January 15th 2024

Certification Management Committee (CMC) decisions

There are no decisions to be shared from the 21st of December CMC. The next CMC is on the 18th of January.

Key updates

EUDR Go-Live!

Today a big milestone was reached: from today onwards Rainforest Alliance certificate holders with cocoa and/or coffee in scope can access our EUDR offering to support their compliance with the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR).

You will also see a comprehensive email from the EUDR project team, but in the meantime we wanted to share this exciting news and some helpful links to get familiar with.

 External resources 

• Rainforest Alliance E-course on EUDR  for Certificate Holders on the RALN 
• Rainforest Alliance E-course on EUDR  for Certification Bodies on the RALN 
• F2F EUDR training for farm CH’s: EUDR course page can be requested from the Knowledge Sharing Unit    
• Manual: RA Certfication Platform (RACP) manual  
• Document: EUDR One Pager with summary about EUDR and our offering 
• Webpage: How the Rainforest Alliance Supports EUDR Compliance from Farm to Retailer 
• Policies: EUDR Data Sharing Policy, Alignment with the European Union Deforestation Regulation 

Internal resources (Please do not share externally)

• EUDR E-course (Customer Success and other internal staff are encouraged to complete) on the RALN 
• Internal FAQ & Internal Knowledge article  
• RACP demo 10/11 January in the KH training schedule #1 

 Person to Contact: Maria van Kooij

Human Rights & Livelihoods - New list of living wage benchmarks as part of Annex Chapter 5: Social published

At the beginning of the year, we publish the new list of Living Wage benchmarks to reflect changes to the benchmarks for inflation etc. Version 1.6  can be found here. Regional comms are aware of any region-specific updates that may need to be flagged/explained to CHs and CBs, beyond the general announcement that has already been shared with CBs and will next week be shared with CHs. 

For any questions, please contact Sophie Boote.

Updated Social Risk Maps Version 2.1

We have good news. We made a small update on the Social Risk Maps and this means that for 5 country-sector combinations the risk level is reduced from high to medium level on forced labor. See the table below to learn where this applies:

The new risk maps version 2.1  will be applicable from 1st of January 2024 onwards.

For farm certification this means that stakeholder consultation on the topic of Forced labor is not applicable in above scenarios. The adjusted interactive risk map are also visible on our website.

Please contact Lennie van Dooren for more information.

New content published

New translations available!

The Rainforest Alliance Assurance System: Supporting Due Diligence across the Supply Chain provides insight on the many tools the Rainforest Alliance employs to build a robust assurance system. Originally published in the last quarter of 2023, we are pleased to announce that the explainer is now available in the following additional languages: Spanish, French, German, Japanese, and Portuguese.