Coffee Crisis: Climate Change Is Threatening Coffee Production Worldwide! | Weather.com - The Weather Channel
Coffee Crisis: Climate Change Is Threatening Coffee Production Worldwide! | Weather.com
Starting the day with a cup of piping hot coffee is a ritual for many of us, and let’s face it — the follow-up caffeine shots are what get most of us through the day. But we have some news that will likely jolt any caffeine lovers: we might be staring at a coffee shortage crisis sometime in the future.
Now, before you get your pitchforks out, the villain responsible for this abomination isn’t precisely tangible, meaning physical violence might not be the answer. The offender, in this case, is the same one that has been taking a lot of nice things away from us: climate change.
A new report, titled “Wake up and smell the coffee: The climate crisis and your coffee”, has suggested that climate change would reduce the land available for coffee cultivation by 54% by 2100. And the worst part is that we might meet this fate even if global temperatures are contained to internationally agreed targets (1.5-2°C).
Published by the international development charity Christian Aid, the report highlights how coffee farmers face climate-related impacts, such as rising temperatures, erratic rainfall, disease, droughts and landslides. And farmers from poorer countries require financial support from richer countries to help them adapt to climate change and address the loss and damage it causes.
In fact, coffee growers from Honduras to Ethiopia have already brought attention to their sufferings.
The Christian Aid report draws upon the impact of the loss of land designated for coffee cultivation in the UK.
In the UK alone, Brits drink over 98 million cups of coffee daily. As per the charity’s calculations, that is enough to fill over nine Olympic-sized swimming pools. Further, estimates from the British Coffee Association suggest that the number of jobs supported by coffee in the UK stood at around 210,325 in 2017.
More than half the coffee drank in the UK comes from Brazil and Vietnam, two countries particularly vulnerable to climate change. And consumers across the UK have expressed concern that climate change will impact the cost, taste and availability of coffee in the country.
The polling also showed that almost seven in 10 (69%) UK adults say that the government should do more to reduce the impact of the climate crisis on the food supply chain to the UK, such as supporting coffee farmers in developing countries to shift to sustainable and resilient methods of production.
David Taylor, Fairtrade Foundation’s senior policy manager, said: “This timely report from Christian Aid highlights what Fairtrade coffee farmers have been telling us for some time: the catastrophic consequences of climate breakdown is endangering not only their livelihoods but also the future of their popular crop."
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Related Knowledge Center: Climate economics
Climate change is now a driver of the world’s economy. The impact is profound:
- Catastrophic weather events — hurricanes, floods, droughts, high temperatures — are more frequent and more extreme. The cost can be measured in both the initial damage caused and the longer-term impact on the economy.
- Vulnerable communities are increasing climate-related investments, hardening infrastructure and taking other protective measures.
- Investment in carbon capture and storage technologies is increasingly rapidly.
- Governments are making investments and crafting regulations to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
On top of all of this is the cost of uncertainty. As the Fourth National Climate Assessment, released in 2018 by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, says, “The assumption that current and future climate conditions will resemble the recent past is no longer valid.”