Since its founding in 1987, the Rainforest Alliance has pioneered a comprehensive transformation across the industries that most impact our environment -- farming, forestry and tourism -- and successfully engaged the support of consumers around the world to protect the forests and ecosystems that are essential to our future. This report incorporates numerous impact studies to demonstrate how the spread of sound land-use practices and the development of sustainable supply chains have begun to arrest the tide of destruction and lay the groundwork for a better future.
Over 120,000 cocoa farms in 11 countries have achieved Rainforest Alliance certification, covering an area of nearly 500,000 hectares (1.24 million acres), and with recent commitments by Unilever, Mars, Kraft and others to source Rainforest Alliance Certified™ cocoa, these numbers are almost certain to increase. The program’s exponential growth has prompted the Rainforest Alliance to take a step back and examine how certification has affected farmers’ livelihoods, families, communities and environments.
The Rainforest Alliance and Citi Foundation have hosted two Sustainable Value Chain Finance Workshops in order to establish a dialogue with agricultural value chain participants regarding ways to expand and improve the financing available for sustainable producers. In the second meeting of this group, held on January 30, 2012, the discussion was focused on risk mitigation in agricultural supply chains. Seventy-nine participants discussed the working hypothesis that adopting and certifying sustainable practices can reduce risk.
This study evaluates several key questions that will contribute to the debate about ecosystem services in a biological corridor, and sustainable management practices in coffee farming. I evaluated ecosystem services provided by coffee plantations, such as habitat for avian biodiversity, and contribution to the conservation of genetic diversity through the facilitation of movement corridors.
A 12-member Steering Committee composed of international business and civil society leaders and academic experts released this state-of-knowledge assessment that describes what is known and what is most important to learn about the performance and potential of voluntary standards and certification. The Rainforest Alliance, ISEAL Alliance, RESOLVE and the Soil Association were among the NGOs that participated in the process.
