News

Peru's coffee growers turn carbon traders to save their farms from climate change

21.05.2012

In the foothills of the Andes, in the Sierra Piura region of Peru, up to 6,600 farmers grow 4,000 tonnes a year of the finest Peruvian Coffee on family plots scattered across the mountainside. However, climate change, with droughts or deluges, threatens the future of Peru's poorest coffee farmers. But Cepicafe (a supplier of the UK's leading ethical hot drinks brand Cafédirect), which was formed 21 years ago to protect small-scale producers from poverty after the collapse of the coffee price, has come up with a potential game changer: a unique way of playing the carbon market to the advantage of the poor that will fund long-term strategies to adapt to climate change. In practice, for every ton of carbon captured by the newly planted trees the community receives a carbon credit; later these can be sold on the global market to the benefit of the community, so as to encourage partners along the supply chain to buy credits. If Cafédirect's project succeeds it could provide a blueprint for indigenous communities all over the world.

Photo (c) Walter Rodriguez / Flickr