Coffee Climate Crisis

We’re often reminded that climate change is one of the biggest challenges we face globally today. And yet sometimes we can get lost in the overwhelming scale of the problem. An incredible 75% of the world’s coffee is grown by smallholder farmers with tiny plots of land, and at Cafédirect we are seeing first hand that these farmers are at risk from the effects of climate change, their livelihoods and the quality coffee supply is increasingly under threat.

So we have launched our Coffee Climate Crisis report and video, which tells of a groundbreaking project and the remarkable story of the CEPICAFE coffee farmers’ co-operative in northern Peru. They have already been feeling the devastating impacts of climate change, with torrential rain, flooding and landslides, destroying their crops. However there are few financial mechanisms to fund adaptation. So we decided to create our own! We had to find a solution that would help and enable the producers to tackle climate change themselves, and make a lasting difference.

We piloted an innovative project in which land above the coffee communities was reforested, within same watershed management area, generating carbon credits, which in turn funds adaptation activities on the coffee farms. The project started in 2008, was accredited in 2010 and will run for 25 years. It not only provides a valuable source of income for the subsistence farmers who are now employed to carry out the reforestation, but 10% of the revenues from the carbon credits are dedicated to fund adaptation on the coffee farms.

This is not an isolated case. There are approximately 25 million smallholder coffee families in 60 countries around the world, so more needs to be done. We would encourage others to copy our model.

We are calling for:

1. Climate change adaptation to be on the agenda of all major coffee suppliers and retailers
2. Sustainable financing of adaptation for smallholder farmers to be a priority
3. Other hot drinks companies to recognise the responsibility they have for the supply chain
4. Smallholders themselves need to be recognised and valued as part of the solution
5. The Foodservice industry, businesses and coffee lovers everywhere to choose their coffee wisely

We believe that it is only by working in true partnership and investing across the entire supply chain that we can tackle our industry-specific issues. We hope that others will take the learning we have from this project and help protect the entire coffee industry from the impacts of climate change.