The brand of coffee consumers choose for their morning cup has a direct effect on the songbirds they may hear while drinking it.
Growing coffee under a canopy of trees provides critical winter habitat for many migratory birds. But in the past few decades, coffee farmers have been cutting down forests to grow new, sun-tolerant varieties of coffee on treeless farms.
The result has been the loss of thousands of acres of bird and wildlife habitat in Central and South American coffee-growing regions. Expansion of the coffee frontier is also contributing to widespread tropical deforestation in Vietnam and other parts of Southeast Asia.
To counter this trend, a coalition of conservation groups, coffee growers, marketers, and financial organizations has crafted a comprehensive set of guidelines for producing environmentally friendly coffee. They have pledged to cooperate in building markets for sustainable coffee in the United States and abroad.
The guidelines, "Conservation Principles for Coffee Production," were unveiled on June 6 by Conservation International, the Rainforest Alliance, the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center, the Songbird Foundation, Seattle Audubon, and the National Wildlife Federation.
Common Standards
The principles set forth the fundamental characteristics that coffee farms and processing facilities must meet to safeguard ecological health in coffee-growing regions.
"Everyone concerned with sustainable coffee—growers, importers, roasters, retailers, environmentalists, and consumers—now have a common foundation for evaluating the environmental impact of their coffee," said Christopher London, director of the coffee program of the Consumer's Choice Council, which coordinated the development of the principles.
"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," London said.
The Conservation Principles focus on seven areas of concern in coffee production: ecosystem and wildlife conservation, soil conservation, water conservation and protection, energy conservation, waste management, pest and disease management, and sustainable livelihoods for farmers.
In each area, the principles outline conditions and practices that apply to farms and processing facilities in most coffee-growing regions of the world, and provide a foundation for conservation-based certification programs.
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