The Coffee Climate Care project addresses climate change in the Vietnamese coffee sector
UTZ Certified. Climate experts and coffee farmers share information. Lam Dong, Vietnam
Hanoi, October 15, 2013 — UTZ Certified and the DE (Douwe Egberts) Foundation have launched the Coffee Climate Care project (C3), a three-year multi-stakeholder initiative aimed at establishing adaptation strategies that will make coffee producers more resilient against the impacts of climate change. The project will start with one pilot group of about 500 producers in Vietnam’s Lam Dong province. The initiative is financed by UTZ Certified and the DE Foundation and further sponsored by the Deutsche Investitions und Entwicklungsgesellschaft (DEG) with public funds of the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).
Vietnam is the world’s largest producer of Robusta coffee, and the second largest supplier of UTZ certified coffee after Brazil. The negative occurrences caused by climate change in the country have the potential to threaten the livelihoods of thousands of smallholders, whose livelihoods depend on coffee farming.
“Climate change is a global challenge. Therefore, eventually we want to apply the lessons learnt from the C3 project in Vietnam across our worldwide network of coffee producers,” said Britta Wyss Bisang, Standards Director at UTZ Certified. “By strengthening our certification program in adaptation measures related to climate variability, we can build new capacities at the farmer level that will benefit all actors along the supply chain.”
[Text Box: The C3 PROJECT and the Initiative for coffee & climate will work on a collaborative-based approach in order to systematically share the findings of both projects. This collaboration aims at making the access to information more efficient and available for national and international networks, which are interested in adaptation and mitigation measures in the coffee sector.]
The C3 project will be a collaborative approach supported by the know-how of several institutions such as the Vietnamese Coffee Research Institute and the Initiative for coffee and climate, among many others.
“During our presence in Vietnam, since 2001, we have seen rainfall patterns become more erratic, with longer and more pronounced drought periods and heavier rainfall in the wet season. In the Central Highlands, this is creating problems for farmers in drying their coffee. In combination with the expected temperature increase, we may also see drastic effects on coffee production,” said Don Jansen, Program Manager at the DE Foundation. “Therefore, innovative adaptation strategies are fundamental for assuring the future of coffee producers in Vietnam and other regions. The C3 project is expected to contribute to the development of such strategies.”
The C3 project will have three stages: i) assessing the climate vulnerability of the pilot group, and collecting relevant data on farms’ greenhouse gas emissions and carbon stocks, ii) training and implementation of farmers on adaptation measures, and iii) the consolidation of results into a refined version of the UTZ Certified code of conduct. At the end of 2016, UTZ Certified and the DE Foundation are expecting to present the results, which will serve as the basis for future development of adaptation techniques and greenhouse gas emission measurement tools in coffee’s supply chains.
UTZ Certified started operations in Vietnam in 2002 and has been promoting its program in all coffee regions. Today more than 27.000 farmers and 44.000 hectares of coffee-producing land in the country are UTZ certified.
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