SAVE THE DATE – GPSNR General Assembly 2021

Assurance Model Task Force: As we approach the General Assembly in 2024 where the Assurance Model will be put up for voting, the taskforce is meeting regularly to discuss comments and incorporate comments from the second public consultation which is currently ongoing. This consultation focusses on feedback on Assessment Checklist, Assurance Protocol and Remediation Protocol, and will be accepting comments till 27 September 2024.  You can access the documents here and provide feedback here. 

Smallholders Representation and Capacity Building (SCB) Working Group: To operationalise projects with the funds collected from the Shared Investment Mechanism, the working group is setting up a project management subgroup to help in reviewing and monitoring projects under the SIM. The TOR is available here, and interested members should email cheewei@gpsrn.org by 11 October 2024. 

Additionally, Smallholders from all GPSNR member countries have nominated representatives for two positions following internal discussions within their countries: the Shared Investment Panel and the Project Management Subgroup. The final international voting is anticipated to conclude by the end of September 2024.

Shared Responsibility Working Group: The nominations for voting seats for the Shared Investment Panel are now open. Five voting seats will be allocated to manufacturers, while four voting seats will be reserved for non-manufacturers. To ensure equitable representation, each eligible member category will nominate one member to take up a voting seat.  All GPSNR member categories are currenting discussing this internally and will choose a nominee by October 2024. Please reach out to your EC representative for more details if you are not already in the discussions. 

Please note that nominees should ideally not submit capacity-building proposals this year, as they would need to recuse themselves from voting. If a category is unable to reach an agreement on a nominee, all seats will be opened for self-nominations from any member, regardless of category. In this case, the Executive Committee will vote to decide the final allocation of seats, which may result in multiple seats being held by members of the same category. 

Here are all their updates from the last month:

Strategy and Objectives Working Group

The working group has made some significant progress this month on its work around risk simply by bringing so many members together in a room! Apart from this, their priorities for the next phase have been finalised and include the assurance model, a strategy for government engagement and a risk assessment framework.

Smallholder Representation Working Group

After successful workshops in Ghana and Liberia earlier this month, the group is now focusing on reviewing the structure of smallholder membership on the Platform, and developing plans for the pilot agroforestry workshops for smallholders.

Policy Toolbox Working Group

This group is inviting members feedback on the transparent reporting roadmap, which you can take a look at here. Once feedback is incorporated into the roadmap, it will be presented to the Executive Committee as a resolution ahead of the 2022 General Assembly. They are also finalising the reporting guidance for all member categories, and developed implementation guidance for manufacturers and end user categories. Currently, their long yet important to-do also includes finalising the compliance panel operational guidance.

Capacity Building Working Group

The group has kicked off GPSNRs first capacity building project on the ground in Indonesia with Koltiva (funded by Pirelli and Goodyear), for which you can expect updates soon! As a continuation of their work from last month, they remain busy with the development of the Knowledge Sharing Platform and technical analysis of other IT platforms, and will release updates on more capacity building projects in June!

Shared Responsibility Working Group

The Shared Responsibility working group has received EC approval for the resolution on the Shared Responsibility framework! They will soon be submitting the finalised resolution, and operationalising next steps based on the framework.