During Grüne Woche (Green Week) in Berlin, Endeva is organizing a practitioner workshop “Gaming towards the future of sustainability standards” on January 22, 2019, from 10:00 till 17:00. Using a game on palm oil, developed by its partners from InSpire, Endeva will explore why smallholders do not benefit enough from standards today, and how this could be changed in the future. 

Sustainability standards have improved transparency and good practices in supply chain over the past 40 years. Yet, they have arguably done little to improve the lot of poor people within these supply chains. For example , while 22% of cocoa is certified as sustainable today, cocoa farmers still remain in poverty In Cote d’Ivoire, 78% of fair-trade certified cocoa farmers earn less than a living income. The same pattern can be observed across countries and value chains.

Boardgame

The workshop is aimed at practitioners in agriculture, agribusiness and trade from companies as well as NGOs and donor organizations. During the workshop, organized by Endeva and using a board game developed by InSpire (a research-based spin-off of ETH Zürich), the following questions will be explored:

• Why are increased prices of certified products not translating into higher farmer incomes?
• What are the incentives farmers face, and what traps them in poverty?
• How can we redesign incentives for all players to achieve the desired outcomes?
• Who can do what to implement the future of sustainability standards?

Agenda

10:00 - 12:30
Playing the game and personal explorations

13:30 - 16:00
Debriefing about the lessons learnt from the game and prototyping collectively actions for change

16:00  – 17:00
Tasting Angelique’s coffee, grown and roasted by a woman cooperative in Rwanda, a new model of social contracting. Talk by Xaver Kitzinger, Founder of the social contracting.