http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0426-07.htm
Published on Saturday,
April 26, 2003 by the lndependent/UK
Cheap Coffee Threatens to Wipe Out Wildlife
and Ruin Farmers
by Steve Connor
A global coffee crisis caused by overproduction and a slump in
wholesale prices is having a devastating impact on some of the
world's poorest communities and the Earth's most endangered
wildlife, a study published yesterday suggests.
Coffee farmers are
being forced into poverty by falling prices
and many are trying to maintain their livelihoods by increasing
production of cheaper varieties of coffee at the expense of
the environment.
Timothy O'Brien and
Margaret Kinnaird, of the New York-based
Wildlife Conservation Society, said: "The crisis has serious
repercussions for human livelihoods and biodiversity conservation."
Some of the rarest
animals in the world, such as tigers,
elephants, rhinoceroses, gibbons and orangutans of the
Indonesian island of Sumatra, are threatened by the boom
in coffee production over the past decade, the two scientists
report in the journal Science.
Coffee production since
the 1990s has increased at an average
annual rate of 3.6 per cent, yet yearly consumption has risen
only 1.5 per cent. The glut has led to the lowest wholesale
prices in 100 years, which has tarnished coffee's image as
a good cash crop for the developing world.
The crisis is forcing
some coffee growers to abandon their
farms to other crops or to livestock grazing, while others
are expanding further into pristine rainforests where they
grow a cheaper variety of coffee called robusta that is
less environmentally friendly.
Dr O'Brien said: "Unlike
arabica coffee that ripens and
falls to the ground, robusta coffee ripens and remains
on the branch, allowing for easier harvest. Robusta coffee
forms the bulk of most inexpensive coffees. It is used in
instant coffee and in flavored coffees."
He said that over the
past decade coffee growing had
experienced a market free-for-all that had undermined
attempts at sustainable growing that benefited growers
and the local wildlife.
"Most attribute
the coffee crisis to a rapid expansion
of production worldwide, but especially in Vietnam and
Indonesia during the 1990s," he said. "Vietnam had no
coffee industry in the early 1980s but coffee production
has grown exponentially since 1985. Indonesia meanwhile
has also rapidly increased production."
Dr O'Brien and his
wife, Dr Kinnaird, have studied the
impact of coffee growing on one of the world's most
important lowland tropical forests, the Bukit Barisan
Selatan National Park in the Lampung province of southern
Sumatra. Indonesia is the fourth-largest coffee producer
in the world and about 70 per cent of Lampung's coffee
production takes place inside and adjacent to the national
park.
"Plans to expand
Lampung's coffee production will almost
certainly target forest inside the park and result in
increased threats to large mammals," Dr O'Brien says
in his report.
The park has already
suffered from the trend towards
the cheaper robusta variety, which is usually grown
in full sunshine with little or no shade provided
by indigenous shrubs and trees. Arabica is best grown
in the shade - a more environmentally friendly method
of production. Indonesia has now become the second largest
producer of robusta, exceeded only by Vietnam.
"Since 1985, the
park has lost more than 28 per cent of
its forest, mostly to agricultural conversion for robusta
coffee," the scientists write.
"Deforestation
rates inside the national park are directly
related to the price of coffee paid to farmers; during peak
prices, deforestation rates double as farmers and outside
speculators clear additional forest in hopes of a quick profit,"
they say.
Dr Kinnaird has found
that large mammals, notably the Sumatran
tiger, rhino and elephant, avoid forest boundaries by up to
three kilometers (1.9 miles). This means that they are
disproportionately affected by deforestation because their
available safe habitat, an area smaller than that encircled
by the forest boundary, is dwindling faster than the rate of
forest clearance. "We are really afraid of losing most of
the secure forest habitat for these animals in the next 20
years," Dr O'Brien said.
The International Coffee
Organization in London said that
in 2001 Britain imported 167,000 bags (10,000 tons) of
coffee from Indonesia and most of that would have been
robusta coffee destined to be made into instant coffee.
One answer to the crisis
was for consumers to drink more
fair-trade coffee, which paid a higher price to growers
and encouraged them to use sustainable farming methods,
Dr O'Brien said.
He also wanted new
international trade agreements to be
brokered by the United States, the biggest coffee consumer,
to keep prices above poverty levels, he added.
"The free-market,
free-for-all seen in the past decade
is not the model to follow. We need new trade agreements
to stabilize prices and we all need to be prepared to pay
a little more for coffee.
"At the very least,
reduction of coffee grown in national
parks will help to attain conservation objectives.
If we do not act soon, our next cup of java may have
the bitter taste of extinction."
Animals under
threat
THE SUMATRAN
RHINO
Also known as the hairy
rhino, Dicerorhinus sumatrensis
is probably the most endangered rhinoceros species.
Numbers have fallen by more than 50 per cent because
of poaching in the past 15 years. Fewer than 300 animals
survive in South-east Asia with significant numbers only
in Indonesia and Malaysia.
THE SUMATRAN
TIGER
The smallest of all
the tiger subspecies, panthera tigris
sumatrae is found only on Sumatra. It is estimated that
there are no more than 500 left in the wild. The largest
population of about 110 tigers lives in the Gunung Leuser
National Park. About 235 Sumatran tigers live in zoos
throughout the world.
THE SUMATRAN
ORANGUTAN
A species distinct
from its neighbour the Bornean orangutan,
pongo pygmaeus abelii inhabits the Leuser ecosystem, the
largest protected rainforest in South-east Asia. It is on
the critical list of the Convention on International Trade
in Endangered Species. There are estimated to be only
about 4,000 to 6,000 left.
THE SUMATRAN
ELEPHANT
Elephas maximus sumatranus, or the pocket elephant, is
the
smallest and possibly oldest of the Asian elephant subspecies
and is unique to Sumatra. It has been protected in Indonesia
since 1931. Surveys in the 1980s found 2,800 to 4,500 wild
elephants. In today's fragmented forests, fewer than 2,000
survive; 400 are in captivity.
© 2003 Independent
Digital (UK) Ltd
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