Good morning everyone. Welcome for all of you to be here. This side event is entitled Public and Private Sustainability Initiatives in and beyond supply chains to promote greater inclusion of small holders and small and medium enterprises. Right, I'm trying to find, yes. So, I will start with some brief introductory remarks before we go into four different case studies that will be presented by Michael, myself and two Sirat colleagues who have pre-recorded their presentations because they were unable to come to the World Forestry Congress. These introductory remarks are based on a study that was published last year as an FTA working paper number eight that had done an assessment of a broad array of different sustainability initiatives. And I think in terms of the framing this session, I think we're all aware that there has been continued growth of agricultural commodities in terms of both domestic and global trade. And I think it's important to stress both those elements of the growth in trade. And this has led to multiple social and environmental challenges. In addition, during a similar period we've seen improved access to information and many new multi-stakeholder initiatives since the adoption of the post 2030 agenda, notably with reference to Sustainable Development Goals 1716 and 1717, which all relate to the framework for means for implementation. And this in itself has led to greater scrutiny, particularly for some commodities. And I could cite, for example, soy in the Cerrado in Brazil, palm oil in Indonesia, amongst other commodities. We've also seen over the last 20 years a plethora of sustainability initiatives. And here I refer to three recent studies, one summary of 10 years of experience of C4's work on value chains, finance and investments led by Michael, another study the FTA working paper I refer to. And April this year, the International Institute for Sustainable Development published another study which was reviewing sustainability initiatives, particularly in relation to reducing financial risk. So we've seen a very diverse array of instruments and tools to promote deforestation-free sourcing as a way of reducing exposure to reputational financial and regulatory risks, but very often there's little articulation between them. These instruments include a number of voluntary sustainability standards, as well as many private governance regulations which have encompassed amongst others codes of conduct, principles and guidelines and moratorium. More recently, we've seen the adoption of both public and private commitments to zero deforestation. However, you're probably also aware that the last Forest 500 report indicated that no palm oil, soy, cattle or timber company had met the goal of eliminating deforestation from their supply chains by 2020. In addition, the recent IISD report has highlighted an estimated 260 billion dollar investment deficit in agriculture if we are to achieve sustainable development goal two on reducing poverty. So this panel explores some of the many challenges to implementing public and private sustainability initiatives. It's based on four case studies of forest trees and agroforestry, the consulting research program that was coordinated by C4 for the last 10 years. And I will stop here and introduce my colleague Michael Brady, who will start with the first of the four case studies, which relates to FSC. Thank you very much. Thanks, Andrew. I've got to go out and go out. Hello to all. Thank you for coming this early in the morning. I guess many of our online participants in Europe and Latin America may not be joining us at this time of day. As Andrew mentioned, can you hear me? Yes, Michael, we can hear you clearly. I think I've got to get out and mute myself and go back in. There we go. Okay. Well, as the first speaker, I'm going to be talking about a exercise that I've been part of over the last three years in developing a smallholder standard with FSC. Just acknowledge my colleagues, Lloyd Jones and Keith Moore. Page down. There we go. I'd like to acknowledge the Forest Stewardship Council who has supported this activity, the Technical Advisory Group members of the Small Holders Standard from India, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam, and all of the smallholder farmers that we engaged with in those four countries, colleagues at C4 ICRAF, and our hosts here at the World Forestry Congress. So I think we're all well aware of the constraints to smallholder certification. Millions of smallholders in the Asia Pacific region would benefit from certification either through access, better access to markets, in some cases price premiums through certification. But these smallholders are constrained by scale, typically one to five hectares of land in which they manage. These are typically single management units. Basic education levels are also a constraint where smallholders may not fully understand certification systems and many of the processes involved in those systems. Affordability is another constraint where incomes for smallholders are typically very limited so they can't afford either the initial certification process or the ongoing audit maintenance audits required. So many constraints and this has been well known. We have some examples where smallholders have been certified and have actually had to give it up because of affordability, a lack of issues around premium price premium and market access. I was worked in Laos in the last few years where a TIC program and Luang Prabang unfortunately gave up their FSC certification after about 10 years. So FSC recognized these constraints, recognized that the FSC FM, Forest Management Certification was not entirely achievable for smallholders. There is a group certification but not all smallholders are able to form these groups. And so a program started the new approaches project by FSC and I list here a number of initiatives under the new approaches project and the last bullet refers to what I'm talking to you today about which is the Asia Pacific Regional Forest Stewardship Standard or the RFSS for smallholders. So I'll refer to this as the smallholder standard. There's a more recent initiative by FSC again at the community level. This is the community and family forest program again focusing on the forest management group standard. So the purpose of the smallholder standard development is to provide a realistic achievable system of indicators relevant to the circumstances of smallholders for their management units in the Asia Pacific region. So this is not a global standard. It's an initial focus on four countries in Asia Pacific. The focus is on smallholder operations aiming to be realistic and having achievable indicators relevant to the circumstances of smallholders and their management units. It's been designed to use simple language that can be understood and met by smallholders. And the intention was to address the realities of over 500 million smallholders in these four countries. So a group was assembled back in 2019 under the policy and standards manager of FSC Asia Pacific and we had a chamber balanced technical advisory group. So I think you're maybe aware of the way FSC is organized in its three environment social and economic chambers. So we had representatives from the four countries from each of the three chambers. So a nicely balanced team and this technical advisory group. I was the chair, technical advisor, and then my two colleagues acted as policy manager and a standard drafter. A little bit of the timeline for the development of this new standard. As I said, we commenced in 2019. Initially drafted a standard and then performed two field tests in the four countries. So the revised standard was developed by 2020 and public consultations were held in April to July of 2020. Came up with a final draft incorporating the results of the field tests, public consultations, and interactions, intense interactions with the performance and standards units within FSC. And this was submitted for approval in December of 2020. Conditions were addressed and resubmitted in 2021. And by July of 2021, the FSC board approved the new standard for testing as a pilot based on the FSC policy for pilot testing. And I'll go through some of the features of the standard and the next steps in this pilot testing. So the intention or the scope for this new smallholder standard was that it would be applicable for all smallholders who own or manage individual units, the focus on plantations, woodlots, orchards, or agroforestry in a number of configurations from block, linear, or strip forms, all being less than 20 hectares in size. So the key criteria here is 20 hectares, which I think many of you know 100 hectares is the limit for group certification. It includes boundary trees or small groups of trees. Smallholder groups include community producers, including indigenous or others who fulfill the criteria for small size. Also includes cooperatives, communities, which own, manage, and use forests again on this 20 hectare limit for each family or member. The NTFP, non-timber forest products, are also included in the smallholder standard. It does not apply to natural forests owned by smallholders. In some countries, natural forest management is common for smallholders. In other countries, it's not yet common. I'm thinking of Indonesia, where smallholder natural forest management is just starting to emerge and be recognized formally. And it does not include short rotation agricultural crops, which is a challenge because many smallholders have both forestry holdings as well as agricultural crops. So the big challenge for developing this new standard was to adhere to the 10 FSC principles and 70 criteria, which are all part of the formal FSC system. So we had to take, use the FSC principles and criteria, but modify those for use by smallholders. We, we did maintain the 10 principles. We did identify seven criteria, which we really considered inapplicable to smallholders. And so no indicators were developed and I'll mention these later. Scale intensity and risk do not appear. It is a common concept throughout FSC, but we didn't find that it was applicable to smallholder forest holdings. And so it doesn't appear in any of the indicators in the smallholder standard, but it's implied throughout. I mentioned forest testing. Once we developed the initial draft of the standard, we went through a series of tests in the four countries. The testing was to test out the clarity of the indicators that