the questions are phrased in a suitable manner.

‘Capacity Building’ Working Group

The Capacity Building Working Group conducted a webinar to share about the national CB strategies and recruit members to the national sub-groups.

‘Traceability and Transparency’ Working Group

The ‘Traceability and Transparency’ Working Group has now set up 3 sub-groups that will focus on different tasks: refining the WG theory of change, developing a definition of traceability and minimum acceptable levels of traceability, and developing a data collection process with Policy Toolbox Working Group members.

Smallholder Representation Working Group

The Smallholder Representation Working Group has completed logistical organization of the Smallholders caucus call, that will happen tomorrow, 25th February. The caucus call will allow sharing and collaboration among smallholders across national lines.

More To Explore

Natural Rubber Supply Chain comes together to build unique sustainability assurance benchmark

PRESS RELEASE

Natural Rubber Supply Chain comes together to build unique sustainability assurance benchmark 

Singapore, 20 June 2024: Members of the Global Platform for Sustainable Natural Rubber (GPSNR), who represent almost 60% of the value chain, have agreed on an industry wide assurance system in an Extraordinary General Assembly held yesterday. Through this agreement, the natural rubber industry now has a standardized stage-by-stage process through which companies can commit to, implement and verify strong sustainability standards and practices in their operations.

GPSNR members’ stage-by-stage progression towards verified sustainability assurance 

The Assurance system is currently being piloted by some volunteer manufacturers and processors until August 2024. Concurrently, three of its four mandatory elements have also been put up on a public consultation to seek comments and additional inputs that will help finetune the different aspects of the model. The feedback collected via the pilots and the public consultation will be integrated into the assurance model and put up for members’ review at the Annual General Assembly in October 2024. By 2025, all GPSNR members will be using this model in their operations. 

The model covers four mandatory elements – an Assurance Assessment checklist which will spell out the minimum requirements that members will have to meet on all aspects of the GPSNR policy framework, an Assurance Protocol which will provide guidelines to external assessors, a Remediation Protocol that includes actions and timelines to close the gaps identified by the assessors and a Members Journey or broad timeline to achieve these requirements.  Additionally, the model also includes supplementary tools that will support members in putting the assurance model into practice, like a due diligence framework and national risk assessments, amongst others.

‘’Having a system that can verify and cross check the implementation of our members’ commitments has always been our overarching goal at GPSNR. With the voting in of the Assurance Model structure, our members have demonstrated their intent to deliver on their sustainability promises. I am especially proud of the multistakeholder nature in which the assurance model has been agreed on, keeping in mind the practical position of each member category.’’ said Stefano Savi, GPSNR’s Platform Director.

GPSNR’s membership is meeting next week in Singapore to iron out the details of the minimum requirements spelt out in the Assurance Model checklist, the nature of the claims that can be made, the feedback from the pilots and the assurance protocol for third party assessors.

END

About GPSNR: 

GPSNR is an international membership driven platform set up to define sustainability for the natural rubber value chain. It brings together various stakeholders to a common ground based on fairness, equity and environmental sustainability. More on sustainablenaturalrubber.org

For more information, please contact:

Bani Bains

Communications Manager

Email: bani.bains@gpsnr.org

Ph: +65 97268165

GPSNR Secretariat June 20, 2024
News

Strategy and Objectives Working Group Update – November 2019

Desired state V1-0 and Theory of Change documents were circulated among Strategy & Objectives Working Group in November. Comments from the members were consolidated and will be responded to in the next version.  Theory of Change will be finalized and submitted to the Executive Committee in order to be approved at the General Assembly in March 2020.

Strategy 1 ‘Policy Toolbox’ Working Group primarily agreed on the scope of work. The desired state V1-0 serves as a baseline document which will be cross referenced with Accountability Framework initiative in order to come up with policy framework that will be applicable to GPSNR members.  The drafters volunteers will present the first draft of a policy framework to the working group members in December 2019.

Strategy 2 ‘Capacity Building’ Working Group members worked on defining priority geographical areas based on current production volume and emerging trend of natural rubber production.  The existing stakeholders and capacity building activities in those countries are being identified in order to design the plan for GPSNR on capacity building.

Strategy 3 ‘Traceability and Transparency’ Working Group members were requested to list down traceability tools that are currently in use and/or traceability tools that could be potentially used for natural rubber supply chain.  In December they will analyze the attributes of each tool to see the compatibility and applicability for transparency and risk assessment.

All the 3 working groups including Strategy & Objectives and Smallholders Representation Working Group members are given access to GPSNR discussion forum which aims to increase transparency and synergy among the working groups. You will be able to see the discussions and the documents of all the working groups but will be able to contribute only to the groups you signed up for.  Please contact nigel@gpsnr.org for your log-in credentials.

GPSNR Staff November 21, 2019
Scroll to Top