Speaker 1: Hi, my name is Amy Rosillo of LISSE Consulting. I'm an independent external evaluator commissioned by Lonsucre to do an external review of the production standard revision process. First, I want to give you a quick summary of what we're going to go over, the process, then the findings, recommendations, and some next steps. The background and objectives of this were a four-week review of the Lonsucre production standard revision process to mainly identify some opportunities for improvement, capture key learnings for going forward, and recommendations. The focus is on looking forward. We're not looking backwards to find blame. We're looking backwards for lessons learned, for improving going forward. The overview of the methodology was a combination of secondary research, of looking at existing documents, a review of the ICL gap analysis, and internal and confidential notes. This was supplemented with primary research. Interviews did 10 deep dives with stakeholders across geographies and stakeholder types, as well as a broader survey that was open through social media to anyone who wanted to participate. And we had 50 fully completed surveys, so a lot of good information in that. So I just want to give a quick highlight of who participated in the survey and what they thought. Again, very high level. Of the 50 that completed, 70% of them, no surprise, were members. About 60% of them were industry along the value chain, so that was quite good. 66% of the respondents were from South and Central America. The overall rating was 3.2, which is above average, but still we'd like to see a little bit higher. And the area for most room for improvement was the handling of stakeholder input and concerns. We'll be getting into more details on these in just a second. Some caveats on these findings are that they are the opinions and interpretations of myself. There's limited time to triangulate the information. This was a quick process within four weeks, so it's not always possible to go back, and as well as on the survey, since it was anonymous, to triangulate the information. However, some of it I was able to do that, as well as I've got a number of years of expertise and experience with other standards, as well as Bonsukra, and used that to kind of contextualize the information that was received. And the other important note is that this was a review of the process and not the content of the standard. So usually you start out, what was supposed to happen? And we always have a plan of getting from point A to get point B, and it always seems fairly straightforward, but the reality isn't always the case. So let's look at what was supposed to happen. The procedures and plans were based on ICO's good practice check. There was lots of great pre-planning to identify key topics. This was done in several months before the standard revision process actually launched. This included a broad members and stakeholder input survey, as well as work within the technical advisory board. There was broad consultation as input on the priorities, but I just mentioned this survey to help understand what's important to you to go into a new standard. And there was a multi-stakeholder working group for the technical work, and it was supported by the Secretary of Admin and Project Management, so check, check, and check. And it was mostly virtual meetings were planned even before COVID, so this was all back mid-2019. So what was supposed to happen, this is the plan from terms of reference drafted in 2018. This is also on the website beginning in July 2019 to be completed by 2020. So let's get into a little bit of that, what did happen. So again, going from point A to B, sometimes you have to take a little detour, sometimes you have to go backwards a little bit, but we still get to point B. So the plan was, again, there was this pre-planning with priority setting in early 2019, there was a kickoff in July 2019, and the plan was to be finished by December 2020 with two rounds of consultation. What did happen was quite a bit longer process, so it went to the end of 2022, the initial standard development phase extended quite a bit longer than originally planned, that would have been wrapped up at the end of December 2019. So that's what was the actual. And we have to superimpose that with the reality of the context we were working in was with COVID. So even though when the process kicked off, COVID hadn't happened, it was coming to a very critical phase right around when COVID hit, it was a lot of uncertainty at the time, it wasn't clear how long would this last, people needed to be in lockdown, there was limited interaction, people were being sent home to work from spaces that weren't intended to be workspaces. So there was a lot of challenges to this period, particularly due to the uncertainty. This was obviously throughout the whole process, so this put a lot of constraints and a lot of additional burden on the process. So the plan was an 18 to 21 month process, the actual was quite a significant longer. Also the budget at one level was almost quadrupled in the budget without staff costs. There was going to be a six month standard development phase, this actually extended to almost an entire year, and the terms of reference for the standard revision working group were defined quite late in the process. The meeting minutes posted for stakeholders, the plan was to always get those out pretty quickly. There is quite a gap in the meeting minutes from July 2019 from the kickoff until actually October 2020, there are not public minutes available. So that was the findings. So what