A new position paper from the Sustainable Coffee Challenge is urging coffee companies and other organizations that might have money to invest in the coffee sector to look beyond individual farm projects.
It notes that long-term coffee supply also depends on household livelihoods, ecosystems, local institutions and markets, as well as collaborative approaches and shared investments.
The 15-page paper, “Coffee Resilience: Building a Shared Foundation for Collaborative Place-Based Investment”, was developed by the nonprofit Conservation International, global development organization IDH and sustainability consultancy Treevaluation.
It introduces a common definition of coffee resilience and a 3-by-3 “Coffee Resilience Matrix” designed to help companies and development organizations assess where investments may be needed.
The paper reinforces the idea that helping an individual coffee farm withstand drought, heat or disease may accomplish little over the long term if the farming household remains economically vulnerable or if surrounding landscapes or support networks continue to deteriorate.
“Resilience cannot be attributed to a single project, practice package or company intervention,” the paper states. “Individual investments can contribute to resilience, but resilience itself is a wider system condition that emerges when productive, ecological, social and institutional systems work together.”
The Matrix
The proposed framework organizes resilience across three levels: farms, farming households and landscapes. For each of those levels, there are three types of capacity: absorbing shocks, adapting incrementally and transforming systems.
In practice, those categories can encompass interventions ranging from shade trees, soil cover and crop insurance to improved access to credit, diversified agroforestry and stronger producer organizations.
The framework also explicitly contemplates more fundamental changes when coffee itself becomes too risky. Examples of “transformative” resilience include relocating coffee production to more suitable areas, developing alternative income streams or even helping households transition away from coffee as their primary source of income.
At the sector level, examples include policy reform, new financial products and shared investment platforms.
Multi-Stakeholder Collaboration
The paper emerged from a four-week process involving 34 coffee-sector stakeholders in April and May, followed by discussion at a Sustainable Coffee Challenge workshop in Brussels in June, according to the group. The paper itself notes that it does not reflect a formal consensus statement or endorsement from participating organizations.
The Sustainable Coffee Challenge was launched in 2015 with an ambitious goal of helping make coffee the world’s first sustainable agricultural product. Five years later, the group established broad climate, livelihood and sustainable-sourcing goals.
Organizers said this is the first planned installment in a broader Coffee Resilience Series. Future publications are expected to address how companies and other stakeholders can assess risk, measure resilience outcomes and mobilize financing across coffee-producing landscapes.
Conservation International and IDH also said they plan to apply the framework through current and proposed initiatives, including Conservation International’s proposed approximately $120 million AROMA climate program and IDH’s recently launched four-year Resilient Coffee Program.
The Sustainable Coffee Challenge remains one of several non-competitive, industry-supported platforms with broad ambitions for long-term coffee sustainability. Yet as the 2026 Coffee Barometer noted, multi-stakeholder programs have often fallen short of significantly changing procurement practices, sharing financial risk or determining who pays for systemic change.
The new paper directly identifies risk-sharing, access to finance and coordinated investment as pieces of the resilience equation.
“The difficulty for companies is not recognizing that coffee faces serious risks, it is knowing where to invest when climate shocks, farm vulnerability and ecosystem degradation are all connected,” IDH Coffee Programme Director Mette-Marie Hansen said in an announcement accompanying the paper.
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