Identifying threatened geographies and the cost of inaction

Know your Risk

To best manage climate risk in a supply chain, companies need to be able to prioritize areas where resilience is critical for future supply security.  While a global phenomenon, the specific disturbances associated with climate change vary across contexts with regard to type and severity.

Companies are often aware of the general risk of climate change and the need to take action.  But even where specific projected climate effects are identified in particular sourcing areas, companies and their organizational partners are better able to make the case for investment if they understand not only the climate risk that farmers face and possible solutions, but also the financial risk for the company of not investing in climate resilience.

Tools to Help with risk diagnosis

Climate Suitability Maps

The International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) scientists have created a tiered risk framework based on the severity of likely impacts to crop suitability and commercial viability.  To support climate change adaptation strategies CIAT developed a gradient of climate change impacts for coffee production by differentiating the different types of climates suitable for coffee production by clustering occurrence locations on a number of bioclimatic variables.  The climate zones are described and ranked using their dry season characteristics, including its length, mean temperature and precipitation.  The difference between current and the most likely future distribution results in the gradient of impacts, ranging from unsuitable without adaptation, to suitable with incremental farmer adaptation and suitable with substantial farmer adaptation.   

Reference: Bunn C, Castro F, Lundy M. 2018. The impact of climate change on coffee production in Central America. CCAFS report. CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS)

For more information, take a closer look at CIAT’s 2018 report completed for the Alliance for Resilient Coffee on The impact of climate change on coffee production in Central America or for more information about climate suitability maps relating to other sourcing regions, please reach out directly to Christian Bunn (c.bunn@cgiar.org).

Cost of Inaction

Is climate-smart agriculture worth the investment?  Companies interested in the return on investment of climate-smart agriculture, should also consider the cost of inaction.  While many believe climate-smart agriculture to be an expensive investment, the cost of not acting can result in much higher losses of income for farmers and the economy as well as overall losses of supply.  CIAT scientists are currently working on Cost of Inaction studies pertaining to coffee.  In the meantime, please see The Economic Case for Climate Action in West-African Cocoa Production for an insight as to how a similar study would be useful for coffee. For more information please reach out directly to Christian Bunn (c.bunn@cgiar.org) or Mark Lundy (m.lundy@cgiar.org)

Reference: Bunn C, Schreyer F, Castro F. 2018. The economic case for climate action in West-African cocoa production. Cali, Colombia: CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS).

Welcome to
Climate Smart Coffee

Increasingly, coffee companies recognize the need to plan for and act on climate change to mitigate supply, reputation and quality risk and realize their sustainability targets. This website is designed to guide medium and large companies, who buy from and support smallholder coffee value chains, to identify relevant areas of engagement and investment in smallholder adaptation to climate change.

Building on knowledge from platforms like coffee&climate, Global Coffee Platform, Specialty Coffee Association, and Conservation International’s Sustainable Coffee Challenge, climate smart coffee highlights research work completed by the USAID Feed the Future Alliance for Resilient Coffee, CCAFS Mainstreaming Climate Smart Value Chains initiative and other key partners.

For complementary information on climate-smart agriculture (CSA), please visit the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) CSA Guide which provides the basics of CSA across crops and geographies, and for companies working specifically with cocoa, please visit our sister site Climate Smart Cocoa, developed by CIAT and Rainforest Alliance/Utz.

Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security

Climate-Smart Agriculture Basics

Company Engagement in Climate-Smart Agriculture

Take Action

Increasingly, companies recognize the need to plan for climate change to mitigate risk and realize commitments to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) or other sustainability targets. Coffee companies in particular ultimately seek to translate climate risk intelligence into practical, operational strategies to build supply chain resilience. Diagnostic and decision-making tools are being created and accessible to users on this website as well as the toolbox.coffeeandclimate.org

Smallholder coffee sourcing entails working with many, diverse farming communities around the globe, each with its own agricultural practices, cultural context, and risk exposure. Depending on the role the coffee company plays in the supply chain, they may lack fine-grain visibility into smallholder performance, or they may seek guidance on how to translate fine-grain data on climate risk and smallholder performance into targeted action plans across their sourcing geographies.

To take action, coffee companies may follow a simple process laid out in the Introduction to Assessing Climate Resilience in Smallholder Supply Chains. This guide, created by the Sustainable Food Lab and Root Capital, breaks down the complex concept of resilience into manageable themes following a five-step process that coffee companies can follow (laid out below), including links to tools and resources offered by leaders in the field. The initiative for coffee & climate toolbox also contains actionable tools by a number of expert research organizations to address these steps.

Take Action

About

About

This website was developed by the Sustainable Food Lab and CIAT.  Thank you to the many organizations who provided tools and resources to the climate smart coffee website.  Photos for this website were provided by CIAT, the Sustainable Food Lab and World Coffee Research.

Our Research Partners

Led by the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) is a collaboration among all 15 CGIAR Research Centers, including IITA.  With help from the Rainforest Alliance, Root Capital and the Sustainable Food Lab, provide the evidence-based science behind climate smart coffee.  To learn more about individual contributes read below.