we had developed, the auditability of those indicators. So working with a number of CBs to get their views on how well these new indicators could be audited. And the utility of guidance material that was prepared as part of the standard and a broad, the broad applicability of the new standard for smallholders. Some of the, just some examples, the, we did forest testing in India. Again, and this was a particular eucalyptus plantation they used for pulp wood. I won't go through these in detail, but just to give you a flavor of the testing activities in Indonesia, we, it was a very interesting smallholding, the company that engages with smallholders harvesting a natural species for use in pencil production. And this company actually does have FSC certification. The interest was to allow the smallholders to basically evolve from a company sponsored certification to managing certification on their own. This is a rubber, a mix of rubber and this natural species for use for pencil. So it was a combination of rubber wood and the particular species for pencil production. And these pencils are produced in Indonesia but sold in Europe, North America. And so FSC certification was a very important part of the product. We had a test in Thailand, which was really the unique feature here was the rubber farmers who were, I wouldn't say hubby farms, but these farmers also had many other economic activities. So their tree plantations were one of several activities. These were very much family owned, producing high, very high quality latex. I also have some interesting features in Thailand practicing rubber agroforestry. So these were all aspects that we were able to evaluate the smallholder standard against. Finally, and the last was on Vietnam. Again, another example of smallholders who already have FSC group certification. And the idea was to test whether these smallholders could, in fact, achieve FSC certification on their own. And here the focus was on acacia plantations. Some of the challenges that we encountered in the process, largely definitional issues, challenge of defining smallholders as I've previously described. Very different from typical forest enterprise companies that have employees. And in these cases, smallholders were mainly family individuals and families, relatives with typically no formal employees. Smallholder forest and defining what we mean by smallholder forest was also a big challenge. I've mentioned the inclusion of woodlots, plantations, tree farms. But often these tree farmers have other agricultural activities that are often mixed with their with their tree plantations. And so trying to separate and certify the trees from agricultural crops was a challenge, particularly on things, for example, use of pesticides, fertilizers, which are quite, quite strongly regulated within FSC. But for agricultural crops, we decided that the standard had to to basically separate those out. So a farmer could be using fertilizer for agricultural crops, but not for for tree crops. So I mentioned the principles and criteria where we we incorporated all of the principles, but just a portion of the indicators that that are that have been developed by FSC. You can see just a portion of the indicators were used in the standard. Many were found to be just not applicable to to the smallholder situation. I won't go through this in detail, but just to give you a flavor of the type of conversion from a generic indicator to a smallholder standard indicator. If we look at, say, principle 10 at the bottom on implement implementation of management activities, the language in the generic indicator, this 10.1.1, is fairly sophisticated, referring to environmental values, referring to pre-harvest or natural forest composition and structure. Smallholders obviously have challenges understanding and applying some of the the concepts in the indicator. So we simplified almost all of the indicators to, you know, for smallholders to be able to better understand and apply these. So in 10.1.1 under the smallholder standard indicator, we refer to smallholders as promptly replanting or regrowing trees on harvested sites. So a much much more simple language, but just a flavor of some of the sort of conversion. So the standard is developed. It is online. I've listed the contents of the smallholder standard and just to note that it does not include annexes, which are generally quite technically complex documents. And we didn't feel that these were needed or appropriate for the stand for smallholders. So this is the standard. And it was drafted, as I mentioned earlier, 2021. It was approved in just this earlier this year, January 2022. And I've got the website where the standard can be accessed. So the next step now that the regional standard has been developed and approved is to develop national smallholder standards. And this is an image of the national standard developed for Indonesia for pilot testing. So this is this is brand new. And it will be effective in July 2022 and tested in Indonesia by the Indonesia national FSC groups. Sorry, just to go back, a draft is also been prepared for Vietnam, their national smallholder standard. And the intention is to develop national standards also for India and Thailand, but a date hasn't been set. Some concluding comments. We were able to develop the standard and retain all of the FSC principles and criteria, but translate these into language, understandable by smallholders. It does apply just to plantations, which most smallholders are dealing with plantation forestry. There's some key innovations mentioned earlier, the how the indicators apply to the smallholder makeup. So the family members, temporary workers, and others who work in the smallholder forest. And the use of external bodies to support smallholders, where smallholders typically are not capable to do detailed assessments, environmental impact studies, high conservation value assessments. And so the standard provides an opportunity for smallholders to make use of external bodies. Some challenges. I mentioned earlier the issue of 20 hectares. The smallholder is responsible for his or her smallholding, but we had to deal with conditions just outside or in the vicinity of the smallholding versus the smallholder's location. So to what degree would the smallholder be responsible for managing a natural forest adjacent to a smallholding? And that was quite a challenge, but it's reasonably well defined in the standard using this concept of immediate vicinity. The standholder is, it was challenged, as I mentioned earlier by this issue of combining forestry, wood management, timber management versus agriculture, often occurring in the same location. And finally, one of the big challenges now is to expand this smallholder standard beyond the four countries. And we certainly hope that it will be expanded to other countries and continents where there are smallholders. So with that, thank you very much. Thank you, Michael. I can try and get start with a few words on the context of cocoa producing in Central Africa and mainly in Cameroon. So there are a few events to be aware of. First, that there have been a historical decrease of cocoa support to cocoa producers for almost 25 years following the structural adjustment events. There are also domestic challenges. The first one is a political upset in the South African region that have been the main... Sorry, there's a problem about sharing the screen but also sharing the audio which is what we're trying to get the two in place. It's this... It starts here. But it starts here. Yes, it's on. It's already on share, Sam. So it should work. We all tested this before. Thousand of tons in Cameroon that is enough for the expectation that we're returning in 2014 in the cocoa development. There are also a few international changes. That is the first one is a drop of the cocoa price for three years, international price. But what is most interesting for us is the new pressure that is... No, why? So to start with a few words on the context of cocoa producing in Central Africa and mainly in Cameroon. So there are a few events to be aware of. First, that there have been a historical decrease of the cocoa support to cocoa producers for almost 25 years following the structural adjustment plans. That means that the state doesn't really support cocoa producers in Cameroon for a few dozen of years. There are also domestic challenges. The first one, the political upset in the South Swiss region that have been the main production area for almost 20 years in Cameroon. And this upset has been going for almost three years and we don't really see the end of this ability. So it has reduced a lot cocoa production over the last years. As a result, there is a stable production level for a few years. That is about now 240,000 of tons in Cameroon that is less than half of the expectations that were written in 2014 in the cocoa development plan. There are also a few international challenges. That is the first one is the drop of the cocoa price for three years, international price. But what is most interesting for us is the new pressure that is exerted by European countries and European commissions in favor of sustainable, organic or deforestation free cocoa. And as a result in Cameroon, we have seen a strong rise in rainforest island-side cocoa. Since in 2016, there was only about 3% of the cocoa that was set fire by UTC or RA. And it's now about 25%. My presentation will therefore try to analyze how this new challenges have an impact on the cocoa currency chain in Cameroon. It will be disdivided into two parts. The first part will try to describe what is the current state of the community state in Cameroon and how this chain has changed following these long, medium and short-term changes. Especially, we'll have a look at the places of cooperative in trading cocoa in Cameroon versus informal transaction. We'll also have a look at the support by the public essential services to cocoa farmers. We'll study the role of multinationals' ears today in Cameroon and how what is the influence of private certification. And finally, we're going to try to discuss contribution of small, medium and large-cap producers. In the second part of this presentation, we're going to focus on the influence of the certification process, especially the rainforest alliance started out, on the livelihood of small order farmers. To this purpose, we're going to distinguish between three different kinds of small order cocoa farmers. First, we'll