Sustainable Coffee Project Update #1
Welcome to the very first Sustainable Coffee Project update! As part of the development team, I will be documenting and reporting on this project’s significant achievements.
The project (now officially called, ‘Global Coffee Solution’) involves modifications to a “typical” coffee supply chain, that aim to improve a coffee’s social, environmental, and economic sustainability. It also includes the creation of the Yoro Biological Corridor; An initiative that aims to restore forests and link eight forest parks in Yoro, Honduras, in order to address the fact that rapidly expanding coffee cultivation is currently their biggest threat.
What makes it truly special are its end goals: Protecting, regrowing and linking threatened forests in partnership with, and to the benefit of, smallholder coffee farmers.
What is a Forest Corridor?
Forest corridors are an important tool in addressing the fact that wildlife habitats are becoming increasingly fragmented due to human development. This leads to a loss of suitable wildlife habitat, which leads to a loss of biodiversity. The concept of a forest corridor involves the creation of “buffer zone” habitat that connects two or more natural ecosystems that have become separated by human activity. Connecting fragmented forests with restored forest areas helps ensure the long term survival of these forests and gives space to wildlife.
Despite needing critical funding (see my previous and first post about this project) the partners and I charge ahead with every tool and action at our disposal as we work to bring the project into mainstream awareness. It has a remarkable +25 year history of valuable conservation research and advocacy work; and is different from other coffee projects because it produces coffee using a model that — not only protects and restores existing forests — but is also designed to scale up quickly, in order to help mitigate climate change in a significant way. See, Yoro Model.
We’re Teaming Up with Dr. Jane Goodall
Our teams will be working with Dr. Jane Goodall’s teams to add even more credibility to its science and bring widespread awareness to its positive impacts. We also have the potential of incorporating one of Dr. Goodall’s ‘Roots & Shoots’ youth environmental groups in Yoro, Honduras. This is a fairly new development with a long-term vision, and all partners involved have reached an agreement that it feels completely surreal to be partnered with such a legendary protector of the planet and biodiversity!
Related side-note: Did you know that Jane Goodall has and continues to work with coffee growers to protect forests in Gombe, Africa? Dr. Goodall and Institute have extensive expertise in forest-monitoring and mapping for their work that protects and restores wild chimpanzee habitat while providing benefits to the local community members who co-exist alongside these amazing creatures.
We’ve Re-Submitted Legal Documentation for the Yoro Biological Corridor
Achieving official legal recognition of the Yoro Biological Corridor officially by the highest levels of the Honduran government is an ongoing process (as offices changes hands frequently). On that note, our teams have just finished re-submitting the legal documentation to the new Honduran administration.
Once approved, the Yoro Biological Corridor will become the first established forest corridor in Central America — if not the world! The process requires ongoing work to provide updated documentation and obtain signatures from all level of government simultaneously. Nevertheless, the teams 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).
Were Training a New Group of Honduran Youth for Post-Grad Employment
A new set of conservation students are receiving critical training for future employment when they graduate.
Our science teams are starting a new season of online and fieldwork training, with four new local Honduran conservation program students this year. A major part of this project is its on-the-ground science; including forest and wildlife monitoring, as well as the mapping, measuring, and analyzing carbon sequestration throughout tropical forests and on coffee farms. The new students this year are being trained to map and measure carbon sequestration on coffee farms, including measuring the sequestration of organic farming and composting. Once they graduate, these science students will be offered employment opportunities by the Mesoamerican Development Institute (our non-profit partner organization).
This is a Sustainable Coffee Story
Global Coffee Solution is the evolution of more than 25 years of sustainable coffee development history. Long and unbroken examples of science-based sustainability work of this nature are ultra rare. This particular sustainable coffee project work would not be possible without the committed group of core partners: Mesoamerican Development Institute, Merchants of Green Coffee, the original Cafe Solar (‘Cooperative COMISUYL’) farmer cooperative members, and the farmers of the 20 currently operational IOC pilot coffee farms in Yoro, Honduras.
When I was first introduced to this project, I couldn’t help but be inspired by the sheer passion of these people — proven by their ability to sacrifice everything for the chance that its incredibly altruistic and gigantic undertaking could succeed and really create change. Now, I’m committed to helping however I can. Today, I’m focused on cultivating relationships and channels and that will (hopefully) fuel the final necessary evolution the project’s sustainability: The ability for it to become financially positive so that it can finance itself.
New, sustainable coffee project updates are posted whenever there are significant development to this story. Read the next one here.
