Certified supply chains in Côte d'Ivoire
With the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) International
In April 2023, LEAF facilitated a three-day workshop for the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) to launch the development process of interim forest management standards in Côte d’Ivoire.
About forty participants, mostly from the rubber sector as well as representatives of public institutions and civil society, were invited to learn about the FSC certification and the standard development process and to exchange with FSC and the technical working group developing the interim standard (Preferred by Nature, Bureau Veritas, SCS) in an interactive and participatory format, alternating between consultation phases and theoretical presentations.
We used the CoPalCam game as a basis to discuss about the constraints experienced by small producers and their interactions with the other actors in the supply chain. While the CoPalCam game was originally designed for the palm oil supply chain, the stakeholders from the rubber supply chain easily translated the experiences from the game into their own contexts. After a classical session on the first day, we used the game to introduce, in a playful, dynamic and participatory way, a dialogue with a certification body played by an FSC agent who simulated an audit for prospective certification.
Synergies between theory and practice through the game facilitated understanding of the complex topic.
The workshop allowed participants to interact actively and ask the targeted questions to FSC in the context of a possible future collaboration, to co-create a stakeholder mapping to guide stakeholder engagement througout the process and to clarify the ins and outs of the new standard under development.
Key learnings for us were:
- the game, even if it did not represent directly the rubber supply chain, worked very well as a proxy and helped participants to have a more tangible debate on certification standards
- the dynamism generated by the game translated into a more engaging atmosphere throughout the workshop
- the interactive format of the workshop allowed to create a strong connivance between the participants which helped during the discussions
To summarize it in the words of two participants:
“I was impressed by the strong commitment and motivation of the participants during the game, how seriously this exercise was taken”
“The game format puts us in control of the decisions we make, we are no longer just participants but actors in the process.”
Story written by: Tamara Pascutto, edited by: LEAF
Photo credits: LEAF
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