The GCP Board, which represents our broad multi-stakeholder membership, is hard at work guiding the membership association’s new strategy planning and execution: GCP 2.0. The GCP Board convened for its second meeting this year on the 5th and 6th of July, 2022.
Key agenda items and decisions included:
- Welcome! The Board welcomed Ric Rhinehart (Strategic Advisor, IDH, additional seat) as newly appointed Board member and appointed Teddy Esteve (Chief Carbon Officer, Ecom) as new Board member representing coffee trade.
- Farewell The Board and ED thanked Trishul Mandana, outgoing Board member, for his valuable contributions during his tenure. Click [here] to access the interview between GCP Board Chair, Carlos Brando and Mr Mandana about his time with GCP.
- The Membership Committee proposed principles for participation in Collective Action Initiatives to motivate non-members to join the association. Based on Board feedback, these principles will now be refined
- The Finance Committee presented an update on financials (Jan-May 2022). Next steps include assessment of options to broaden revenue streams for GCP going forward beyond earned income and grants.
- The Technical Committee presented revised Equivalence Mechanism (EM) version 2.0 to the Board for approval.
The EM revision started in October 2021 and was guided by the GCP Technical Committee and Advisory Task Force. It also included a public consultation with participation of over 50 stakeholders and a beta-testing exercise with six companies/organizations. Main changes between version 1.0 and 2.0. include the revision of the claims about the GCP recognition, additional transparency required from all schemes that seek recognition, addition of the governance and standard-setting sections in the Operational Criteria.
The proposal includes a transition time of 12 months as of publication of the revised EM 2.0 in Q4, 2022. As well as collaboration with the International Trade Center for implementation (assessment of schemes) while GCP retains ultimate decision.
The Board approved the revised EM 2.0 along with the transition time of 12 month and ITC collaboration for implementation.
- New strategy GCP 2.0: Updates were presented on the execution of the GCP 2.0 Strategy and Business Plan, including status of 2.0 Country Plans development, Scorecard including capacity index, Partner Ecosystem, Financial Projections, Seed Capital. The Board provided feedback and approved the next steps, including the activation of the Board Strategy Group.
Next steps include advancing the capacity index by targeting organizational development per country; assisting countries to further develop 2.0 Country Plans with local stakeholder input and connected with GCP Member priorities; raising seed funding and accelerating GCP Membership drive, and starting deployment of first 2.0 initiatives.
- Partnerships & Fundraising: Two key partnerships were celebrated:
A new cooperation with Partnerships for Forests (P4F) focuses on East Africa and explores the nexus between farmers’ prosperity/living income and regenerative agriculture/climate resilience and the next phase of the strategic partnership with IDH (The Sustainable Trade Initiative) until 2025 was introduced.
- Deep-Dive Kenya: George Watene, GCP Program Manager Kenya, presented a progress update of the Kenya Coffee Platform, including key activities, partnerships, priorities, challenges and opportunities.
He highlighted the role of the platform being the voice of coffee in Kenya. The KCP was launched in 2018 and is governed by a National Steering Committee. KCP has developd key knowledge products, including the Kenyan Coffee Manual which is being used by public and private extension services for farmer training. Current activities include the work with GCP and giz on Living Income benchmark, participating in the Rainforest Mount Kenya Sustainable Landscapes and Livelihoods Program, the G25 Africa Coffee Summit, 2nd National Agricultural Summit.
Priorities of KCP include increasing efficiency of sustainable coffee production at farm & factory level, productivity and quality while saving costs. Next steps include reviewing the strategic plan and developing a national roadmap to achieve the KCP strategic plan and GCP 2.0 related objectives.