consider the non-certified small producers in the forest area, basically the southern part of the country. Second, we'll distinguish the producers who grew cocoa in shade agroforest and we are today involved in the certification process. And finally, we'll consider some farmers based in Graceland areas, especially in the BAM region, also Fjärnde, and we are also involved in certification. We have used a couple of different methods to do this analysis. First of all, we started with a review of Pacific and technical literature on cocoa growing in Cameroon and all the challenges around this this chain. But we mainly actually rely on individual interviews. We did with 63 cocoa farmers who are based in the four main producing regions in Cameroon, basically the center region, North region, Littoral region and South region as it is shown on the map. We selected the respondent according to a four steps process. We first started discussed with rainforest alliance and they indicated us a few cooperatives who are today involved in certification. We did the same kind of consultation with the national cocoa and coffee boards to identify the few cooperatives that are not involved in any certification process. We went to the headquarter of this cooperative to have a kind of focused group meeting and discussing with all the members, the representatives of the cooperative and so on. And finally, we randomly selected a few producers and we ran individual interviews with those people especially to calculate and to establish our operating accounts. As a whole, within the temple, we had 67 producers who had joined the rainforest alliance certification and 26 who had no business links with any certification schemes. On the basis of the surveys we did with cocoa producers but also on the basis of many interviews we had with other stakeholders of the community chains. We have been able to choose this diagram of the structure of the cocoa value chain in Cameroon. So a few lessons may be drawn from this diagram. First, I would have a total volume of 240,000 tons a year of cocoa. Most of it is still exported as unpressed cocoa with more than half of the total production that is exported as bulk. Another is about the percentage of the certified beans that is almost one third, not even one quarter of the total production, about 55,000 tons a year that is exported as a certified cocoa. And finally, we may see the strong role that is still played by the middlemen in this chain as they trade more than half even a two-third of the total production of cocoa in Cameroon. We also noticed what we also did with certification especially with the rainforest alliance scheme is gaining momentum. Both Telcar and Olam are putting certification in place today and it is extending and it is today the only systems that can trace the origin of the beans especially with a mass-balanced stressability system. So the main result that came out from the surveys are presented in this table. Well, we clearly see small-scale production as the average surface of cocoa plantation is between one and a half hectare to three hectares for the three kind of producers. The yields are still quite low, less than 600 kilos maximum. The value-added has been also calculated and it is not that bad and many came from the payment of manpower. That's the main source of value-added for small-scale orders. And what is most interesting is the net profit rate. We clearly see why it's quite low for the cocoa producers that would not benefit from certification support. It's much higher for the two of the kinds of producers between 15 and 24 percent that clearly indicates an influence of certification on the money those people get from cocoa production. So cocoa certification appears as an effective but only a possible solution in Cambridge. On the one hand, cocoa certification concerns today the quarter of the national production and it involves about 90,000 cocoa producers. We also discovered that there is a positive correlation between the average profit level of cocoa growers and its involvement in the certification process. So one of the conclusions is that certification schemes now have largely implemented public services which are today almost non-effective on the field because of lack of means to operate. So one of the conclusions is that private certification has become the main support of the mechanism for small orders and it is difficult to consider certification only as a complementary approach to publication. That's today the main influencing leverage of action to touch small order cocoa producers. But on the other hand, I mean almost 200,000 farmers, cocoa farmers do not today benefit from these market-driven mechanisms for several reasons. First is the age of the plantations, the small size plantations are isolation and also the limited material resources. We saw that the price today that is proposed and the premium that is associated with certification is too low to convince consumers to improve the prediction methods. So what are the main lessons we made from this result? The first one is that it seems to there is a strong influence of certification process being involved certification on the net profit done by the small-scale producers. Why is this the first reason is that there is a higher price that is given to producers that are engaged in certification. The bonus is about 50,000 francs per kilos so that makes a difference on the turnover but there is also a difference that comes from the cost and the cost is reduced, the producing cost is reduced when the certification happens especially because there are some subsidies that are provided to producers in terms of training, equipment and inputs and these cities decrease the cost and then increase the profit. What we also observed is that the state is almost absent now in supporting small-scale producers in Cameroon, in rural areas and most of what are now provided by companies that are engaged in certifications. That means if any commitment for legality, sustainability or zero deforestation of cooperation needs to be met in the coming years we have to do it with an involvement of the private sectors that has the most active stakeholders with small-scale co-co-producer producers. But certification, the rent for SUT certification has still some major shortcomings in terms of traceability. It's almost impossible to attract dry beans from the final market to the plantations and there is also a risk to create a two-tier production systems with some producers being engaged in certification with many benefits and cost reduction and other farmers that are a bit, that cannot get any benefit from that. So that's probably something that cannot be accepted by the Ministry of Agriculture of Cameroon. That's this new background and precious opens a new opportunity to think in the coming years about new forms of governance and to think about what may be the functions that should be more efficiently provided by the states and some of the functions that may be efficiently provided by the private companies in framework of certification. So that's probably something we should think about and observe in the coming years in Cameroon. Thank you for your attention. Thanks very much Guillaume in absentia. I'm sure he hasn't got up at three o'clock in the morning in France to listen. Stop share. And now we're changing geographies again. And we're now going to move to Brazil. Good morning. I am Marie-Gabrielle Piketty, Economist at Cirade Bay Montpellier. I'm sorry I cannot be with you this week, but I have a lot of travel commitments and it was really not possible for me to attend to the Congress. Thanks to Andrew and Michael for organizing this side event and for their understanding. I will present here the result of the work we initiate in partnership with C4 in the framework of Priority 18 of the Forest Trees and Agroforestry Challenge Program. Priority that analyzed in several countries public and private commitment to zero deforestation. This first result obtained in the Brazilian Amazon will be complete within the framework of the project TRAMAS, Amazon Territories that started in 2020 and is financed by RFD, the French Agency for Development. I will briefly present at the end some of its changes. Sorry we've got the same problem. So, first the context, the persistence of deforestation and foridation in the Brazilian Amazon particularly during the last 10 years and this even if there has been several public and private governance initiatives aimed to promote sustainable development compatible with forest conservation and restoration in this region. That initiative are led by sub-national jurisdiction but also my other levels of governance, national, regional, international, value change that those sub-national jurisdictions implement or not that have impact or not. Sub-national jurisdiction is both a level of governance where initiative are there and implement but also a level of articulation between other levels of governance with greater or lesser success on the reduction of deforestation and forest degradation. They are also seen as a pretty scale to guarantee the compliance of commitment to the deforestation, their associated outcome and allow small holders inclusion. However, although promising, some knowledge gaps remain regarding the way such jurisdictional approach at those sub-national levels are implemented and their outcomes. Now let's take a quick look at deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. The first graphs show the evolution of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon as a whole whose data are well known and often cited in academic and non-academic publication. They show a very strong decrease between 2004 and 2012 followed by a persistence or even a tendency to increase after 2012. Now Brazil is a federation and the second graphs show data by state in the Brazilian Amazon. As you can see on the second graph, this trend of persistence increased concern mainly the state of Paris in the eastern Brazilian Amazon. Each state is composed of municipalities with a local environment, municipalities in Portuguese. There are 144 municipalities in Paris state. We assess two indicators for each municipality of Paris. The persistent deforestation extinctions that is the sum of absolute deforestation increments occurred between 2013 and 2018 and the persistent deforestation rate which is the persistent extinction area divided by the total accumulated deforestation