Coffee and Tropical Rain Forests, Today

Can we save them both?

saving the tropical rain forests and coffee

Part Two, follows last week’s unintended consequence, “Tropical Rain Forests and Coffee, Will we lose them both?” Part Two focuses on how we are trying to save them both.

PART TWO

International Soft Governance of Tropical Rain Forests

Intergovernmental international organizations, like the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), work with governments to develop policies and programs for rainforest protection. Recall the United Nation’s role in destroying millions of acres of tropical rain forest to industrialize coffee in the 1950s, from last week’s article. It is important to understand its history because the UN is a creature of its member states and takes on the mission and interests of those members. The UN has no independent legal authority other than what is agreed upon among the members. So as the members’ interests changed from economic prosperity at all environmental costs to incredible urgency to protect what is left of the world’s biodiversity — it was all a reflection of member priorities.

The Integral Role of Indigenous People in Forests and Coffee

The UN as a intergovernmental body has finally come to recognize the vital role of indigenous communities in rainforest preservation in the last two decades.¹ Efforts are being made to empower them and recognize and enforce their land rights. Collaborative initiatives involve providing technical and financial support, involving indigenous communities in decision-making processes, and enabling sustainable livelihoods that reduce dependency on destructive practices, like selling timber for groceries and clothes.

Today, almost 30 different indigenous nations have coffee production as a central part of their economies and traditions.² Coffee is grown in 88 of 122 municipalities in Chiapas, and half of those are nearly 100 percent occupied by indigenous people.³ Indigenous grown coffee based on the traditional knowledge developed around this crop became part of the culture and economics of the Chiapas region of Mexico. There is not a single Starbucks in sight in the region.⁴ The commodification of their own traditional knowledge has proven profitable for the indigenous people of Chiapas and Oaxaca and contributes not only to the economy of the region but to the accumulation of more traditional knowledge and perpetuates their identity.⁵ Tropical rain forests are exactly where coffee growing regions exist, so the interests of coffee and tropical rain forests should develop integrally, not in competition.

While the United Nations has never publicly admitted they were mistaken in supporting the mass clearing of tropical rain forests, they no longer fund more of these ill-conceived projects to clear tropical rain forests, but they could do more to restore forests by supporting rain forest-grown coffee. One of the sustainability goals of the United Nations is “biodiversity” which makes it essential to conserve tropical rain forests. Ironically, they never mention they had a hand in destroying millions of hectares of tropical rain forest in the 1950s and 60s through UNEP.⁶ The UN should be consistently more transparent and this is just one example of how transparency could help the credibility of the UN.

Non-profit organizations have worked to fill the gap in public support for reforestation. The Rainforest Alliance, a non-profit organization, has worked with the indigenous communities in Chiapas and Oaxaca to replant 9,890 acres and replant 20,000 coffee bushes that replace plants killed by the roya fungus. Replanting is a long process to bring back a rain forest, but the work has been started. It is a long journey to replace the 5,000 square miles reported lost in 1990. Yet, forest land continues to be lost each year, with a net loss, despite efforts to re-forest.

Can the U.S. use its great trade power to buy environmentally-friendly coffee?

            The United States is the largest purchaser of coffee in the world by almost two-fold more than the second largest purchaser, Germany.⁷ Coffee is the most valuable world trade commodity often ranked second only to oil, yet we think only of the energy sector when considering the environmental impacts. The coffee trade is massive, with 500 million people globally involved in the trade of it. The coffee market in the United States alone is $19 billion and the world market is $55 billion. We have a popular culture of coffee drinking and franchises of coffee bistros. We socialize over coffee and make it a morning ritual.  In the last two decades, coffee shops have become corporate power brokers and social policy influencers, like Starbucks.  

Just being better stewards of the land

Each sovereign nation and U.N. member with forests, can establish their own forest conservation programs. Many countries have established protected areas and national parks to safeguard rainforests. These initiatives involve creating and enforcing laws to prevent deforestation, illegal logging, and encroachments on forest lands.

The UN REDD+ is a new organization to implement the UN Climate Change Treaty (UNFCCC) ⁸ that is dedicated to “reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries, and the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks.”⁹

Sustainable Forest Management and Reforestation

Encouraging sustainable practices in logging and timber industries is necessary but requires a strong rule of law that applies to everyone. This includes promoting responsible harvesting techniques, reforestation efforts, and certification programs such as the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), which ensures timber products are sourced from sustainably managed forests.   

         The Rainforest Alliance, a non-profit organization,¹⁰ has worked with the indigenous communities in Chiapas and Oaxaca to replant 9,890 acres and replant 20,000 coffee bushes that replace plants killed by the roya fungus. Replanting is a long process to bring back a rain forest, but the work has been started. It is a long journey to replace the 5,000 square miles reported lost in 1990; but land continues to be lost each year, with a net loss.

