In recent years, changes in the way coffee is grown have led to clearing of rainforests, losses of bird and wildlife habitat, declines in biodiversity, and increased dependency on chemicals and pesticides. Alarmed, conservation groups have increasingly focused on encouraging coffee growers to adopt or improve upon environmentally-friendly techniques. We developed these principles to help strengthen the sustainable coffee movement, and promote greater clarity on conservation issues. We hope this will lead to more opportunities to collaborate in promoting conservation in the world coffee industry. They are also intended as a point of reference for the development of industry sourcing guidelines and codes of conduct, changes in government or financial sector policy to encourage sustainable agriculture, and modernization of technical assistance programs.
Shade coffee provides a refuge for biodiversity.
The beauty of these Principles is that they give growers, conservationists and planners wherever coffee is grown a roadmap for protecting our shared biological heritage. Our experience shows that there are both economic and biodiversity benefits from promoting 'biodiversity-friendly coffee'. Traditional varieties of coffee grow best in shady, forested surroundings, and maintenance of shade grown coffee plantations can provide high levels of on-farm biodiversity while helping to restore corridors between undisturbed tropical forests. Coffee grown under a canopy of diverse species of trees provides critical winter habitat for many migratory birds. But over the past few decades, farmers have been cutting forests to grow new, sun-tolerant varieties in treeless farms.