in the municipality. The second indicator is useful to assess in every municipality is the weight of persistent deforestation in the whole deforestation process. We plot all the 144 municipalities of the state in a two-dimension scatter plot graphic as you can see here with persistent rate in absolute axis and persistent extinction in the ordinate axis and we identify six types. Without entering in detail about those data, this typology what I wanted to show here is that municipalities where deforestation persists are not numerous, 18 municipalities only over 144. Most municipalities have progressed indeed in the control of deforestation. Then choose two municipalities, one post-frontier, bagaminas municipality and one with persistent deforestation, San Felix do Xingu. To analyze more closely what happened after 2008 when both municipalities were blacklist by federal government because of their high deforestation rate. This period gave rise to the green municipality program led first by bagaminas and then extend to all para-municipality. Several conditions were said to exit the blacklist and its restriction and amongst them the need to reduce their annual deforestation rate below 40 square kilometers per year. As you can see on this graph, para-munices succeed after 2012 but not San Felix do Xingu even if there have also been several initiatives in this specific jurisdiction to halt deforestation. Led by Frederic Brandau who was working at C4 until last year, we performed a qualitative comparative analysis looking at the specific socioeconomic and biophysical features of each reduction, the different interventions aimed at halting deforestation, the way local actors implemented or developed their own intervention. We then used six indicators to compare our case study, the role of local government, vertical coordination, adaptive management, horizontal coordination, participation and inclusion, alignment of public and private initiative. For such analyses we had to collect a lot of academic and technical documents to detail the timelines of interventions, documents that have been completed by an analysis of a 102 semi-structure interview. In this work we have assumed that it was crucial to understand behind intervention public or private the specific features and process that can explain why some apparently similar initiative at the municipal level may not have the same expected outcome. Looking at the intervention we show that both municipalities were impacted by several field-based interventions when they were added to the highest deforester list in 2008. This led the municipal government in Paraguayminas with support from the main local actor and different NGO to produce a roadmap to exit the list. More in both municipalities, perception changed, deforestation was no longer acceptable. The initial goal to exit the list was set by Paraguayminas and then applied to other municipalities through the Green Municipality Programme and this independently of the size of the municipality, whereas for example, Saint-Felix-Dukshin grew four times larger than Paraguayminas. More despite their efforts, none of the municipalities benefited much from this funding. Comparing the role of the local government, we found the local government engagement was strongly different between both municipalities and Saint-Felix was much more led by external actor than Paraguayminas at its early stages. More, Paraguayminas achieved high level of coordination with the federal and state government whereas articulation with those two level was much more difficult in Saint-Felix. The political setting in Saint-Felix was also problematic since two of the last four elected mayor were charged with corruption and one environmental secretary was murdered during the same period. Articulation across government's level was led by NGO that played indeed an important role here, even if some structural problems also linked to lack of operational capacity of some federal and state agency remained unresolved. As the process advanced, in both municipalities, the difference in the local government leadership was also reflected in their ability to manage, take all their expectation and take new steps. The pioneers, charters and political capacity of Paraguayminas enabled the local government to define the rules to get off the blacklist. Then the green municipality initiative became obsolete and the municipality could define other targets such as developing a new integrated development plan or acquiring the very source status. The process was much slower in Saint-Felix. Despite effort, the municipality did not succeed in getting off the list and had difficulty to render new target operational. This led to pessimism as benefit and satisfaction from effort already made have been lacking. Both case studies show some effort to promote cross-technical policy alignment, but the process mainly focused on specific commodity and actors. With the presence of a lot of external actors, engagement and participation have been much broader since the beginning in Saint-Felix and aimed to achieve more effective results. However, too many consultation platform meeting raised high hopes amongst participants, but that could not always be fulfilled, leading some time to demobilization. In Paraguayminas, it was also easier to reach target regarding deforestation threshold without very broad participation at the beginning, because most deforestation at that time was taking place in medium and large land holding. Finally, if there has been some initiative involving private commitment to remove commodity-driven deforestation from the supply chain such as the Sarmatoyam and the Cattle Agreement, they did not translate into premium or strong positive market incentives. Concluding from those two examples regarding the capacity of municipalities in Brazil as a national leisure addiction called deforestation without exclusion, first the role of the local government and its legitimacy are crucial. When both are questioned, the civil society and other actors can make a difference, but they cannot completely substitute such local government. Second, participation is important, but it must also be operational. Too many meeting consultation without concrete results can be counterproductive. Organizing participation step by step with which concrete results impartial is as important. It can turn out counterproductive to impose the same target and the same level of deforestation reduction for all jurisdictional initiative. It is thus important to adjust the objective to local reality and also to have a transparent mentoring system that demonstrates progress and gaps. Such system can indeed attract private investments that are truly committed to promoting sustainability. Now what we're going to do regarding governance in the TerraMass project is to go further and systematically identify public policies and the necessary coordination at different levels to guarantee the expected impact of jurisdictional approach at the subnational level aimed at sustainable agricultural development, forest conservation and restoration and social inclusion. And to identify the complementarity and possible articulation of the public policies implemented with the different systems of certification proposed by our in this territory. And we are going to work in Guaviar, Colombia, Madre de Desperous, Paraguaminas and Cotrigua-Sou in Brazil. Thank you very much, Mario Gabriel in absentia. Now, I'm trying to find the last presentation. Can you help over there? Let's stop sharing. No, not that one. I'm going to start sharing. No, I'm going to find the other presentation, so I don't know what it is. This one, yeah. Okay. Is it on the share screen now? This one, this one, this one. And again, we're changing. Can you do full screen? Changing geographies again. And this time we're now moving to West Africa. And this particular case study is looking at the role of a national multi-stakeholder initiative, the table filier carité, TFK, and its role in terms of the inclusion of women's share producers in agribusiness and cosmetic value chains in Burkina Faso. Just a quick outline, I'm not going to go through all that. I'll just go through it in the interest of trying to save some time. I want to start with a little bit of history, though. This is from some archives from the Gold Coast Column in 1924. So almost 100 years ago, when a superintendent of agricultural and forestry, Mr. Kool, made the following observation. The collecting of share kernels is entirely done by women, but anticipated this would alter when it was found out there was money to be made from share kernels. And this is exactly what happened in the post-2005 era when global demand for what are called cocoa butter equivalents, which substitute for cocoa butter, led to a massive increase in the demand for share kernels and share butter. Just as a little bit of background here, for those of you who know, is Vita Laria Paradoxa. It's a member of the Sakatasi family. It occurs in a very broad band, I'll show them up later, and represents a gendered value chain for at least two centuries. If you use some of the old Arab Muslim traveler texts, which have been translated now into English, it actually goes back more than six or 700 years. But the value chain has been restructured post-2000, and women share producers are increasingly vulnerable. Nevertheless, share remains a staple food oil for 200 million people and a critical source of revenues for 16 million women across three and a half million square kilometers of sub-Saharan Africa. And just to give you some idea of the extent, this is based on a paper by Peter Lover the Lovers of the extent to which sheer occurs across this whole belt, stretching from Senegal all the way through to Uganda. Although there are differences between the West and the East in terms of whether they're high or low steering content share oil. Critical to remember is that half of sheer nut production is still consumed locally. It's an essential staple food oil. And our own research from a former doctor candidate Karen Russo, who now works with the Agence Francaise de Development, we found that 94 percent of households collect sheer nuts, and of whom 60 percent also sell sheer nuts and or sheer butter. It's mainly exported from seven countries in the West African sub-region, and Burkina Faso and Ghana are the two most important. Current rolling average, something like 350, 400,000 tons a year. The global sheer line