The Transformative Land Investment TLI programme

well thank you for the opportunity to present this project I'm going to be talking about the SEC funded transformative land investment project um just as a caveat I mean this is not a purely research project this is largely a development oriented project with the the general purpose of helping countries better leverage aggro investments in support of a Food Systems transition so ultimately what it tries to do is to strengthen the contribution of aggro and Forestry Investments to tenure security environmental resilience and social inclusion so the way it does that is on the One Hand by improving private sector compliance with national and Global regulations and best practices so we're talking about uh globally recognized responsible business Frameworks such as the CFS responsible agricultural investment principles the voluntary guidelines and the governance of tenure and increasing your Carter regulations like the EU deforestation regulation um the way we try to do that is also through business model Innovation and I must say there are striking parallels between this project and the living Landscapes project which is encouraging the sea and it's good to know so I think there are a lot of opportunities for cross-learning there um ultimately tli is embedded in sdc's Global Food security program and emerged from primarily their commitments to the voluntary guidance in the government's opinion so phase one of the project the the objective is a long-term objective for us is to have three phases uh the first phase will run from 2022 to 2025 and the second one from 2025 to 2028. the projects let receipt for each graph with support from Land Equity International were cost based in Bangkok and SNB who are technical implementing Partners uh focuses on five countries that have been a major object of land-based Investments uh these are Ghana Ethiopia Mozambique Myanmar and Laos um in the last say 15 years or so there's been a transfer of over a million hectares of land in each of these countries which has produced a lot of land related conflicts and smallholder displacement and competition so so what is the the general premise of the project um the idea for us and the initial call from SDC was to support the vgtt compliance um our thinking is is that okay if investors comply with these International regulations and standards that doesn't necessarily mean that they contribute positively to their host countries uh it might reduce negative impacts but it doesn't necessarily mean they produce positive impacts is much like the ptg teams if companies respect in your rights that doesn't necessarily mean that their contribution to local populations is positive um the most important thing and what we're seeing in practice from from the last 10 years of research on this is that a lot of these sort of commitments and Frameworks produce a lot of unintended consequences um I think the prime example is is now what is emerging from the EU deforestation regulation and also corporate serial deforestation commitments that companies are trying to eliminate deforestation from their supply chain uh the effect being that there are excluding smallholders from our supply chain because they're too costly and expensive and difficult to trace um so for us in order for for these sort of Agro Enterprises to have a positive effect a net positive effects they really need to change the way they do business and their business models need to become more consistent with sustainable Food Systems principles where this notion of trade also non-listic perspectives is a lot more Central so indeed for us uh issues of social inclusion environmental stewardship governance and societal issues should become part of the very fabric of how Investments do business and this demands assistance perspective and it also demands co-creation of business models and business ecosystems that resonate on one hand with national priorities but also with the needs and practices of smallholders for us what we are trying to do with this project is essentially help move companies along what we call the tli Continuum so they're somewhere on a Continuum and this Continuum is defined by us along a set of tli principles these principles include for example strengthening a plant rights expansion of Market opportunities for smallholders promoting adoption of agroecological practices and supply chain shortening amongst other things so we recognize that you can't move an investor at the bottom of the continue to the top straight away this is a gradual sustained long-term process that requires dedicated support so the way we do this is is through um sort of a four-pronged approach I guess we recognize that you can't do these things in isolation in a piecemeal sort of way we have to tackle this thing at multiple different runs so the first thing you have to do is to prevent negative impacts even ever from happening um and and the way we're trying to do that is to institutionalize what we call a risk reward tool um that helps governments identify and screen for inherently unsustainable investment models from the outset so that feeds into the approval process and those sorts of investors are never afforded any licenses for those that do um what becomes important is is then to control how positive a negative impacts play out inevity play out but they have to be managed this is often a policy and Regulatory issues but at the same time the investors also have to be encouraged to do better they have to be encourage to adopt better business models so the way we're doing this is is thinking about okay how does the National Business ecosystem needs to evolve and we are doing that through a series of multi-stakeholder platforms uh in each of the five countries so these are essentially three-year platforms that bringing uh private sector civil society and