Smallholders Representation Working Group Update – July 2019

In January 2019, interested stakeholders came together in Singapore to discuss on the governance and objectives of the platform. Participants attending the workshop unanimously agreed that to bring about a change, work must be done to ensure smallholder inclusivity within the platform. In order to achieve this, the Smallholders Representation Working Group was created and assigned the main responsibility of coordinating actions to identify and secure adequate smallholder representation within the GPSNR governance.

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Since its establishment a few months ago, the Smallholders Representation Working Group has been working consistently and collectively to accomplish its mission. The group has been actively involved in understanding, strategizing and testing the methods by which the platform can ensure adequate and relevant smallholder inclusion. 

In its work to date, the group has selected 11 Working Group members as “Country Champions” who have extensive regional knowledge regarding the rubber supply chain. These members have been in charge of conducting interviews of various smallholder associations and organizations in their assigned country or region. The Working Group also refers to these “Country Champions” as “GPSNR Ambassadors” because of the role they play in creating awareness about the platform. In the past few months, they have helped promote the platform internationally, specifically in Natural Rubber producing countries, by interacting with several organizations, companies and government authorities in different regions of the world. This in turn has helped create curiosity and interest regarding the platform with local stakeholders and in the international rubber community.  

To further this process, the Working Group is currently planning on organizing a series of workshops in various rubber producing regions of the world, including Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam in Asia Pacific, Brazil in Latin America and Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana and Liberia in Africa. The objective of these workshops will be to understand the local needs and motivations of smallholders and onboard organizations representing  smallholders to join the platform. The Working Group agreed these workshops will be a chance to facilitate an open and constructive discussion between the participants, including smallholders, smallholder representatives and other rubber stakeholders. By organizing multiple workshops in different regions of the world, the Working Group is trying to ensure appropriate coverage of the vast and diverse global natural rubber supply chain.  

Through these workshops and the onboarding work done by the Country Champions, the group will be able to identify relevant smallholder representatives, in view of onboarding them as GPSNR members, to ensure smallholders representation in the GPSNR governance is achieved by the next General Assembly in March 2020.

It has been encouraging to see volunteer members of the Working Group actively participate and contribute to fulfill the tasks and responsibilities assigned to the team. Going forward, the Working Group Co-chair expects more involvement of the members as the group implements its developed action plan of organizing regular events like the regional workshops aimed at the betterment of Rubber Smallholders.

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In favour of disagreement

Why conflict is crucial for meaningful sustainability initiatives

Aidan Mock, Impacts and Assurance Manager

Since joining the Global Platform for Sustainable Natural Rubber in July 2020, I have spent about 3,000 hours working for the organization. Malcolm Gladwell popularized the controversial idea that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at something which means that I still have a long way to go. Reflecting on these two numbers at the end of last year, I started to wonder how much time it takes GPSNR as a whole to demonstrate progress. I was most curious about our brand new Reporting Requirements (RRs) which were approved at the General Assembly last year. The RRs will ensure that all GPSNR members have standardised sustainability data which can be tracked, monitored, and analysed to meet our goals on sustainability and equity. Needless to say, this is a crucial piece of work for the global rubber industry.

 In June 2021, ZSL conducted 1.5-hour long focus group calls with each stakeholder category within GPSNR on the RRs. On average a total of 72 work hours were spent on this segment alone, with 12 people attending each of the four calls (12 x 4 x 1.5). In July, the Working Group convened its first meeting to discuss the proposed RRs in detail,  resulting in another 43.5 work hours spent on the RRs. 

The truly difficult months were October and November, where members met almost daily. An average of 19 people joined each of the 22 calls, which lasted about 1 hour and 45 minutes each time. In these two months, members spent a staggering 750 work hours discussing and negotiating the questions. 

By the time Reporting Requirements were sent out for General Assembly vote, GPSNR members had spent more than a thousand hours discussing the RRs at the working group level. The actual number is likely higher as I didn’t include the time spent in category-specific meetings, executive committee discussions, and meetings that ran over their intended time limit. The time taken to complete the RRs eventually amounted to a third of the time that I’ve been working at GPSNR.

Image 2: A screenshot of the tabulation on hours spent discussing the RRs

With members all across the world, these meetings meant sacrificing hundreds of hours of family dinners, early morning sleep, and mid-afternoon siestas! Yet members made the choice to show up for meetings day-after-day, demonstrating remarkable commitment to the mission of GPSNR.

From an outside perspective, one thousand work hours of meetings were needed to create 100 questions, which means we had a progress rate of 10 work hours per question! Sceptics of GPSNR would be quick to point out this “slow progress”, and I will admit that there are faster ways to formulate a hundred questions. However, if you want to get more than 100 members across different stakeholder categories to agree on reporting questions for the entire industry, this is the fastest that it can go. I observed something similar at a grand scale at the COP 26 negotiations in Glasgow in October. Parties spent hours discussing the choice of wording in key phrases and some even used valuable time to simply express disagreement with the text. 

If we are to achieve multi-stakeholder progress, we must adopt the same philosophy and spend time listening to the concerns and disagreements of all parties before we collaboratively develop  solutions to address these concerns. This process of listening to each other and finding solutions will take time, maybe even a thousand hours, but this is the fastest and most thorough way to do it while still honouring the multi-stakeholder principles of the platform.

One of our greatest strengths at GPSNR is that members can disagree with each other openly. I believe that disagreement and healthy negotiation is a sign of a diverse membership that trusts each other to listen and address their concerns. Being able to work towards solutions across “category lines” is also a sign that GPSNR is maturing as we approach our 10,000 work hours of collective practice. I hope we can carry forward this momentum and growth into the new year. I hope we continue to treat the disagreements that will inevitably arise as opportunities to listen, demonstrate empathy, and build trust. I hope we come to see the multi-stakeholder enterprise as one that is conflicting by design and slow by default.

This year, we will work to define the Implementation Guidance and the Transparency Roadmap for the reporting requirements and I expect these topics to involve extensive discussions and quite possibly extensive disagreement. For members already part of this work, I look forward to speaking with you on our calls. If you are not yet part of these discussions but feel  excited by the idea , feel free to write to us and we will ensure that you are included in the meetings that are soon to follow.

See you on a Zoom call soon!

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Capacity Building for Natural Rubber Smallholders

The regional sub-Groups of the Capacity Building Working Group continue to advance discussions on developing country-specific capacity building goals and strategies for Indonesia, Thailand, Côte d’Ivoire and Myanmar. 

The sub-Groups have made progress in identifying three issues of priority per country. Focusing on these issues, the sub-Groups have pinpointed the drivers or causes of these issues, as well as developed priority actions to address them. Having already established who the existing stakeholders conducting on-the-ground capacity building projects are, the next step is to approach identified local agencies to discuss possible collaboration and partnership. 

The Capacity Building Working Group is developing a budget estimate that would provide a more comprehensive overview of the resources involved in carrying out the planned capacity building initiatives.

The members of the Working Group recognize the importance of involving smallholders and government agencies in the process of developing these capacity building plans, and are working towards engaging these parties in the discussion.

Meanwhile, the Smallholders Representation Working Group continues to finetune the onboarding programme for smallholders prior to the General Assembly 2020. A sub-Group has also been formed to consider the issue of financial support for smallholder participation at subsequent General Assembly meetings. 

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