A Whole-Systems Investment Approach for the Coffee Sector and Beyond

"At Climate Week NYC, across a wide range of topics from finance to law, energy to food, infrastructure to conservation, one message rang clear: We need more collaboration, particularly across diverse stakeholders. This message is nothing new. If you are engaged in environmental or societal issues, you would most likely agree that no single actor or sector has the capacity, incentive or mandate to truly address the systemic problems we currently face."

"One Climate Week event addressed this challenge by focusing on something many of us can relate to: our daily coffee. The event, Sustainable Prosperity for Coffee Farmers: An SDG-Based Approach, was led by Lara Fornabaio, lead researcher at the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment, and Jeffrey Sachs, president of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network. It served as a launchpad for a new handbook, Prosperity for Coffee Farmers Through SDG-Based Coffee Plans, that showcases a methodology for collaborative investment planning, to align finances and the diverse incentives, across stakeholders, in coffee-producing regions. Sachs, an economist at heart, opened the event with a lighthearted comment on how any disruption to the world's coffee supply would "create a disruption to the world's productivity.""

A persistent call for broader collaboration emphasizes that no single actor or sector can resolve systemic environmental and societal challenges alone. Coffee illustrates the complexity: it is a highly traded commodity exposed to climate and supply-chain risks, rising prices, and uneven incentives across actors. An SDG-based planning methodology offers a framework to align public and private finance, interests, capacities, and mandates to support farmer prosperity. Practical, collaborative investment plans can channel resources strategically, manage climate vulnerabilities, and create shared incentives for sustainable production. Such frameworks can be adapted to other commodities and regions to scale impact.

Read at State of the Planet