From Strategy to Implementation: Next Steps for Capacity Building

Several challenges of sustainable natural rubber production were brought up and discussed among rubber farmers and GPSNR members, but front and foremost was the issue of livelihoods and future of labour. After the field visit and 3 days workshop, the rubber farmers both in Indonesia and Thailand agreed that to solve such issues, smallholders should be put at the center of the solution.  They agreed that including smallholders’ representatives in the new governance model is the way forward to achieve this.  As for the criteria of the organizations, apart from having a personnel with extensive knowledge around rubber from cultivation, transportation to processing, the farmers also said that it is important that any representing organization should have a democratic governance. The smallholders also pointed out to a few farmers from different regions that could directly represent smallholders in GPSNR.  A few organization names were also proposed which will then be followed up by Smallholders representation working group to ensure active engagement for further collaboration.

“I am happy to hear that the downstream of natural rubber users like tire makers wish to establish a direct relationship with the upstream natural rubber producers like us. Personally I believe that sustainable supply chain will work only when every actor in the chain work together to find potential solutions together.” said one rubber smallholder in Thailand. Smallholders also emphasised on the importance for engagement to be long term if results are to be achieved.

The dates for the last 3 smallholder workshops have been confirmed and will be held in Brazil (20 – 21 Nov), Cote d’Ivoire (26 – 28 Nov) and Vietnam (16 – 18 Dec) respectively. The aim of the workshops is to gain a better understanding of smallholders, how smallholders can be meaningfully represented within GPSNR and to further explore the future of sustainable natural rubber production from a smallholders perspective at local level.

We will keep you posted on our progress in our upcoming newsletters. Stay tuned !

The GPSNR Topic Talks webinar series is organised by the GPSNR Secretariat and presented by GPSNR members. The webinars cover several themes around sustainability and the global natural rubber supply chain.

The Topic Talks series continued on the 17th of March with Dr. Michael Steuwe from WWF US and Gerald Tan from HeveaConnect presenting on the Sumatran Rubber Pilot.

The Sumatran Rubber Pilot (SRP) is a voluntary, self-financed collaboration of rubber supply chain players and technical experts interested to facilitate the production and trade of transparent and sustainable natural rubber. The participating processing mills, tire makers, civil society organisations, technology providers and financial institutions have three major objectives:

• Demonstrate how rubber’s downstream can work together to make its upstream more sustainable.
• Identify, test, evaluate, and report on what it takes to achieve, and how to pay for transparent sustainable natural rubber supply chains.
• Develop “Proof of Concept” approaches from and for GPSNR discussions on policy requirements and implementation, transparency and traceability, capacity building, and shared responsibility.

Within a few months of the project launch in July 2020, SRP’s four rubber processing factories, managed by the Halcyon Agri and ITOCHU groups, had traced up to 1 year of rubber supplies to the village and/or sub-district of origin based on self-declarations by their supplying dealers. These approximate origins of the rubber sources were filtered through WWF Indonesia’s new environmental risk assessment and management tool which identifies High Conservation Value Areas and High Carbon Stock Forest for the whole island of Sumatra. The results allow processors and their respective downstream supply chains to focus their sustainability work with farmers on priority areas.

The SRP partners are enhancing dealer self-declarations with digital apps such as CropIn and Hamurni to assess farms’ potential environmental, social, equity, labour and legal issues accurately and to address them.

As GPSNR adopts principles and criteria for what constitutes transparent and sustainable rubber, the risk assessment algorithms will be adapted to flag compliant rubber accordingly. This is increasingly important for rubber’s downstream as companies’ Environmental, Social, Governance (ESG) impacts are becoming key evaluation criteria for investors and financiers who will demand the disclosure of the relevant information. In a parallel development, new supply chain laws will require major companies like the world’s car and tire makers to be responsible for the environmental and social impacts of their supply chains. The collection and analysis of detailed data on upstream supply chains will have to become an essential part of doing business and SRP partners are working to respond appropriately to these changes.

While continuing to focus on increasing the resolution of tracing rubber to its origin and collecting the respective data, SRP will now begin finding ways to best address the social, equity, labour, and legal issues that may have come up in supply chain assessments. 

The SRP is a voluntary, open and flexible platform of like minded partners interested in testing a diversity of approaches to achieve supply chain transparency and sustainability, and welcomes interested rubber supply chain actors to reach out and discuss how they might join the collaboration. GPSNR members interested in participating in the SRP should reach out to the GPSNR Secretariat to get involved in the project.