is confirmed last year in 2021 was the first year that total production exceeded half a million tons. There's been an evolution over time in terms of the sheer nut price, but most critically the value of exports tripled between 2000 and 2005 and increased sevenfold between 2005 and 2012. And this largely reflected the demand from bricks countries for the cocoa butter equivalents which are used in chocolate manufacture, but also in the confectionery industry. So again, it's important to remember that most of the exports 90 percent is for the agri business, the agri food business value chain, whereas only 10 percent is for the cosmetics value chain. This is a simplified diagram taken from the global sheer line strategic plan of the sheer value chain in terms of how from collectors all the way through to refiners and the end up between this broad division between edible brands and the personal care brands of using this sheer. In reality, it's a much more complex pyramidal purchasing network which exists in Burkina Faso, which links women's sheer collectors and sellers in periodic local markets, which occur every three to four days throughout the West African region. These link then with retailers and mid-level traders who then supply to wholesalers in Burkina Faso, which is the second largest town in the Southwest of the country, and ultimately this is to supply the big transnational corporations, of which the big four are Ous-Oliacalsham, which is the Danish-Swedish consortium, AAK, Bungalodis Crocland, which is an American Malaysian-British company, Fuji Oil, and then last but not least, 3FI, which is an Indian transnational corporation. In terms of the national multi-stakeholder initiative, I'm not going to go through all the detail. I just want to highlight some of the critical points. In the late colonial period, the first price stabilization fund was set up to try and control, i.e. a government control of the sheer marketing in the country. That collapsed. They tried to set up another price stabilization fund in 1968, and then during the structural adjustment period in the early 1990s, that also collapsed, and we saw market liberalization of this year's sector, and which was what triggered initially the development of national consultation framework, which eventually led to the creation of the tablofiniere, the Kaite Association in 2000. This was formally nested within a global multi-stakeholder initiative, the Global Share Alliance, which is established in Ghana as a result of the USA Finance West African Trade Help, and then in 2009 it was legally officially recognized as an association entre professionnel in French, and then it was restructured in 2019 following new legislation, which required that the three separate chapters of the tablofiniere Kaite were to relate to production, processing, and marketing were established in accordance with a new law. But what does the tablofiniere character aim to do? Essentially, it's a multi-stakeholder initiative which aims to assist and empower women's share producers in booking a façade through improved representation, liaison with government, the organization of production, processing, and marketing, and trading share, and access to information. It currently has 60 representatives, but this role has changed over time as new national and international regulations have emerged. But it was critical in establishing the first share exchange, which was then replaced by what is now called the Salon International Kaite, which is held every two years, and they've introduced new charters of good governments and village tree enterprises. The share is essentially a non-timber forest product, which were introduced in 2018. In terms of its governance, it has a general assembly, a board, an executive committee, executive secretary, internal control commission, and then specialized commissions which are set up. Its critical weakness is that it has throughout its existence depended entirely on external funds from donors and NGOs, and very often has been characterized by conflicts in terms of leadership between particularly the members of the three chapters. This dependence on external donor finance projects and member contributions is its core weakness. It's a key detail. This led to then discussions which started in 2019 with the proposal to try and establish a three-tier what's called in French a contribution of an obligatory contribution and in fact a tariff on whether share is being exported as unprocessed share kernels or it's being exported as shareholder or it's being marketed locally. So these were the three different values. But this has not been implemented yet because they've had earlier problems with similar contribution of a tariff with the cashew and sesame value chains in the country. However, in terms of what are the options other than this CFO opportunity to raise funding, I think there are five new roles which I just want to summarize in terms of the services that could be provided by TfK and or other partners that could support them. One critical one relates to the question of securing women's rights to land and trees. And despite multiple iterations of what is called the framework law, the reform agrarium, this has not led to either securing land rights or right to trees and this is critical in relation to the access to use of tree crops. And in that sense it's essential to understand share tree as an essential to manage food tree crop. In effect it falls between the agricultural sector and the forestry sector and it doesn't fit neatly in either and this has created huge complications. I would argue we need disruptive change to redefine how women's rights to land and trees can be better secured particularly in terms of the changing social organization in rural communities and a country which has been hit by the growth in jihadist activity in West Africa. I have suggested that this could involve possibly piloting social and environmental performance based payments targeting women such as getting children vaccinated and or school attendants and or the exclusion of fire on farms. These have been tested in Brazil for those of you know the Bolsheviks like Portuguese is falling. These have worked in other countries. Secondly a critical gap is the regeneration department. Despite 40 years of projects supporting women's share producers these are focused almost entirely on either improving the organization of women's share producer groups. Secondly the introduction and new technologies particularly for the pressing of share bartending extraction of this year not oil and thirdly improving access to markets. What we found in recently published work that was published in the international forest review at the end of last year is that over that 40-year period almost no interventions were actually looking at actually sustaining the resource space. So this has become now one of a 10-point action plan that was adopted during a jointly C4 government of Pugina Pasa hosted national forum and share that was held in July last year. So it is possible to propagate but then much much more emphasis needs to be placed on the regeneration of the thirdly there is a need to improve women's access to affordable finance and here Himland is in the room. I'm suggesting we might need to look at developing at a national and original scale the use of an innovative regional financing instrument such as a blended finance instruments in conjunction with public finance for some of the pilot operations. I won't go into the details here because again we're running out of time. Fourthly there is a huge need and opportunity to improve access to new African markets. Traditionally sheer has been marketed either in North America or in Europe but the creation of the new African continent free trader it creates a huge new market but information about that is still relatively scarce particularly for women's share producers particularly the need to try and improve access to information about the progressive removal of tariffs on sheer products which vary between 10 to 40 depending on which country to enhance readiness for trade in the African continental free trade area. And last but not least there's much greater recognition and communication of the multiple benefits of agroforestry partners which is needed. As I pointed out it's a critical crop for 200 million people but it's one of a number of threatened agroforestry species in the parkmen so it's important to look at the parkmen as a whole and the multiple goods they provide are used by humans and livestock as well as the ecosystem service, soil fertility, shade, biodiversity, pollination services, protection of catchments, climate change, mitigation and adaptation as well as continuing to provide a critical source of edible oil for subsistence use and revenues particularly for women. So there's some additional reading for those who are interested but thank you I'll stop here. Now if you are willing to stay we will of course welcome any further questions and then there are just some concluding remarks after we've listened to some of your questions. Can you put up one another? So any questions Michael do you want to hear? I don't see any in the we had there were two in the Q&A which I answered in writing and these related to questions on the the FSC smallholder standard and why it focused only on plantations my response was that in the four countries that the standard was developed for initially natural forest smallholding natural forestry is is extremely limited it's also viewed that plantation forestry was a an easier first step in developing a smallholder standard so at some point if the standard expands and needs to be used elsewhere where there is smallholder natural forestry then it would be it would be adapted for those conditions. Another question was on the there is another smallholder standard in FSC the SLMF and I was asked why why is a second smallholder standard is needed and the second smallholder standard is for 20 hectares or less of small holdings whereas SLMF is 100 hectares where you have a small business business and activities so those were the two questions online if there's any any other questions yeah gentlemen in the front yeah sorry sorry yeah sure yeah no that's the old one just your your name and affiliation yes yeah my name is Thomas I work for the European Forest Institute yeah I have I sorry I missed the very first part of your presentation so apologies if you have already touched upon this point