were some of the key takeaways, that was the process, what were some of the key takeaways from this process? From the survey, for those that agreed or strongly agreed, really almost three quarters said that it was a clear and transparent process, that roles and responsibilities, again, 64%, but still quite good. Inclusive opportunities, it's really good to hear that people felt that there was inclusive opportunities to participate in the process. Appropriate communications, again, also quite high, three quarters believing there's appropriate communications, and the area where there was most room for improvement was the handling stakeholder inputs and concerns at 55%. So that kind of gives you an overview of the different aspects of the process, generally good thumbs up. The area for the most improvement, again, is back to the handling inputs. So let's go through this in a little bit more detail. So there's some really good things that came out, the cohesion of the working group, consensus was there at the table, that's a really great thing. The enormous volunteer dedicated, there was a lot of time, energy, and input from both staff and the working group members. And with these long processes, this is really a lot to ask, particularly of volunteers, that they stay with the process, that they continue at the high energy, and that was evident from at least the minutes and the notes and the interviews that I had with people. Commitment to follow procedures was very clear, regional workshops and local languages was very much appreciated. That came out as very positive in the survey particularly. This iterative process to get to final conclusions is normal in a standard revision process. You know, you move forward, there's always some issues that might be a little bit contentious and you move forward a little bit more, and you really narrow it down to a few issues in the end that really you have to then work through with a more intensive nature. And the strong multi-stakeholder engagement was seen as quite a positive. And achieve the outcome. You have a good, okay, acceptable standard. I think it's a great standard. I think it's very forward-thinking, which I realized can be challenging for those that are implementing that. I am not a producer, however, understanding what market expectations are, I think it's a very future-proof type of standard. I would add, gaps in transparency in the process, as I already mentioned about with the minutes and just how were the working group members selected, what was happening, what decisions were being made, there was not always transparent. It does not mean that there was anything negative happening or anything intentionally happening. But when there isn't transparency, then there could be erosion of trust in that process. There was limited monitoring and adaptive management of the process. So as things started to take longer and maybe things were derailing a little bit, there wasn't necessarily a process to see how to get that back on track or take some action. The lack of clarity and perceptions on roles, this is when you really get down to some of the questions around decision-making. What is being recommended and what is being decided on? Sometimes those were not as clear. And then if you look at the terms of reference that are in the public on the Bonsuker website, sometimes there's some overlap in some of those roles. And so that can be quite challenging for those involved in those different processes as well as governance. The underestimated, the time and resources. We all know that any of these processes, you could double the time and double the resources and it would still not feel like enough. But really it was quite low, the budget, when I saw that compared to when I look at and have been involved in other revision processes, considering that these are generally, I don't think I've seen one less than 18 months, they're generally a two-year process. The organizational ownership, again, it could be Bonsukra could have maybe taken more ownership in some of the aspects, particularly in terms of the monitoring and adaptive management. Again, these are my perceptions and from my perspectives. The implementation plan, including risk and implications was not evident. So yes, the standard is there, but how would that be then implemented and including the risk and implications is quite critical. And as well as the complaints mechanism. Now there is a general complaints mechanism and there is the ability to go to the website, but I think there was not always clear to all stakeholders what mechanism to use and who to outreach to. So that needs to be very clear. And if other channels are used, then it should just be made clear to those stakeholders, what is the most appropriate channel. So what can happen from that is that the working group members felt disempowered. These are long processes with lots of energy, but when you feel like you're putting all of this into it and you're not seeing it necessarily being taken up, that can be very disempowering. And I think I heard that as well through the survey of a lot of the stakeholders. So there was frustration, feeling that you were providing the input. If you remember, that was the lower ranking on the overall process. Input was being provided, but not necessarily felt like it was being heard or acted upon. And of course, this creates additional cost and time. The contributing factors of this is we cannot underestimate COVID and how it affected such a process. These are processes of building trust. These are processes that usually require a lot of face-to-face