government together to talk about what a Food Systems transition looks like in their respective countries and how businesses uh or private sector can best be leveraged for that purpose but and then finally is sort of our improved part is okay you've been incentivize an investor to do better but that doesn't mean the investor knows how to do better that doesn't mean that a commitment translates to a practice so for that we have conceived these business what we call business transformation Labs those are nested at the national level within government structures and the idea of these labs are is that they provide technical backstopping support or partnership brokering support um two uh agricultural Enterprises across the country especially new entrants then concretely um just to go into a little bit of sort of activities that we've been doing this year for the risk rewards tool so the tool essentially is is a simulation model um and the idea behind the simulation model is that with minimal input and user secondary data it can very cheaply and easily estimate what types of costs and benefits are likely to be associated with planned Investments so this is really before an investment is approved this uses existing data so we're talking about uh investor feasibility studies citing plans spatial data sensor data carbon data and what the model essentially produces is an estimate of the value of Lost in game production emissions associated with land use change displacement risk employment potential and FX earnings the model will eventually be the institutionalized within certain Ministries and they'll also be trained to use this tool appropriately to inform their own licensing processes then the multi-stakeholder platform is essentially a facilitated learning and co-creation space um for these different stakeholders the the initial part of it is to sort of collaborately identify national food systems challenges and priorities and a value awaits and entry points for improving the enabling environments in support of transformative lands Investments now once those priorities are identified we are co-developing strategies and action plans on how to improve the enabling environment and ultimately test their viability and support implementation in phase two what we've done in 2022 I mean the Project's been going for about seven eight months now is we've done an enabling environment assessment so with a full assessment of what the enabling environment is how it disables or discourages uh Investments are consistent with the eoi principles and based on that we're we're developing what we call a business ecosystem index so there's essentially an index for monitoring how well countries or country ecosystems or corresponding with the tli principles five multi or four of the five multi-stakeholder platforms have now been established government buy-in has been achieved terms of reference have been designed and initial planning activities have come off the ground the business transformation labs are uh like I said they're they're technical support facilities and a co-innovation space um there are the idea is that they become financially self-sustainable service units nested uh within um the One-Stop shops in countries so so the investment promotion agencies um that are accessible to willing investors across the country in Agriculture and Forestry and the way the business transformation Labs work is that they they create a a space for investors and communities to co-create bankable Solutions so solutions that help improve smallholder production practices and make things more consistent with agroecology principles to improve corporate sustainability policies in line with International Frameworks and ultimately through device business models that help achieve that um then once once that is identified about okay what's the least solution look like our role is is to identify capacity and resource gaps and broker the necessarily necessary public and private and Civic relationships to actually deliver on the business models that are designed and then ultimately what the the btls business transformation Labs do is Provide backstopping support to implementations systematic performance monitoring and also supports to communities um then finally and this is sort of a a way that okay we have used these different processes whether they need to be a cultivated force and a lot of the countries we recognize the Grassroots organizations are ill-equipped to effectively engage the private sector and also to engage in National policy processes so what we're doing is spreading a community of practice with Grassroots organizations which is meant to Foster uh Collaborative Learning also planning Collective collaborative proposal development but ultimately to devise a strategy about how they can improve their Collective capabilities to support businesses to Advocate against unsustainable business conduct But ultimately also also to support the msps then the final component is looking more Global alignment uh we are working across a different community so sort of in the respect responsible investment space you have three or four very disparate communities so you have the the 10-year ride social justice justice movement you have the um responsible investment movement and you have the zero deforestation movements and that's essentially where investors are veering towards and between those movement there's very little prospercialization there's a lot of territorialism and and and that has to be overcome because these these trade-offs between these sorts of initiatives and investors adopting these sorts of instruments is is really quite detrimental in practice so what we're trying to do is is create space for dialogue across these three core communities of practice and essentially link that to the work on on Food Systems sustainability and ultimately uh Agro ecology