Consumer Labeling

            The tastes of consumers increased the demand for shade grown coffee. The small farms that survived the coffee market collapse during the industrialization period, enjoyed a resurgence in a demand for their coffee beans.

            The Smithsonian Institution responded with the establishment of “bird-friendly” coffee labels, a variety of a “shade-grown” label, for any producer who met their standards. Those standards include a certain number of species of trees and bushes in use, use of traditional not chemical control of pests and maintenance of these standards, which would result in 95% more bird species. These natural coffee plantations in comparison to the open sun, industrialized coffee plantation, earn the certification shown by these labels. 

            Other designations use the organic factor as the standard, earning the USDA Organic certification. The USDA Organic label is a regulatory standard and can be voluntarily adopted for trade by coffee producers in Latin America. Other designations focus solely on shade grown qualities, like the Rain Forest Alliance that certifies coffee farms which focus on establishment and maintenance of tropical rain forest species in traditional coffee agriculture. A single issue label, the Fair Trade certification, does not require any environmental standard, but focuses on whether laborers are paid a fair wage and treated fairly, and unfortunately, it does not matter whether it is a traditional shaded farm or a large, industrial agricultural operation.

            Environmental benefits as well as the humanitarian and economic stability factors are important enough to warrant market intervention by requiring at least a certain percentage of coffee imported into the United States to be certified under one of these designations. Much like we require a certain percentage of recycled paper in all newspaper in order to implement a policy of reduction of the destruction of trees and to prioritize recycling and reuse, we could also use the same principle to reduce deforestation.  

With the U.S. being the biggest buyer in the world, why can’t we use our buying power to change the world for the better?

We have already seen what changing a complex system can do with its unintended consequences, and should we intervene in the marketplace to try repair the damage without unintended consequences? We may be estopped from even trying. International law may prevent us from taking any action based on our buying power to interfere in free trade.

International law and our policy of “free trade” in our free trade agreements (like GATT)¹¹ prohibit complete impediments to trade that could be protectionist, and coffee labeling based on growing conditions or fair labor practices could be seen as protectionist. Because this kind of restriction does not clearly demonstrate there is a public health risk, this would likely violate international trade and the phytosanitary rules of GATT. But once all coffee is imported, then consumer-driven labeling and certifications can be used. Producers can use labels as marketing devices so that  consumers will favor their product over other less environmentally-friendly or less labor-fair operations, and free trade principles will not be violated.

Can’t we just buy our way out of this? Buying Carbon Credits and Saving Tropical Rainforest Lands

Where there is a lot of money to be made, expect frauds to follow it. Altruisim is the common front, and carbon credit markets are no exception.

Carbon credits are a form of payment to offset the carbon emissions generated by companies or individuals for which they seek to offset it by planting trees as carbon sinks, or in many cases, buying tropical rain forests to prevent their destruction so they can continue to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere. You might expect to pay US$3,000 per 300 tons of CO2 emitted for example. Last year, companies spent $100 million on carbon credits.¹²

The carbon offset market is valued at about 2 billion dollars and a trading exchange was established to trade what was expected to be a massive trading market for carbon credits.¹³ However, the volume of trading did not materialize to sustain a trading platform and it was closed in 2011.¹⁴ Worse, recent investigations have revealed that the carbon credits were mostly fraudulent and may have even hurt the sustainability of the tropical rain forests. Major companies in the U.S. (like Delta Airlines and Disney) make large claims about climate change mitigation by purchasing largely useless carbon credits.¹⁵

The Nature Conservancy in 2021, began its own internal investigation after criticism it was overstating the aggressive timber harvesting it purported to be stopping and thereby selling more carbon credits, It turns out that the carbon credits did nothing to offset timber harvesting.¹⁶ In 2023, an investigation into the practices of Verra, the world’s leading carbon standard, found 90% of the carbon credits to protect tropical rainforests never offset carbon and may have done more damage.¹⁷ 

A couple in Taiwan, Hsu and Yang made US$3.13 million in profits by setting up a fraudlent carbon credit trading company, Rich Alliance Good Health Co. in 2016, claiming to trade on a non-existent carbon exchange.¹⁸ In August 2022, the Hsinchu District Court in Taiwan convicted the couple of violating the national Banking Act, and Hsu and Yang were sentenced to prison for 6 and 4 years, respectively, and were forced to disgorge their profits.¹⁹

Despite optimistic studies that claim the carbon credit is good because there is not as much fraud as you might expect, is hardly a hardy endorsement.²⁰ The carbon offset game has turned out to be just a game.

Finally, the idea that the air we breathe and the water we drink can be privatized into the sale of credits to destroy one part of it is another form of colonialism where it is meant to benefit the colonizer at the expense of everyone else.²¹ We need to rethink tradeoffs as a strategy.

The Seven Generations View

Our faith sought the harmony of man with his surroundings; the other sought the dominance of surroundings.

