Human-induced climate change threatens to shrink the coffee industry and impoverish its producers.
Climate change will reduce the land available for coffee by 54% by 2100 even if global temperatures are contained to internationally agreed targets, according to a new report.
Coffee growers from Honduras to Ethiopia said they are already suffering from climate destabilization and the charity Christian Aid is calling on the U.K. Government to help by canceling historic debts and raising money to pay for climate loss and damage.
The charity has calculated that rising temperatures and unpredictable conditions will shrink the world’s land suitable for growing coffee by 54.4%, even if global temperatures are limited to 1.5-2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
More than half the coffee drank in the U.K. comes from Brazil and Vietnam, two countries particularly vulnerable to climate change.
Vietnam clocked its highest ever temperature on record last week at 44.1 degrees Celsius (111.38 Fahrenheit), while neighboring countries also experienced new extremes.
Rising temperatures, as well as erratic rainfall, disease, droughts and landslides brought on by human-induced climate change threaten to shrink the coffee industry and impoverish its producers.
Yadira Lemus, a Honduran coffee farmer, said, “As a coffee producer, it is more and more difficult to produce. And yes, that is obviously related to climate change because before we would plant coffee and it produced almost by itself.
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