Sustainable Coffee Project Update #1

This is my very first personal update as part of the development team for a sustainable coffee program. The project (now called, Global Coffee Solution) includes the creation of the Yoro Biological Corridor. What makes it truly special is the end goal: to protect, regrow and link up threatened forests in cooperation with smallholder coffee farmers.

What is a Forest Corridor?

Forest corridors address the fact that wildlife habitats are becoming increasingly fragmented due to human development. This leads to a loss of both natural habitat and biodiversity.

The concept of a forest corridor involves the creation of “buffer zone” habitat that connects two or more wildlife habitats that have become separated by human activity. Connecting these forest patches helps secure remaining forests, and allows wildlife to survive and move around safely.

Despite needing critical funding (see my previous and first post about this program), we charge ahead with whatever is necessary to get the project into mainstream awareness and bring attention to it’s decades’-worth of valuable conservation research; i.e. government documents, letters of support, outreach to key forest protectors, etc.

So, if you’re just tuning in now, this is a developing coffee story with a long (25+ years) history … and I’m sharing its most recent developments, as one of many ways of documenting and growing awareness of the project. This project is very different from all other coffee programs and produces the only coffee supply that protects and restores existing forests, with the ability to scale and help mitigate climate change in a significant way. See, Yoro Model.

#1 New Forest Advisor, Dr. Jane Goodall

Our team will be working with the Jane Goodall Institute to incorporate a Roots & Shoots chapter in Yoro, Honduras. This is a fairly new development with a long-term vision and all I can say is that working with Jane feels like a childhood dream come true.

Did you know that Jane Goodall has and continues to work with coffee growers to protect forests in Gombe, Africa? She and her Jane Goodall Institute have extensive expertise in forest-monitoring and mapping in order to protect key chimpanzee habitat and make it so coffee growers and chimpanzees can co-exist.

#2 Forest Corridor Government Documents Submitted

We’ve re-submitted legal documentation for the Yoro Biological Corridor to the new Honduran administration.

This forest corridor is linked to the Coffee/Forest Project and is setting up to become the first established forest corridor in Central America, if not the world! The process has not been easy, as there is a lot of documentation hoops to jump through, and of course the changing political landscape, but we persevere and have high hopes that the new female President to will embrace the project. (The previous Honduran President was recently extradited and charged with narco trafficking in the US).

#3 New Conservation Students in Training

A new set of conservation students are receiving critical training for future employed by the project when they graduate.

Our team in Honduras is starting a new season of online and fieldwork training, this year with four new local Honduran conservation program students. A big part of the program is the key science; including wildlife monitoring, plus mapping and measuring of carbon sequestration in tropical forests and forest farms. The new students this year are being trained in the mapping and measuring of forest carbon sequestration on the program’s coffee farms, plus organic farming and composting. Once they graduate, the students will be hired by the Mesoamerican Development Institute (our non-profit partner organization).

This is a Sustainable Coffee Story

Meaning, it’s a work in progress. Started in 1994, it involves more than 25 years of sustainable coffee development history. It involves 3 main partner organizations (in Canada, US, and Honduras) connected by their mission to save tropical forests and their biodiversity via coffee. I’ll post updates will be whenever there are significant development to the story.