― Chief Luther Standing Bear (1933)²² 

          Vine Deloria, Jr. noted our responsibility to consider those generations most familiar to us – looking three generations back, our current generation and three generations forward --- in consideration of our actions.²³ Looking back three generations, we see the destruction of 65 million acres of tropical rainforest in Mexico alone, has robbed us of our common natural heritage and even more so, robbed Mexico, in sacrifice for short term economic gain in a trade commodity. The transition to industrialized coffee set off a chain of events of unintended consequences that would plague Mexico for the coming decades. Environmental benefits that the tropical forests could have provided include not only the increasingly important carbon sinks role and the loss of literally thousands of species, forever. The losses are tragic.

            Looking ahead three generations from our current one, reducing deforestation and returning to traditional ways of planting and maintain coffee will be the only way to adapt to climate change that is projected to destroy sustainable coffee growing in its current form.

Working with nature rather than against it, as Luther Standing Bear describes, would have advised against cutting down tropical rainforests to industrialize coffee that had found a balance of growth with and among the tropical rain forest trees. For example, returning to these more traditional shade-grown methods of indigenous farmers²⁴ is already being rewarded with higher prices per pound, and special labeling for consumer preferences.

Coffee is not yet extinct but all indications are that it will be within the century without significant intervention.

Unfortuantely, by not valuing the impact that the coffee trade might have on the global environment led to devastating and irreversible effects. In the global effort to bring economic stability to Mexico and Central America with economics as the controlling value, the environmental, societal and indigenous cultural values were not considered, which lead to severe unintended consequences in the destruction of complex and invaluable tropical rain forests.

However, the United Nations has unequivocally stated that the solutions to deforestation and restoration of forests lie in natural solutions that work with nature.²⁵ It took 3/4ths of a century to come full circle from destroying tropical forests for economic gain to sustaining and restoring tropical rain forests for survival of life on earth.

Better late than never.

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1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2023/05/01/indonesia-rain-forest-guardians/

2. Centro de Estudios para el Desarrollo Rural Sustentable y la Soberanía Alimentaria (CEDRSSA) (2018) Oportunidades para la agricultura en México: La estevia. Poder Legislativo Federal Cámara de Diputados. CDMX, México, 13 p. http://www.cedrssa.gob.mx/files/b/13/92Estevia.pdf

3. Quoting Marco Antonio Botello Utrilla, a director in Chiapas’ Institute of Coffee, at https://cronkite.asu.edu/projects/buffett/chiapas/fair-trade-coffee-a-big-business-but-indigenous-growers-not-getting-rich/

4. Eye witness observation, described to the author.

5. Graber, C. B., & Lai, J. C. (2012). Indigenous Cultural Heritage and Fair Trade: Voluntary Certification Standards in the Light of WIPO and WTO Law and Policy-making. In P. Drahos & S. Frankel (Eds.), Indigenous Peoples’ Innovation: Intellectual Property Pathways to Development (pp. 95–120). ANU Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt24hfgx.11 .

6. https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/biodiversity/

7. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1096400/main-import-countries-for-coffee-worldwide

8. https://www.un-redd.org/

9. https://www.un-redd.org/sites/default/files/2021-10/Fact%20Sheet%201-%20About%20REDD3.pdf

10. https://www.rainforest-alliance.org/in-the-field/our-work-in-mexico/

11. GATT with our world trade partners, and the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) (replacing NAFTA) with our hemispheric partners would involve the coffee trade).

12. https://www.fastcompany.com/90910444/carbon-offsets-deforestation-redd-are-they-real

13. https://data.ecosystemmarketplace.com/

14. https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/cwire/2011/01/03/03climatewire-chicago-climate-exchange-closes-but-keeps-ey-78598.html

15. https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2022-carbon-offsets-renewable-energy/

16. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-04-05/a-top-u-s-seller-of-carbon-offsets-starts-investigating-its-own-projects

17. Verra, the world’s leading carbon standard, has found 90% of rainforest offset credits do not represent genuine fossil fuel reductions. 

18. https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2022/08/26/2003784196

19. https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2022/08/26/2003784196

20. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-03/carbon-credit-fraud-assumptions-are-challenged-in-new-study#xj4y7vzkg

21. https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/cop26-climate-summit-indigenous-offsetting-b1951289.html

22. Luther Standing Bear, “Land of the Spotted Eagle” (1933).

23. Deloria, Vine, Jr. C. G. Jung and the Sioux Traditions: Dreams, Visions, Nature, and the Primitive. Ed. Philip J. Deloria and Jerome S. Bernstein 147 (2009).

24. Victor M. Toledo, Patricia Moguel, “Biodiversity Conservation in Traditional Coffee Systems of Mexico,” Conservation Biology 13(1):11 - 21 (Feb. 1999) at DOI:10.1046/j.1523-1739.1999.97153.x

25. https://www.un-redd.org/post/ignoring-nature-based-solutions-climate-change-can-make-2030-goals-unattainable