Lend your voice to define what elements should sustainability schemes in the coffee sector encompass to be considered credible and effective: GCP public consultation on the revision of the Equivalence Mechanism.
GCP invites all interested stakeholders to participate in the Equivalence Mechanism Revision and contribute to ensuring the Operational Criteria in the EM reflect good practice and user’s expectations of credible schemes.
The EM assesses whether a sustainability scheme meets the Coffee SR Code plus a set of Operational Criteria that ensure sustainability schemes have a credible and effective system for implementation. Operational Criteria include five topics: governance, standard-setting, assurance, data quality, and claims. Following the publication of the Coffee SR Code in October 2021, this revision of the Equivalence Mechanism focuses on the operational criteria.
The public consultation will run until 20 April 2022, with the publication of the revised version expected in Q3 2022. Once a new version of the Equivalence Mechanism is published, all the sustainability schemes that have been recognized by GCP to be equivalent to the Baseline Coffee Code either 3rd party, or 2nd party will be re-assessed.
Why is this work important?
GCP chats to Whitney Kakos of Keurig Dr Pepper on why the Equivalence Mechanism matters.
GCP’s Gelkha Buitrago chats to Stefan Canz of Nestlé to better understand how the mechanism can be used.
More about the Revision
The revision is being guided by the GCP Technical Committee and the Advisory Task Force. It includes actors from all segments of the coffee supply chain, from producers to roasters and supporting organizations like NGOs. The consultation will look at the elements that define a credible sustainability scheme in terms of governance, standard-setting, assurance, data and claims. For this revision GCP is in particular seeking input from organizations that have developed a sustainability scheme, companies that use sustainability schemes for their responsible/sustainable sourcing strategies and actors in the sector who are active in the area of responsible/sustainable sourcing.
Do you want to know more? Have a look at the project description here.
The public consultation runs from 16 March 2022 until 20 April 2022.
How can I share my views?
Provide your input via our online survey, or schedule a one-to-one session with us. In this link you find all the information about the consultation. Lend your voice and contribute advancing the foundations for sustainability in the coffee sector.
