Wake Up and Smell the Coffee, While You Still Can!

Until now, all the dire warnings about climate change impacts in the developing world have perhaps seemed a little abstract to the citizens of industrialized countries whose greenhouse gas emissions are largely responsible for the problem. Maybe these folks will gain a new sense of the reality of climate change, when they find out that the impacts might hit them as well and where it really hurts – in their coffee cups.

Coffee bush. Photo: World Agroforestry Centre.

According to recent research by Andy Jarvis and colleagues at Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), half of the land in Nicaragua that is currently devoted to coffee production will cease to be suited for this purpose, assuming that temperatures rise by 2 degrees Centigrade. If that happens, Jarvis points out in a recent Oxfam article, 2.5 million coffee farmers in one of Latin America’s poorest nations will have to find another way to feed their children. “One of the first things to disappear,” he adds, will be the quality of Nicaraguan coffee.

What impacts might climate change have on the quantity and quality of coffee produced in other places, like Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia, Uganda, Vietnam, etc., and what effect might this have on coffee prices? While Jarvis and others are working to figure that out, coffee drinkers and concerned citizens everywhere, not to mention Starbucks, would be well advised to “lobby and campaign for serious curbs in emissions when world leaders discuss ways to tackle climate change at the end of the year” in Copenhagen.