Next in-person meeting of WG02 and newly launched Subgroup on Costs of Sustainable Production to take place in Montreal, Canada in October 2018

29/06/2018

Working Group 02 coordinators have announced that the next in-person meeting of the working group will take place in Montreal, Canada, on 10 and 11 October 2018. The location was selected with the aim of trying to engage North American companies and governments of banana-consuming countries in WBF activities.

The meeting will convene working group members to discuss the objectives, priority areas and future activities of Working Group 02. In particular, the meeting will focus on discussing progress made with respect to the four priority areas established in the 2018-2019 WG02 Work Plan, which were developed on the basis of proposals made during the Third Global Conference of the World Banana Forum in November 2017:

  1. Exploring the possibility of creating a permanent observatory on the real costs of production, from plantations to ships, in all the main banana-exporting countries
  2. Continuing the work on living wages, focusing on two new and important dimensions: (i) incorporation of a gender pay gap analysis for workers in the banana sector, and (ii) inclusion of Governments in living wage-setting processes
  3. Establishing a Subgroup on Costs of Sustainable Production
  4. Exploring opportunities to work on living income for small producers, looking at possible synergies with existing work within the framework of the “Community of Practice on Living Income”

In this respect, the Subgroup on Costs of Sustainable Production is in the initial phases of development, and will soon have its first conference call on 5 July 2018 to discuss its mission and mandate. Amongst its objectives are the need to study proposals and methodologies for calculating costs of sustainable production (CPS), analyze a crucial component of CPS – wages – in different exporting countries, adopt a common definition and methodology for calculating living wages, and support governments in establishing methodologies for setting living wages.  

The Subgroup will host its first in-person meeting at the same time as the WG02, in Montreal, with the aim of bringing key stakeholders together to discuss how to achieve the Subgroup’s objectives through pre-competitive collaboration mechanisms.

For more information on the Working Group 02 and the Subgroup on Costs of Sustainable Production, click here.

For further questions or inquiries, contact Victor Prada at [email protected].