yeah but a problem I think with certification in the context of smallholders is that that and with external support smallholders can get to the level of being certified but they cannot keep it especially if such support is no longer available so I was wondering if you know how FSC is addressing this issue and also what kind of support is actually available to help smallholders to achieve certification status thank you thanks a great question and I guess to some degree your question is exactly addressed why FSC decided to develop an additional smallholder standard the one that I've been involved with and and as I explained the the new standard is much much more simplified where the smallholder you know the intention was that the smallholder should be capable of meeting the certification standard requirements by by themselves or with with with support from other smallholders but the but yeah that was the intention was that they didn't need to hire consultants to to do major you know high conservation value assessments and environmental impact assessments and then the the one issue we didn't address is the annual auditing costs by the certifying body and that and that's that's still something to be you know the cost for that annual auditing obviously because the audit is looking at a much more simple standard the the assumption is that the auditing costs should be quite a bit less as well but yeah hopefully that that answers your question yes I also missed the first part but I I like very much your presentation my question go to the the certification associated with for example EU timber regulation or this upcoming deforestation field commitment we learned from the EUTR that the certification is not automatically verified as a gain lane for for the certified timber to immediately export to the EU country right so that actually required the importer to have to exercise due religion when they import some timber or timber product and that put a lot of pressure to the producing country especially to the smallholder with the new commitment on the deforestation fee valuation it will be the same thing do you think there would be an approach or something about this challenge that can support the smallholder those who also have to compile with the certification but also have to you know pursue in the same direction of this kind of regulation okay thank you for that yeah you're you're referring to essentially two different issues one being legality certification which is essentially applicable to I believe about seven countries Indonesia being I guess the first to achieve fleck VPA and the the T last the Indonesia the Svlk Svlk the legality certification or certificate that process is reasonably well streamlined in you know for example in Indonesia where it's the first one their Svlk certificates are required by all both forestry and wood product enterprise whereas the the FSC certification is is a sustainability certification so they're really two different systems I I think if you can achieve the FSC certification for smallholders then you would almost automatically also fulfill the requirements of the legality certification under you know principle one in FSC deals with with legality so there would probably be separate processing you know certification processing costs that the smallholder would have to absorb that would be you know that's an issue I don't believe it's been has been resolved yet I think I'm going to seize your question as an opportunity to segue into the concluding remarks because they actually end up on the second slide with reference to the EU's new proposed regulation so if you permit me then we can bring this so you can all get on and get your coffees or whatever your next want to move on to and in terms of what we've learned looking at this vast array of different instruments and sustainability standards and the private governance arrangements have been reduced and increasingly now the hybrid governance arrangements which are emerging we see that the growing complexity and multiplicity of governance initiatives does not necessarily equate with great effectiveness in terms of actions on the ground or even reduce rates of deforestation and forest degradation I alluded to in the introductory remarks to the forest 500 report which suggested that there isn't a single company which has attained any of the targets that they'd originally set for 2020 there are key questions about combating imported deforestation to what extent as you heard from the case from both Cameroon and Brazil to what extent will states will governments take the lead in the development of either incentives and or binding instruments I think what we've learned from many certification schemes is that they in themselves are not enough yes but we also recognize the need is a need to better understand and manage the ambiguities and the trade-offs during implementation of many of these new complex hybrid policy regimes I don't know if I can move on to the next slide or where that's been controlled it's not working can you get me on to the next slide I don't know it's one computer doesn't thank you yes there's one computer doesn't speak to the other in addition as I think Marie Gabrielle recognized in her presentation we need to really develop a much better understanding of the outcomes of jurisdictional approaches and how to monitor their progress but lastly and this ties in with your question very much related to whether you know certification or provides a green lane or not I just wanted to highlight three or four recent initiatives one of which is the forest positive alliance led by the consumer goods forum in addition you may have seen that there's been an initiative to try and develop a more standard reporting system led by the accountability framework initiative and what used to be called the carbon disclosure project CDP for 2020 which companies are increasingly trying to use and adopt in addition there was an innovative finance for critical agri SMEs by the global ag alliance but most importantly I think in terms of the future this EU's proposal to introduce a new regulation on deforestation free products because this isn't just about timber anymore that proposal relates to another five commodities and some derived products including chocolate products so this is where even the the sheer butter becomes relevant as well in these debates but this is still being negotiated there are lots of issues my own personal view is I think there are huge challenges ahead even in terms of what we've learned in terms of the implementation of flag T of EPA Michael alluded to seven countries in reality there is only one country currently only one country which is actually developed an operational system and that is Indonesia all other countries are still in the process of trying to finalize their legalistic systems but haven't yet developed licensing in the other countries now if we extrapolate the experience from that flag TVPA experience and the difficulties even the member states in Europe have placed in terms of how how do these countries control this and now extrapolate that to another five commodities in terms of a more legality based I think we have a long and winding road ahead to put it mildly thank you very much for your patience and thank you very much for participating and our apologies for the technical glitches but I hope we got there in the end thank you


a fiery horse with a speed of light, a cloud of dust, and a hearty Hio Silver, the Lone Ranger. In the early days of the western United States, the local sheriffs had a full-time job preserving the peace. They knew very little about law. There was no adequate court system, and the men, women, and children who couldn't defend their rights by force had no law enforcing agency to protect them. The masked rider of the planes was the only man to whom they could turn for help, and in time, Hio Silver became the battle cry of justice. And I'll return with us to those thrilling days of yesteryear, from out of the past from the thundering hoofbeats of the great horse Silver, the Lone Ranger rides again. Our story opens in the district surrounding Flat Rock, one of the richest gold-producing sections in the state. Barnaby Greer opened the door of his home and looks outside for his partner. The letter he holds in his hand contains important news. Hey! Hey, you stand! Come over here! What's the matter with you? Come here! I got bad news! What in tuck is the hurry about the spreadin' of bad news? Well, listen, I got a letter from a lawyer in St. Louis. St. Louis? That's where your brother's young ones was. Well, this is right, but they ain't there now. They're being sent here by stage. That lawyer must have heard somethin'. He heard about all I was to hear. I didn't think news would get back there, but it has. And them good-for-nothing youngins of Pete's are being sent here to lay claim to the goldmine their father left them. That's bad, Barnaby. That is bad. Especially after us figurein' it was ours. It'll mean I'll have to give an accountant of all the gold we took out in the mine. Hmm, that's bad. We gotta do somethin'. You were the one who told me the kids had never know about their poorest claim. I was sure of it. The lawyer mentions the mine right here in this letter. Hmm. Well, think of somethin'.  Think of somethin'. When does the stage get in? It's due at Flat Rock Tuesday. That's half a day's ride from here. I know. Letter come by Pony Express.  We're likely go to jail now for stealin' the kid's gold. Most of what we took is spent. And them kids' lawyer want an accountant. Leave it to me, Barnaby. Got any cash? No. You scraped together enough to ship them back to St. Louis. I don't want them pestin' around here. Give them some sort of a story. It wouldn't do to use the gold. No. Get cash in town. And let that lawyer back east take care of them. Put them in an orphanage or somethin'. I ain't gonna have three kids hangin' around here. I plan to meet that stage and tell them a few things. Don't you worry about it. Just leave everything to me. On the day the stage was due, Stan borrowed money from everyone he saw in town. Tato, the faithful Indian companion of the Lone Ranger, was buying supplies when the bartender gave Stan the last few dollars he needed. The stage had already arrived when he left the cafe and hurried to the express office. He found Tom, Sally, and little Betty waiting for their uncle.  