Specialty Coffee Wiki

Conservation International

Properties3
descriptionThe American environmental charity that co-wrote Starbucks' coffee-buying rulebook, has worked on coffee farms since 1996, and is now steering a $120-million climate fund into smallholder coffee.
tagsorganization, ngo, sustainability, certification, climate
aliasesCI, Conservation International Foundation, Conservation Coffee, Conservation Coffee Best Practices, CCBP, AROMA Sustainable Coffee Program

7 min read

Conservation International

Conservation International (CI) is an American environmental charity — not a coffee company, not a certifier, not an auction house. It protects forests and wildlife. Coffee matters to it because coffee grows in exactly the places it wants to protect: the tropical highlands where the world’s remaining biodiversity is concentrated. So instead of fencing farmers out, CI spent thirty years trying to make the way they farm compatible with the forest around them.

The reason it appears in a specialty-coffee wiki at all is one document: C.A.F.E. Practices, the private rulebook Starbucks applies to every farm it buys from. CI co-wrote it.

The basics

Full legal nameConservation International Foundation
TypeNon-profit environmental NGO
Founded19871
HeadquartersWashington, D.C., USA — see the flag below
Reachoffices in 35 countries, projects in more than 100 countries1
Coffee work began19962
Coffee frameworksConservation Coffee · Conservation Coffee Best Practices (CCBP)2
Best-known outputC.A.F.E. Practices, co-created with Starbucks in 20043
Current flagshipAROMA Sustainable Coffee Program, announced 13 January 20254

What it actually does in coffee

CI does not grow, buy, mill or roast coffee. Its role in the chain is upstream of all of that: it writes the rules other people apply, and it moves money to farms that follow them.

Three things it has done, in order:

  1. Conservation Coffee (from 1996). CI began treating coffee farming as a conservation tool in biodiversity hotspots — the idea being that a shaded, tree-rich coffee farm next to a forest is a far better neighbour than cattle pasture or logging.2
  2. Conservation Coffee Best Practices, or CCBP. A guideline set CI developed for the environmental and social things a coffee-growing area should get right, written to be adapted to local conditions in each hotspot rather than applied identically everywhere.2 It is a production framework, not a badge you can buy — there is no CCBP seal, no registry and no score.
  3. C.A.F.E. Practices (2004 onwards). The step that gave CI’s thinking real scale, by attaching it to the purchase orders of the largest coffee buyer on earth.

CI’s own coffee programme has worked directly with farmers in five countries: Mexico, Colombia, Costa Rica, Panama and North Sumatra in Indonesia.2

The Starbucks partnership

This is the load-bearing fact, and it comes straight from CI’s own newsroom:

“Conservation International teamed up with Starbucks in 2004 to create a verification program that holds coffee farmers to economic, social and environmental standards, known as the C.A.F.E Practices.”3

That confirms from the NGO’s side what Starbucks and its auditors have long claimed — a gap this wiki had previously flagged as unresolved on the C.A.F.E. Practices note, because CI’s site could not be reached at the time.

The scale CI reports for the programme, as of 2021: more than 465,000 farms enrolled, together covering 1.1 million hectares — roughly 10 percent of the world’s coffee-producing land — across 33 countries.3 CI also puts the number of people worldwide who depend on the coffee economy, from growers to baristas, at around 125 million.3

Hold those numbers next to what C.A.F.E. Practices publishes about the individual farms: nothing. No farm names, no scores, no prices, no public registry. CI’s contribution is the environmental and social criteria; the results stay inside one company.

AROMA — the climate-finance chapter

CI’s newest coffee programme is AROMA, announced in a press release dated 13 January 2025.4 It is a different kind of instrument from a certification: it is a route for climate money to reach smallholders.

  • Money. Roughly $120 million over seven years, tied to the Green Climate Fund — the UN-linked fund that finances climate adaptation in developing countries.4 See the flag below on what stage that funding is at.
  • Where. Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and Uganda — together home to nearly 20% of the world’s coffee smallholders, about 11% of global coffee production and about 16% of the land used to grow coffee.4
  • What. Regenerative farming, agroforestry (growing coffee among trees), climate-resistant varieties, and general resilience-building for farming families.4
  • Who else. CI leads it through the Sustainable Coffee Challenge, a coalition it hosts of over 120 partners whose stated ambition is to make coffee “the world’s first sustainable agricultural product.”4

For a reader of this wiki, AROMA is the clearest example of the money-side answer to Climate change and coffee: not better cultivars or higher altitudes, but capital aimed at the smallholders who grow most of the world’s coffee and can least afford to adapt.

What CI is not

Worth stating plainly, because the name turns up next to a lot of coffee marketing:

  • Not a certifier. CI issues no seal. The Rainforest Alliance frog and the Sustainable Agriculture Network standard are separate organisations with their own labels. CI wrote criteria that a company’s programme uses.
  • Not a quality body. CI publishes no cupping scores, no sensory descriptions, no Coffee scoring figures for any coffee, anywhere.
  • Not a competition or auction. Nothing in CI’s materials connects it to Best of Panama, Cup of Excellence or any auction result. Any claim tying a lot price or a winning score to “Conservation International coffee” is not supported by the organisation’s own record.
  • Not a farm owner. CI describes itself as a partner to communities, governments and companies. It does not claim to own farms or mills.

To verify — how much AROMA money is actually committed

The 13 January 2025 press release is headlined as AROMA “to receive support from” the Green Climate Fund, and the **120 million over seven years** figure is described in the context of a **Project Preparation Facility grant** being approved.[^2] A preparation grant and a full seven-year disbursement are different things. Whether the entire 120 million is contractually committed, or whether what has cleared so far is the design-phase funding, is not clear from the release and no later GCF board document was consulted here. Treat the figure as the programme’s stated size, not as money in the bank.

To verify — office count, headquarters, and the Sustainable Coffee Challenge's founding

Office count conflicts. CI’s own About page gives offices in 35 countries;1 the AROMA press release materials give 30 countries.4 Both are CI’s own words. The higher figure is used above because the About page is the organisation’s standing description, but the discrepancy is unresolved. Headquarters address. Washington, D.C. is given as the global head office in a CI Japan presentation, which lists “1919 M Street, NW, Suite 600, DC 20036.”5 That page was not fetched directly for this note, and CI’s homepage publishes no address. Sustainable Coffee Challenge founding. The coalition’s site refers to a “10-year milestone”, which would put its start around 2015, but no founding year and no convening organisation are stated on the page.6 The “over 120 partners” figure comes from CI’s press release, not from a partner list that was counted.

Footnotes

  1. Conservation International — About — confirmed via WebFetch ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  2. Conservation International Japan — CIのコーヒー生産地への支援 — confirmed via WebFetch ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  3. Conservation International — How a 20-year partnership is addressing coffee’s climate challenge — confirmed via WebFetch ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  4. Conservation International — AROMA sustainable coffee program to receive support from Green Climate Fund (13 January 2025) — confirmed via WebFetch ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7

  5. Conservation International Japan — Conservation Coffee programme presentation (PDF) — not fetched; cited via research report ↩

  6. Sustainable Coffee Challenge — homepage — confirmed via WebFetch ↩

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