FOREST POSITIVE

What are the FACT Dialogues?

The FACT (Forest, Agriculture and Commodity Trade) Dialogues are an initiative launched by COP26 Presidency and TFA, to accelerate the transition towards more sustainable land use practices in a way that opens up new opportunities for investment, for jobs and livelihoods in forests, land use and agriculture, and to ensure that the economies which have a sustainable relationship with forests are the ones that thrive and grow.

What are its aims?

The FACT Dialogues aim to agree on principles for collaborative action, a shared roadmap on sustainable land use and international trade, and to take action now to protect forests while promoting development and trade.

How will it work?

It brings together the countries that together can decisively shift global commodity markets towards sustainability, to seek collective action and collaboration not only to protect our precious forests but also to enhance people’s livelihoods and to support economic development and food security.

What are the Multi-stakeholder Consultations?

Convened and facilitated by TFA, the Multi-stakeholder Consultations form a key part of the FACT Dialogue, feeding into the G2G meetings, ensuring all relevant parties have a voice and a space to contribute.

Participants will come from all sides of the supply chain, balancing voices from consumer countries in the North, with those from the Global South producer countries. Participant will include:Producer companies, consumer companies, growers, finance institutions, local farmers, foresters, forest communities and indigenous peoples, civil society organisations, academics, grassroots practitioners, global and local consumer brands, regional suppliers and processors.

These many different perspectives will provide strategic guidance and insights for the Dialogue and will therefore help shape ambitious and transformational action designed to accelerate the transition to more sustainable land-use practices.

What is the Global Multi-stakeholder Taskforce?

TFA has convened a global Taskforce who will ensure that the voices, insights and recommendations of ALL involved in commodity supply chains - producers, consumers and local communities – are channeled into government-to-government dialogues in an effective way.

Objectives of the Taskforce are:

To collect and coordinate views/action from regional and national stakeholders outside of government
To channel knowledge, feedback and recommendations from leading business and civil society into the G2G process
To identify and showcase leading initiatives and good practices

The Taskforce will be Co-chaired by:

Fabiola Muñoz (Coordinator of the Peruvian Coalition for Sustainable Production)
Justin Adams (Executive Director of TFA, and Friend of COP26)

Get involved

As part of the Multi-Stakeholder Consultation process, we are keen to hear opinions, voices and insights from across the forest, agriculture and commodity trade sectors - from both consumer and producer perspectives, from regional and local stakeholders, from businesses large and small, and civil society.

Background

Globally, the majority of tropical deforestation is still linked to commodity farming and production. The expanded production of agricultural commodities such as beef, soy, cacao, palm oil and paper/pulp are the major drivers of primary forest loss. This loss of primary tropical forest contributes significantly to C02 emissions, while sustainably managed tropical forests provide substantial and cost-effective carbon emission mitigation, while also generating social and economic benefits.

COP26 Presidency Action

The UK Government is hosting the 26th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP26) in November 2021 in Glasgow, and will serve as the Presidency of this global climate conference.

As President of COP26, the UK intends to convene a dialogue on sustainable land use and trade in forest and agricultural commodities. The aim is for countries to take collaborative actions that promote trade and development while protecting forests.

This will be a government-to-government dialogue, supported by wider multi-stakeholder consultations. In the COP26 context, this will be part of a broader campaign to strengthen political commitment and increase financial flows for nature-based solutions to climate change and biodiversity loss. The intention is that this dialogue should continue well beyond COP26, in order to achieve the necessary long-term cooperation and progress.

"This is about cleaning up our supply chains - we can do all the wonderful things in the world domestically with our own environment, but if we import environmental destruction through commodities then that is a problem and it is something that needs to be sorted.

"The hope is that on the back of what we're doing in the UK, we'll be able to build a global collation of other countries all committed to doing something similar with a view to tackling what is one of the great problems of our day - deforestation."

Multi-stakeholder Consultation Dialogues

The Tropical Forest Alliance (TFA) hosted by the World Economic Forum has grown to become a powerful community of purpose, drawing together 170+ partner organizations, including governments, companies and civil society organizations, to create innovative private-public partnerships to tackle deforestation associated with agricultural commodities, including palm oil, beef, soy and paper/pulp and cattle.

TFA convenes and/or supports these tropical forest multi-stakeholder actors through several Collective Action Tracks including:

Upon invitation of the COP26 Presidency, TFA is facilitating the multi-stakeholder consultations of the Sustainable Land Use & Commodity Trade Dialogue process. This role will leverage TFA's existing Collective Action Tracks and expansive multi-stakeholder relationships, and is supported through a direct grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

The TFA facilitator role includes:

Dialogue: promote and host multi-stakeholder dialogues to identify key issues and opportunities for progress

Coordination: strengthen coherence between different initiatives and platforms

Insight: provide strategic perspective to support the government processes and keep ambition high

Action: identify & curate flagship initiatives, actions and commitments, together with the Marrakesh Partnership.

Timeline

The below is a draft timeline of the the proposed multi-stakeholder consultation process. It outlines an initial phase Sept-Dec 2020, and the launch of the dialogue initiatives from January 2021, running until COP26 in November 2021.

The multi-stakeholder dialogues process will feed into the government-to-government process, through this draft process map, and will inform both a Collective Action Roadmap and Shared Principles.

Outputs

The outputs of the COP26 Presidency's Sustainable Land Use & Commodity Trade Dialogue multi-stakeholder consultation process will be published here as they become available.

Pre-launch multi-stakeholder consultation reports:

English

French