time to really hash out some of those differences, to really understand and walk in the shoes of others. They are long processes, even though very well-intentioned, they are volunteers. And so that really is something to always consider it. And then the global context of the global standard of Bonsukra is really quite interesting because you operate in a global context, in highly variable context. So you're trying to standardize something. So you're creating one common thing that will work globally. But the reality is that a sugar is grown in a number of different places and processed in a number of different places under very different agro-economic and social conditions. And then there's a producer squeeze and see it not just in your sector, but we see this in many other sectors that between the pandemic and the disruption in Ukraine, we're seeing a lot of challenges in inflation and kind of increasing costs, as well as in facing increasing stringency in a standard. And that's really quite a challenge to those that are responsible for implementing this. And this is where concepts of shared responsibility of then downstream actors becomes quite important. Shared responsibility of civil society organizations to support this and producers becomes quite important. So a quote that I pulled out was that the process was exhausting, but in the end, or although in the end, we had a successful deliverable, the process was not the best is kind of underscores what echoes what I heard from a number of people. So what do we do with all of this? It's really important to always keep in mind that although it's a standard and it's a technical process, there's very important political and strategic aspects of this. Understanding for each stakeholder, what's in it for me. Silence is not an agreement, so it's very important to speak up and speak your mind and provide your input. And Bansukra is taking it very seriously to make sure that they hear it and listen to it and act upon it. Perceptions are more important than reality. I see this all the time. It's, we don't need to necessarily always say what was the facts. The facts might be support that everything was done 100% perfectly. But if the perceptions are there that something did not work or that you were not heard, that's just as important. So this very, very important thing to always keep in mind that perceptions are, is what we need to manage. And that the standard plus the implementation is the cornerstone of the strategy. So recommendations are, this is kind of a no brainer, a strong project management and also this adaptive management piece. So when things are not on track and things will, we know we're now almost the only certain thing is uncertainty. So things may go differently than planned. So we need to have adaptive management. We need to have plan Bs. We need to also acknowledge successes. A lot was accomplished despite the circumstances. So not just focusing on what's negative, but really together celebrate what we do achieve. Overly communicate. We can't communicate enough. You just communicate, communicate. Full transparency, radical transparency on everything. So this is really having this open culture and transparency on everything. Clearer roles. There's some concrete recommendations in terms of the roles for the terms of reference and for each of the different actors from the board, technical advisory board, membership council, the standard revision working group, all the way down to then the secretary. And then it's very important to understand the role of others to support producers. It was just mentioned a little bit earlier about shared responsibility and really managing expectations, walking in the shoes of others. Try to put on the hat of the others and understand what are their needs, what's important for them. And really have to have top-down support of the process that needs to have this culture of not tolerating workarounds or back channels. So following a good revision process, another good quote to remind ourselves that the following the process has an impact on the quality of the standard produced in the end. That's a given. But what's also equally important is the level of acceptance of the revised standard by key parties. So following a good revision process will affect the acceptance then by those that are applying the standard. So the next steps, and these are from Bonsukha. So if you had any questions on these next steps, then I would ask that you reach out and contact Bonsukha. But basically, first of all, I applaud that they did this external review. It was very brave of them to say, you know, we're going to brave and as well as, you know, to take the time to reflect and say, what could we do better? And so they also said, you know, it'd be great if I could present my findings. So here are my findings. They're unfiltered. I did not have to get them vetted and approved by Bonsukha. So the next steps are really what to do with it. So basically, the inputs that I have provided, they will be using for general improvements on consultations going forward, improving transparency, building capacity, and having more clarity on the roles and responsibilities. So those are four areas that the general improvements. And then it will also affect on these new revisions, both an interim revision and their small holders, the standard revision, as well as chain of custody standard revision. So thank you for your time and appreciate you listening to this. And if you have any additional questions, you can reach out to Bonsukha and provide your input, your comments, and your suggestions.