Climate change

Climate change / Coffee and the environment

Carbon credits with coffee: a how-to guide

Last spring I posted about a lecture I attended at the SCAA conference on coffee and climate change. I focused on the climate module that Rainforest Alliance is adding to its certification. Part of this initiative was to create a methodology for measuring and verifying carbon stored on coffee farms and a mechanism for producers to receive payments for carbon credits.

Rainforest Alliance partnered with the International Finance Corporation (IFC), part of the World Bank Group; ECOM Agroindustrial Corp., the world’s third largest coffee trading company; and coffee farmers in Mexico and Nicaragua to develop and test these methodologies. They produced a document, “Guidance on coffee carbon project development using the simplified agroforestry methodology.”

The guide is in six parts, and I’ll paraphrase the introduction to outline what each is about:

  1. A general overview of forest and agroforest carbon projects to help the reader understand what a ”project” is and what it is not; what is needed to set a project apart from business as usual practice; and why such projects are important and have value.
  2. Preparation and design of a project, requirements for a Project Design Document which identifies and explains each of the project’s key activities, elements, and important data.
  3. Description of risks to carbon projects’ success and how to assess and lower or manage them.
  4. Explains the processes of independent third party evaluation.
  5. An overview of the financial and contractual arrangements associated with carbon projects.
  6. Glossary and resources.

It’s a pretty straight-forward and non-technical document, and if you are interested I encourage you to download it and give it a look. One of my first thoughts was that this is still well out of the realm of many very small producers who might be only marginally literate. Like all certification schemes, we (the consuming “North”) are imposing a lot of rules and erecting a lot of barriers on farmers to in essence prove they are managing their land in an environmentally-responsible manner so that they might be rewarded for it. I don’t think the average Juan Valdez is going to sit down by the light of his wood-burning stove with this guide and be on his way to selling carbon credits. It will require support and partnership, which in turn requires funding, and ultimately boils down to the need for consumers to be willing to pay more for a sustainably-grown cup of coffee. Which I’ve been saying all along.

Photo by DelosJ under a Creative Commons License.

Certifications / Climate change / Coffee and the environment / Rainforest Alliance

Coffee, climate change, and Rainforest Alliance

At the Specialty Coffee Association of America expo, we attended a lecture on climate change and coffee. Several speakers discussed this topic, but I’ll focus on the climate module that Rainforest Alliance is adding to its certification. This was announced at last year’s SCAA meeting (my post here), and RA’s Jeff Hayward provided more details on the program.

Coffee, especially shade coffee, is a global crop that has a relatively lower impact on greenhouse gas emissions and a more positive impact on carbon sequestration than many other crops.There is potential for shade coffee farms to contribute to the mitigation of climate change and generate income for farmers at the same time; I have a previous post that outlines the basics.

Rainforest Alliance has developed around 100 different criteria used to certify farms. A small number are considered required critical standards. Beyond that, certification is awarded once a particular percentage of the remaining criteria are met. RA is evaluating which criteria represent practices that improve carbon storage and mitigate climate change. If those particular criteria are among those that are met by a farm, they would be eligible to receive a ”Rainforest Alliance Plus” or "Climate Friendly" certification. RA is currently testing some assumptions and developing these criteria in Guatemala.

This will help buyers choose coffee that is climate friendly, but depending on what consumers are willing to pay won’t necessarily generate additional income for producers. A second part of RA’s climate program is to work to develop a mechanism for producers to receive payments for carbon credits within existing carbon markets. Since these must be beyond ”business as usual,” existing shade coffee farms might not be able to greatly increase their amount of carbon sequestration. But this holds promise for farms that are growing sun coffee or shade monoculture as they can gain credits for planting shade trees or for reforestation — the more the better. It could also help discourage the conversion of coffee to pasture or less eco-friendly crops. RA is working on pilot carbon credit projects now in Mexico and Nicaragua.

Climate change / Coffee and the environment / Coffee news and miscellany

Green Mountain climate change grant finalists

Last month, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters announced a request for proposals for four $200,000 grants to organizations working on climate change. The grants will be awarded in each of four categories: transportation-related emissions, threats to coffee-growing communities, building political will, and empowering individual action.

They’ve just announced the finalists in each category. While I’m disappointed that a proposal by the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center (developers of the Bird-Friendly shade coffee criteria) didn’t make the cut, I see that another great organization did. The American Bird Conservancy is one of five finalists in the Threats to Coffee Growing Communities category. Here is a summary of their proposal:

[We] will determine the additional carbon load held by shade coffee plantations over sun coffee plantations, and calculate the income differential per acre for coffee production for shade and sun  growers. We will then test a system to stream carbon offsets credit funding incentives to shade growers to compensate for the difference in income between the two systems. If it can be shown that shade coffee can be economically beneficial due to its additional carbon load (from both a sale of credits and/or consumer interest), then this project stands to benefit farmers across millions of acres of the Andes and could be the land management driver that saves the Cerulean Warbler the fastest declining songbird in North America on its wintering grounds. The project will have multiple additional benefits for famers and local communities in terms of the protection of watersheds and traditional farming techniques which are currently threatened by conversion to sun coffee.

ABC does excellent bird conservation work at home and internationally, and does so very cost-efficiently. They are very familiar with Latin American shade coffee issues. I’ve written about their Cerulean Warbler campaign, which has included working with Colombian partners and shade coffee farmers to preserve wintering habitat for this declining songbird. ABC has continued to work on reforestation projects in South America which includes shade coffee farms. I’ve also written about the potential for coffee farms to provide carbon sequestration services, and think the ABC proposal is very worthy of support.

For the next week, the public can vote for and comment on proposals at JustMeans.

Climate change / Coffee and the environment / Keurig Green Mountain / Retail and specialty roasters

Green Mountain to fund climate change projects

Green Mountain Coffee Roasters will award four grants of $200,000 each to organizations with ideas to combat climate change in four core areas: transportation-related emissions (including GMCR’s product shipping), threats to coffee-growing communities (enormous, given that climate change is already pushing coffee production to higher altitudes), building political will, and empowering individual action. Grant recipients will also be required to meet with GMCR twice a year to help the company work on reducing and mitigating its own carbon footprint.

The last two grant categories seem a little amorphous, but I’m quite enthusiastic about the potential for development of programs that can help farmers adjust to climate change (for those that can; the solution for many farmers may actually be to transition to other crops, unfortunately).

This grant project is part of a larger effort by GMCR to focus on climate change through changing business practices and raising awareness (you can read their statement on climate change here).

Spending $800,000 in the current economic crisis by a company that sells what is essentially a “luxury” item is, I think, a pretty strong statement of commitment to environmental responsibility. Kudos to GMCR.