I've got a few things to tell ya. But where's my Uncle Barnaby? I ain't need to be here. Tom, he ain't well. He couldn't get here. What's the matter with him, mister? I hope he isn't real sick. Well, let tell the truth, girl, your father's debts. Worry about you three young'uns oughta warm down. You see, your old man thought he had a sizeable sum of cash here, as well as some mining claims. We were told it was a house and a gold mine and some cash in the bank furs, as well. Yes, we come to live with Uncle Barnaby. Trouble is, kids, a mine caved in. It had cost too much to tunnel it out again. Caved in? Yep. Then your uncle went broke. And then, as if that wasn't enough, his creditors come and took the house and property. There was just a few dollars left, and I got that. Your uncle sent it so as to buy your stage passage back east, where you come from. You know people there. But we can't go back there, Mr. Denton. There's no place to go there. No, no place but the orphanage where the lawyer said we'd have to go. Well, shucks. Even that'd be better than starving out here and putting your poor sick old uncle a lot of worry, wouldn't it? Well, we don't want to worry him or be a bother. There, now that's right. Nice, you sally. Let's see. Tom, you're the oldest. I'll hand this cash money over to you. You sign this paper showing you got it. Yes, sir. You're the man of the family, you know. Sign important papers and everything. I'll go see Mrs. Beebe. That's her house across the street. She'll put you three up for the night and you can pay her a dollar or so for it. Yes, sir. Then tomorrow the stage will come through and you can get on it and get back where you come from. There's cash enough to buy your passies there. Here, now sign here. Yes, sir. This isn't the way we thought it would be. Now don't lose your nerve, Sally. I'm not going to let you and Baby go to the orphanage. I'll get a job and work. Don't you worry. There. Now wait right there. Now go across the street and see Mrs. Beebe about you. Yes, sir. Tom, what about Baby? It's an awful long trip. We can't turn right back and go through it all again. I don't know what else we can do, Sally. This money won't keep us long if we stay here and it's all there is. Tonto, see, Baby? Oh, a real Indian. Oh, gosh, I... Ha, ha, ha. They're plenty nice. Sally, look. Baby's smiling. Well, that's the first time in days she smiles. She likes the engine. Me, Tonto. You from East, huh? Yes. We came here to live with our uncle, but all the money was lost and he's alien. So we're going back east. That's an awful long trip. That's an awful long trip. I wish we didn't have to go. Who? Uncle? His name is Barnaby Greer. Do you know him? Oh, I don't know him. You do? Get away from the youngster's engine.  You stay with Mrs. Beebe till the stage covers. Oh, wait, Mr. Denton. This engine's friendly. I told you to get. You say Greer's sick. Is he sick? You say money all gone. Team none of your business. Now clear up before I... All the cash that was left on what Paul had was given to us, Tonto. You give him cash? Yes. What's it to you? Tonto, go now. You'd better. You'll not worry. Maybe you'll not go east. Not go east? What do you mean? Tonto, maybe see you later. Good riddance to him. Don't you kids talk to no red skims? Tain's safe, Savvy. Now come on. Get him up, scoundrel. Tonto rode to join his masked friend, the Lone Ranger, and briefly explained what he'd seen take place in town. Late that evening, Stan Benton raced up the hill to Greer's place and reigned in his horse before the door. Who? Who there? Who? Barnaby. Open the door. Hey, Barnaby. What are you on horseback for? Where's the buck for it? I had to leave it in town. I had to get here fast. Listen to me, Barnaby. Well, go on, talk. What's all the excitement? Let me come in and get my win back. I wanted to be sure I got here first. First? What do you mean? I'll tell you in a minute. Well, go on now, talk. Get to see the kids. All right. Let's get some cash. You know, I vowed enough to give the stage fair back to St. Louis, but it didn't do no good. They ain't going back. Ain't going back? Where are they now? They're on their way here. On their way here? Count found you, Stan. I told you. And I carried out things just as we'd planned. I met the kids and told them the mine had caved in. Yeah, what'd they say? They believed it all right. Everything was going swell. They was going to stop for the night with Mrs. Beebe and catchy he's bound stage tomorrow. Well, why aren't they doing it? Why are they coming here? Who's bringing them here? I'm trying to tell you as fast as I can. While I was at Mrs. Beebe's, an engine got to talking to the kids and they told them all about themselves. What did you find out? Well, for one thing, I told the kids the money I gave them was what their pod left them. And the engine seen me bow it in the cafe. Blast that engine spoiling all our plans? That ain't the worst of it. The kids didn't want to go back. Of course not. So they was quick to believe anything that was told them. Yeah, what was told them? They didn't believe an engine over you, did they? Well, not at first. I left them with Mrs. Beebe, you see. Then I hung around town for a while. I figured there wasn't any sense in coming back too soon, so I dropped in the cafe. Next thing I know, the engine came in and took me out. Then what? Outside, it was a mask man. He told me the kids was coming here and him and the engine was bringing them. A mask man? What in thunderation is a mask man doing? He told me the whole thing was a lie, that the kid's mind was good and they was going to get it. He talked to the kids? Yeah. Tom, that's the old man. I know, go on. Well, Tom showed him the letter the lawyer wrote, proven who he was and telling anyone of my concern that he was the rightful owner of this mind we've been working. We gotta do something. We gotta do something. We gotta do a doll gone fast. Barnaby, if them kids get here and see that mind's being worked, they'll know the whole thing's a fake. There ain't no telling what this mask man will do. A doll gone it, I didn't think they'd get folks on their side five minutes after hitting town. Gotta do something. Gotta do something fast. There ain't but one thing we can do, Barnaby. Well, go on. I shouldn't know better than to listen to your ideas, but go on, tell me. If the kids get here and see the mind working, they'll expect all the gold has been taken out of it to be theirs. That's where the shoe pinches. We ain't got it. Not having it, we'll both go to jail. You ain't telling me no news. But you said you had a plan. I'm getting to it, Barnaby. Only thing we can do is blow up the entrance to the mind. Blow it up. We gotta do it. Barnaby. When the kids see it's caved in, they'll believe I told them the truth. Then we can convince them the mask man and the engine was just scheming something. And we can still send them back east. There'll be another stage heading there in a week. Yeah. We can tolerate him for a week. But with the mind caved in, we'll have all the trouble of digging it out. Well, what do you want to do? Dig the mind out again or go to jail? There ain't no choice. Go on. Get ready to set that blast. Meanwhile, the Lone Ranger was guiding the buckboard along the narrow backcountry trail. When they neared Barnaby's place, he turned to Tommy. Don't think too hard of your uncle Barnaby, Tom. I can't believe he double-crossed me like that, mister. Suppose you just believed that he was forced to do it by bad companions. Gosh, maybe that was it. My poor used to tell me about the trouble men could get into if they had bad friends. That's it, Tom. We'll see what we can do about getting rid of you. We'll see what we can do about getting rid of you uncle's companion. Then you can settle down with Barnaby. Is the mind there all right, mister? I think you'll find it all right, Sally. Then we won't have to go back in. Gosh, it sure is like we met you in the engine. You didn't seem to be afraid of me, even when you saw my mask. As soon as I heard you talk, I knew you were friendly, mister. Thanks, Tom. What are you thanking me for? Perhaps when you're grown up, you'll understand why it means more to a man to have young fellas like you believing them than grown men. Maybe so, but I don't understand it now. How soon will we be at Uncle Barnaby's place? We're almost there now, Sally. Gosh, I'll be glad. I'm awful tired. There, out. Yes, hand. Good. Is that the house? That's it. Where's the mind? Goes up that hill, a little way beyond the house. Golly, imagine us all in a gold mine. Hey! Hey! Is that Uncle Barnaby? Yes. You've never seen him, have you? No, sir. Oh, tell her. Oh, oh, God. Barnaby, now I'm going to have a talk with you. That suits me all right, stranger. My partner came back and told me he was bringing the youngsters here. I'm afraid you made a mistake, though. I don't think so. Now, the owners of the gold mine. Didn't Stan tell them the mine caved in? Yes, sir. He did. Now, you're Tom, ain't you? Yes, sir. And you must be Sally. Yes, sir, Uncle Barnaby. Well, it's a go-and-go and shame this here mask man and the engine was fools enough to bring you all the way here. Well, you'll find out about that one day when I come to Barnaby. I told him you must have been forced to send word that the mine caved in. We don't hold it against, Uncle Barnaby. This mask man is trying to work some schemes of his own. The mine has caved in. It has. It's caved in and you can see for yourself as soon as daylight comes. But you come in now. I'll put you up for the night and then I'll have to take you back to town first thing in the morning. You mean to tell me the mine is actually caved in? You can hear, can't you? Tom, you stay right here. Keep an eye on these children. Me too. I'm going to find out something just as soon as I can unhitch silver from this wagon. I didn't think the mask man was working any scheme up on Uncle Barnaby. He's masked, ain't he? Well, yes. Ain't your father ever told you outlaws in the West where masks? Knock him in the house. If that arm ray didn't pack two guns, I'd hold him and turn him over to the law. We'll meet sometime tomorrow, Barnaby. Will the mask man be able to win back the children's inheritance? In just a moment, we'll continue with act two of our lone ranger drama. Now to continue our story. Barnaby Greer's nephew and niece were up at dawn despite the late hour at which they'd gone to bed. Greer talked with them at breakfast while Tonto remained outside the house. Now finish up. Eat your breakfast and then I'll show you the cave in and start your back east again. Gosh, sir. I don't hardly know who to believe. Do you, Sally? No, I don't. What do you mean? Of course, it's our own uncle's word against the mask man. But I like that mask man. He didn't seem like a man who wouldn't tell it wasn't true. A mask man and a ninja. They both said that the mime was pan. And you and Mr. Denton said it caved in. There ain't no question about it. As soon as you're done eating, I'll show you. Anyway, even if we do lose the mime, we sort of count it down and have to go back east. It'll be good to know that you're on the level. I sure hate to know that our own uncle planned to cheat us. No, Tom, that ain't what the mask man said. Well, he said that Uncle Barnaby... He said that if Uncle Barnaby was trying to do us all of the mime, it wasn't his fault. It was because of his bad companion. Bad companion? Yes, sir. The mask man said that? Uh-huh. Well, I'll be...  