Given our limited staff, it is not always possible to attend everything that we would like. Fortunately, national roundtables sometimes represent our network. We are fortunate to have board members, executive committee members and others attend meetings and report the conversations taking place. They also make introductions to people and organisations that align well with our work.
On 24th-26th July there is the UN FSS +2 Stocktaking moment in Rome. We are not lined up to speak at that event and neither Josefina nor I are available to be there. If any members are going to it, please let us know. I am aware that several other livestock sector organisations, including dairy, will be there.
Between August 26th and September 1st, the EAAP, WAAP (European and World Associations for Animal Production) and Interbull Congress is taking place in Lyons, France. This year's theme is "Climate Change, Biodiversity and Global Sustainability of Animal Production." This is a highly relevant event for us to attend. We submitted an abstract and will be presenting on the work of GRSB and our network there.
On the 25th-27th of September FAO is holding a conference on Sustainable Livestock Transformation in Rome. Again, we are submitting proposals to be represented there. As the agenda is limited and the number of side events restricted, competition for speaking slots is quite intense.
Our own Communicators Summit is, of course, taking place in San Diego from 2-4th October, immediately preceding the Protein PACT Summit (5-6th October.) I'm sure there will be many members at those two events.
On the 11th-14th October, the World Meat Congress is taking place in Maastricht, the Netherlands. Typically we do try to attend this if possible, but the number of meetings to attend at that time this year severely tests our travel budget.
The Committee for Food Security of FAO is holding its 51st annual meeting in Rome between 23rd and 27th of October, again with focus on sustainability. There is also potential for us to present and we submitted a proposal for a side event. If accepted, we would likely be grouped with other livestock organisations.
The 13th Global Agenda for Sustainable Livestock (GASL) Multi-Stakeholder Partnership (MSP) Meeting is in Chiang Mai, Thailand, from 30th October until the 3rd November. We have regularly attended this in the past. This year I would give priority to attending the Committee for Food Security, as many more member states are represented there. If it is possible to have representatives at both, we will.
CoP28 will take place in Dubai from 30th November to 12th December. The first full week is going to be the most important for agriculture and livestock organisations, and we plan to be there and participate in side events, as we did last year.
With the exception of the GASL meeting in Thailand, you can see that the majority of these meetings, many of which are influential and will have some feed into UN processes, including CoP, are taking place in the Northern hemisphere, and quite a few in Europe.
While it is not the main reason for my decision, it coincides with my move to live in Scotland, which is planned to take place in August. Certainly being based back (almost) in Europe will help to cover many of the meetings that take place and should make travel less expensive than from New Zealand.
However, as you can see, logistically even then, some of these are challenging for a GRSB as a small organisation with limited staff. Your support by attending some of these meetings, or helping with travel costs to do so is always highly appreciated, and it pays dividends to have livestock organisations present at all such gatherings.
In the meantime, we are still making good progress on the social impact Principle & Criteria and goal, as well as on the reporting framework. I want to acknowledge the hard work all of the National Roundtables are doing along with our Working Group leads to make that happen.
We should be aware of the level of the challenge that we have set for the National Roundtables. It is unrealistic to expect all of them will be ready to report in all areas this year, and that is acceptable. We knew our goals were challenging when we set them, and one of the biggest challenges is collection and management of data.
So this, our first reporting year, will be a trial and will no doubt expose issues that we had not considered at the time of setting the goals. The last thing that we want to happen is for this to end up discouraging roundtables or members, or create divisiveness between them.
