Leading up to the International Coffee Conference, Hivos, IUCN Netherlands, Oxfam Novib, Solidaridad and WWF have launched the Coffee Barometer 2014.
It provides an interesting and thorough overview of the situation with regard to sustainable coffee. UTZ Certified welcomes this report and agrees with the main findings: a lot is being done to help farmers produce more sustainably and make them more resilient to climate, but a major challenge remains to generate collective action across the coffee chain to tackle this global issue.
As the report states, “voluntary standard systems are amongst the best tools currently available in agriculture” and UTZ is proud to be the largest one for sustainable coffee in the world.
Building demand
UTZ fully endorses the important message from the report that there is a need for a commitment from different parts of the supply chain to ongoing capacity building and long term investment in order to further improve the conditions of farmers and their communities.
We therefore call on market players to live up to and increase their commitment to sustainable purchasing.
The supply of certified sustainable coffee is there, now only the demand needs to follow.
Even if the UTZ certified coffee is not sold as certified, farmers benefit from the good agricultural practices and resulting higher yield and quality product, but obviously it is better if farmers are rewarded for their sustainability efforts further by selling their product as certified and receiving a premium.
UTZ continues to believe that the market is the best trigger to stimulate sustainable practices.
Climate Change
UTZ takes climate change very serious and has strengthened climate related aspects in its newly launched Codes of Conduct.
The previous version of our Code addressed already the key items regarding both climate change adaptation as well as mitigation, including improved soil management, optimal fertilizer use, water management and protection of biodiversity.
Our new Code that was launched on May 15th has an even stronger focus on climate change through stricter regulations regarding the treatment of coffee waste (a major source of methane emissions) as well as better guidance for farmers regarding adaptation measures.
These help farmers to reduce the negative impacts caused by changes in climate. Through strengthening the production systems we help farmers to become more resilient against changes in rainfalls and temperature and where possible against extreme weather events.
Through several pilot projects UTZ is strengthening its climate approach even more. In Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Honduras we introduced the “Energy from coffee waste” project.
This project has led to sustainable production of energy from coffee waste on small to medium sized farms and reduced pollution through proper treatment of wastewater.
Furthermore, we started a Coffee Climate Care (C3) Vietnam, a three-year multi-stakeholder initiative aimed at establishing adaptation strategies that will make coffee producers more resilient against the impacts of climate change. For more information on UTZ Certified’s approach to climate change please see their position paper on Climate Change.
Source: UTZ Certified
