BONN, Germany – The Global Coffee Platform (GCP) and the Sustainable Coffee Challenge signed on February 8th,2017, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), taking an important step in cementing their strategic partnership to make coffee the world’s first sustainable agricultural product.
The MoU formalizes an ongoing collaboration between the two initiatives to inspire innovation and more ambitious action across the entire sector through increased effectiveness and efficiency of sustainability investments.
Successful transformation of the global coffee sector to sustainable production will require greater investment and action from business, governments and civil society if we are to effectively address the issues threatening the future supply.
The Sustainable Coffee Challenge and the GCP recognize the opportunity and co-responsibility to facilitate the public-private collaboration that is needed to meet increasing demand for coffee, as well as increase the resiliency of coffee-producing communities while conserving nature.
Working toward this shared vision, both initiatives are complementary in their strategy, scope and objectives.
The GCP is the member-driven global platform which facilitates public-private dialogue, the alignment of investments, collective action, and the scaling of successful sustainability activities across the sector.
The Challenge is a movement that is working to spark greater demand for sustainability across the sector. It promotes transparency of commitments and serves as a catalyst and incubator for new ideas, collective action and innovation. Outputs from the Challenge may be taken up and adapted for use by the GCP and others within the industry to advance the transition to a sustainable sector.
In order to further cement the collaboration and clarify their complementary activities between the Challenge and the GCP, the organizations have signed a MoU. These areas of collaboration include:
Setting collective vision and targets
Alignment on the development and implementation of a sector-wide vision and agenda.
Sharing best practice
Encouraging all stakeholders to exchange best-practices and lessons learned and publicly state and report against commitments.
Driving action
Facilitating and coordinating pre-competitive dialogues and action.
Tracking & Measuring progress
Bringing together efforts to develop a framework that enables the sector to track & measure progress.
As GCP and the Sustainable Coffee Challenge continue to support the coffee sector, they aim to drive transformation of the global coffee sector toward sustainable production and consumption. By complementing each other and engaging in shared activities, the initiatives will ensure sector-wide alignment on language and tools.
Actors from the sector are invited and encouraged to participate and actively engage in both organizations.
For more information or to receive a copy of the MoU, please contact the Global Coffee Platform via www.globalcoffeeplatform.org or via email, or the Sustainable Coffee Challenge via www.sustaincoffee.org or email.