I don't want any more. Neither do I. You better take a look at the baby, Sally, and make sure she's all right. I will, right away. Hurry it up now. I will. You three have got to catch that eastbound stage. If you miss it, you'll have to spend the whole week here. I'm all ready, Uncle Barnaby. What about you, Sally? Coming. Is the baby all right? She's still sleeping. Dad, we're at it all anyhow. Well, what's the matter, Uncle Barnaby?  Well, baby, be all right here. Sure, we won't be going long, very far. Gosh, I'll hate to leave this country. Look at those hills, Sally. They're a sight different than what we see back east, aren't they? Say, uh, Tom. Yes, sir? Did you mean to say you'd sooner lose the gold mine than to find that I was a crook? Sure.  Mom and Paul always told us about you. Hmm. Dad, we're at it. Where's Mr. Denton? Doesn't he love with you? I don't know where he is. I ain't seen him since last evening when he left it. So what? Uh, I do something at the mine. Me come to. Are you still hanging around here, engine? It's Tondo. Well, me still here. Well, bless your hide. Stay close. What are those people doing over there? Why don't they're all around my... matter what was left of your claim. Is that where the gold mine was? Yeah, you can see now that it's all caved in. It sure is. What in Tondo are they doing there? Uncle Barnaby, it looks as if they're digging it out. Well, boy, hey, what's this mean? Howdy, Greer. You're just the man we want to see.  What do you mean, Sheriff? Just that. The law is likely to want you. The law? Sadly, he's the Sheriff. What are you talking about, Sheriff? You'll see later on. Now look here. Don't leave here till the men are done working. What are they doing? Looking for the body. The what? Now you see here, Mr. Sheriff. My Uncle Barnaby ain't done anything wrong. How do you know, kid? Because he hasn't. He's my father's brother. He wouldn't do anything wrong. He told us the truth about tomorrow. Now listen, you'll come with Tondo. Who are you?  Go with the Indian. Let me talk to the Sheriff. Anyhow, they can't say you did anything dishonest. If they do, they'll have time and me to argue with them. That's right, Sally. See you later, Uncle Barnaby. Come on, Tondo. Got a couple of loyal youngins there, Barnaby. I know it. Blasted I. I've been feeling like an ordinary low-down cuss.  Look, there was any way to undo what I'd done. There ain't no way to undo a murder, Barnaby. Murder? Just so. Now she hears, Sheriff. That guy's all wrong.  We'll know. Blame soon. I didn't. I got some pretty raw things. I did scheme to rob them youngins. But that is for I know them. Before I seen the way they could look at me and tell me how they trusted me. And that is before I seen the way both of them kids went and stuck up for me when they seen you. It still stands. I want you for the murder of your partner, Stan Denton. Stan Denton? Yeah. Come on. Step over here a ways. That mine wasn't closed up yesterday night like that, was it? No. And Stan was seen in town yesterday. Seems that you and him argued frequent. Sure. But there wasn't anything serious. And we'll see. Stop here. It's my bet that we'll find Stan's remains inside that tunnel. But we... I... Listen, Sheriff. I'll tell you the truth. Stan told those kids at the mine which was theirs and caved in. There was a masked man that brought the kids here. Him and that engine. Telling them that the mine hadn't caved in. Masked man, huh? A white horse? Yeah.  He lies. He came here with the kids and Stan come ahead of him. And the only way we could make our story true was to blast the mine. Last night? Yes, last night. You're slick, Barnaby. I admit I stole them kids gold, but I never killed. You decide sooner go to jail for stealing gold and hang for murder, huh? Now let me tell you a thing or two. You got a story all fixed. It seems to fit the cases. Only here's what happened. I was at home last night asleep when I heard a horse pull up outside the house. I woke up and heard the masked man shouting. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I get out in bed to see what it was, and I heard a hammering on the door. Then before I could get to the door, this man walked in. He had a pair of six-guns holding them on me. Hey, what's the idea of them six-guns? I yelled. Then he just stood there quiet, saying... You'd better get dressed and come with me, Sheriff. You may find a murder. I couldn't savvy what he was getting at at first. I was just half awake, and then he says... You must have heard the blast. What blast? Near the Greer Mine about an hour ago. Seems like I did hear something, but didn't pay much attention to it. Come over there and see what the footprints around the entrance to the mine show. But it's dark. There's a moon. Can't study footprints in the moonlight. You'll see enough to convince you that there's need for the law. Barnaby, I went along with him and come here, and what I seen was a plenty to hang you. No, no, Sheriff. The ground was tore off with a mess of footprints showing every sign of a scrap. I found an open knife, and it had Stan Denton's letters on it. Like it's not, he tried to use it in the fight. Then I found a part of his coat, which was tore off, and seen a blowed-up entrance to the mine. You and Stan fought. It wasn't me. It was that mask man. The mask man's the one that fought with him and killed him. I was in the house all the while. Those kids can prove it. They showed that they'd do most anything to help save your neck. They don't know what a pole catcher are. Well, I fetched a crew to dig that mine out, and just as soon as we find Stan Denton's remains, you're going to jail for murder. Find that mask man. He's the one you want to find. He's the killer. If that was the case, why'd he come for me? But I just... Are you right here where I'd keep an eye on you? Hurry up there, boys. Get that tunnel opened up. The men worked hard all morning. Sally went back to the house and cared for the baby. When she heard the shout announcing that the mine entrance was cleared, she hurried to her brother's side. Are they going to hang Uncle Barnaby? I'm afraid they will if they find Mr. Denton dead. But they can't. He's our uncle. He wouldn't do anything wrong. Bless you for that.  Sally, you're the living image of your mor. Am I? She's a fine woman, too. They can't wait here no longer. Come on, Barnaby. I'll have to take you in while we hunt for Denton. Sheriff, now listen. No, use argon. But these kids, they need me. Denton made arrangements for them. They can stay with Mrs. Beebe till the next stage. But don't you see? This is their mine. Your men turned it out for them. Now they can get the gold. They can't leave here. But that's so. The mine isn't caved in no more. Come on, man. Sure enough. The mask man, Sheriff. If Denton's killed, he... Thank Mr. Denton in the saddle with us. Come on, Mr. Silver. Denton's alive. Get in there. You see, Sheriff, you were all wrong. But what in time... Hold that door. You gotta rest this man. Get down, Denton. You take Tom and Sally back to the house. You, um... But we want to stay. Go along, Sally. I want to speak to your uncle. Don't let him take him to jail. They won't. Blasted, I want this thing explained. I think your little sister's crying, Sally. Uncle Barnaby, you'll be at the house, won't you? I don't know. He'll be there. Go along, Tom. Yes, sir. I'll see you there, Uncle Barnaby. You told me to come here and dig that tunnel to find a dead man. No, Sheriff. I only showed you the signs of a struggle. But you let me figure... You figured that Barnaby and Denton forced him. That Denton was killed and put in the tunnel. Sure. You didn't figure that Denton might have blasted that tunnel last night to the story that he and Greer told would be convincing to those children. But the fight... The fight took place when I captured Denton and took him to my camp to hold for you. Then went to get you. My boys and all the rest I brought worked all morning digging out that tunnel. And you've given those children the property that belongs to them. And I'm glad to see them get it. The only thing I don't like is that now all the faith they had in me will be shocked to pieces. Sheriff, can't you take me to jail and not tell those kids where I went? I'm an old cuss and I got jailer coming. But I... I hate to see the faith them kids had in human nature destroyed. Throw that mask man in jail. He captured me.  You never did have an idea that was worth a hoot. The mask man gave them kids their claim that have taken me years to tunnel the thing out again and no cash to work with. Sheriff, Barnaby Greer has three children to take care of. And a mind to manage for them. Jail isn't the place for him. I reckon you're right. But that's Keeman Crook. Now wait, don't you hold me. Yes, by darn I'm going to. You blow that tunnel up and there's been 30 men working here all morning. You're going to jail unless you pay for that time. That's it, Sheriff. The coyotes had me in trouble all these years with the cussed ideas. I can't pay them. I need no cash. You stay in jail till you can. I can't get cash if I'm in jail. That's great. You'll stay there from now on. As for you, Barnaby. Behave yourself. So long. Come on along. I don't know what I'd done to deserve a chance like this. They good care of those children, Barnaby.  And they're all I got. And by darn they'll have reason to trust their old Uncle Barnaby. The story you have just heard is a copyrighted feature of the Lone Ranger Incorporated.