Sustainable Coffee

A great deal of tropical deforestation occurs so that crops can be planted. One of the popular cash crops is coffee, which, when grown on an industrial, monocultural scale, is often exported from developing nations to developed ones. Sometimes, coffee is illegally grown within the boundaries of national parks, which exacerbates the plight of endangered species like orangutans, rhinos and cloud leopards. The WWF has followed illegally cultivated coffee from inside Indonesia’s isolated Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park all the way along its export routes to multinational coffee companies and supermarket shelves across the US, Europe and Asia.

The crop is big business for Indonesia, the world’s fourth-largest exporter of coffee, and second-largest exporter of the robusta variety. In an attempt to ensure that the beans are grown sustainably, the WWF has teamed up with ForesTrade - a company with a strong track-record in establishing sustainability programs in Sumatra. Also collaborating is Rainforest Alliance, who are well-known for their efforts to certify sustainably produced coffee. In a different project, Starbucks has aligned itself with Conservation International to facilitate their own in-house sustainability program, which extends beyond the farms into the surrounding forest areas.

As with the RSPO, the coffee industry has established its own self-regulating body, which is called ‘the Common Code for the Coffee Community Association’ (“4C”). The sustainability advocates aim to help the 4C members to prevent further damage to HCV forest, and undo the damage coffee production has done so far.