The purpose of this roundtable is to explore the opportunities for the private sector to accelerate sector transformation in forest-risk commodities, particularly through national and subnational jurisdictional and landscape approaches and by influencing national production standards and financial incentives.
Many major producers and buyers of agricultural commodities have made ambitious commitments to eliminate deforestation from their supply chains by 2020. It is now clear that even if they meet their own commitments, deforestation will continue and many of the other fundamental underlying environmental and social challenges will also remain. Therefore, companies are increasingly thinking about how they can contribute to wider, sector transformation beyond even their own supply chains – moving from “silo thinking” to “systems thinking”.
GEF has funded a major international programme (the Good Growth Partnership) to take an integrated approach to sector transformation across production, demand and finance in beef, palm oil and soy to be a catalyst for sector transformation. The work is currently focused on work in Brazil, Indonesia, Paraguay and Liberia. In the next round of funding (GEF 7), the intention is to scale and expand this work globally.
This roundtable provides an opportunity for producers and buyers of forest-risk agricultural commodities to share ideas on how future donor funding can be best aligned with private sector approaches to sustainable sourcing and sector transformation. The event is an important opportunity for the private sector to provide input directly to the senior leadership of the GEF on their recent allocation of $430 million towards a new Food, Land Use and Restoration program.