Sustainable coffee

Sustainable coffee is coffee that is grown and marketed for its sustainability. This includes coffee certified as organic, fair trade, and Rainforest Alliance. Coffee has a number of classifications used to determine the participation of growers (or the supply chain) in various combinations of social, environmental, and economic standards. Coffees fitting such categories and that are independently certified or verified by an accredited third party have been collectively termed "sustainable coffees". This term has entered the lexicon and this segment has quickly grown into a multibillion-dollar industry of its own with potentially significant implications for other commodities as demand and awareness expand.

Coffee has several types of classifications used to determine the participation of growers (or the supply chain) in various combinations of social, environmental, and economic standards. Coffees fitting such categories and that are independently certified or verified by an accredited third party have been collectively termed "sustainable coffees." The term "sustainable coffee" was first introduced in expert meetings convened by the Smithsonian Institution Migratory Bird Center (SMBC), NAFTA’s Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) and the Consumer Choice Council (CCC) in 1998. The CCC's 1999 report, "Sustainable Coffee at the Crossroads" is the first use of the term in the public sphere. It discusses interpretations of sustainability and identifies options such as organic and fair trade as "sustainable coffee", though it does not offer a single functional definition.

The CCC report emerged during the same period as notable World Bank publications and an IMF paper that were among the first to identify the economic and social problems in coffee origins that would be the basis of the coffee crisis that more fully unfolded early in the 2000s. The SMBC contributed some of the earliest evidence of the environmental impacts occurring in some of the most important coffee growing regions of Central America. The ecological and economic concerns were discussed at meetings hosted by the CEC ("Workshop of Experts on Sustainably-produced Mexican Coffee" in Oaxaca in 2000 that resulted in The Oaxaca Declaration. The International Coffee Organization (ICO) voiced and documented some of the factors leading to the crisis, especially the dramatic decline in coffee prices to producers.

Initial trade volumes were estimates because no agency, including the certifiers themselves, accurately tracked them at the time. The first thorough assessment and the first concise definition appeared in research documents commissioned by several organizations in 2001. The Summit Foundation, the Nature Conservancy, the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, the Specialty Coffee Association of America, and the World Bank combined to fund and publish the first large-scale assessment of the markets, the value and the volumes for these coffees (a statistically significant random sample across North America of 1558 retailers, 570 roasters, 312 wholesalers, 120 distributors, and 94 importers). The resulting "Sustainable Coffee Survey of the North American Specialty Coffee Industry". indicated the availability of four primary certified sustainable coffees(in order of importance then): Organic, Fair Trade, Bird Friendly (Smithsonian Institution Migratory Bird Center), and Rainforest Alliance.

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