LAUSANNE, Switzerland – In her role overseeing diplomacy towards the Northern Triangle and Mexico, Vice President Kamala Harris announced a Call to Action for businesses and social enterprises to make new, significant commitments to help send a signal of hope to the people of the region and sustainably address the root causes of migration by promoting economic opportunities in the Northern Triangle – El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.
As part of this Call to Action, Nespresso joined as founding participant the Partnership for Central America. It has been established for private companies and organizations to provide targeted support for economic and social development in areas such as digital and financial inclusion, food security and climate-smart agriculture, clean energy and climate adaptation, education and workforce development and public health access.
Nespresso is committed to improving livelihoods in the Northern Triangle by expanding its existing coffee sourcing activities in Guatemala, and by starting to source quality coffees from El Salvador and Honduras from this year on, creating new economic opportunities for smallholder farmers and replicating the positive social and environmental impact of Nespresso’s programs in more communities.
We aim to support the local economy with a minimum of $150 million spent across coffee purchases, price premiums and technical assistance by 2025, more than doubling both the number of coffee farms we work with and total coffee volumes.
Nespresso: Fostering long-term economic and inclusive growth
The goals of the partnership align closely with our own values – creating sustainable economic opportunities for farming communities focusing on long-term economic and inclusive growth. Our involvement in this partnership builds on our longstanding commitment and partnership with coffee farming communities globally.
In 2003, Nespresso developed, with the NGO the Rainforest Alliance, the Nespresso AAA Sustainable Quality™ Program, a unique approach to sourcing high-quality sustainable coffee, which aims to improve the quality of the coffee, protect the environment and enhance the livelihoods of farmers and their families .
By working directly with over 120,000 coffee farmers in 15 countries, the AAA Program model unlocks the potential of coffee for producers by addressing some of the key social, economic and environmental challenges they face with specific practical solutions, focused on improving yields and quality to drive revenues, paying higher prices for high quality coffee and driving activities to improve livelihoods, providing free agronomy support, promoting human rights protection and gender equality, and building resilience to climate change through regenerative agricultural practices and agroforestry.
“We are delighted and proud to answer Vice President Harris’ call to action, by being a founding participant of the Partnership for Central America,” said Guillaume Le Cunff, CEO of Nespresso. “We strongly believe in the power of private-public partnerships to develop relevant projects to foster economic and inclusive growth for communities and to preserve local ecosystems.
Through our long-standing work in coffee growing regions, we know that success depends on collaboration and the combination of different expertise and know-how. The goals of the partnership align closely with our own and we look forward to continuing creating sustainable economic opportunities for farming communities in new regions.”
