Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/737343
46 STiR coffee and tea / Issue 5, 2016 (October/November) STiR coffee and tea photo by Tessa L. Tucker By Aaron Davis, Justin Moat, and Tim Wilkinson. Pub- lished by the Royal Botanic Gardens and distributed by University of Chicago Press. The 11 x 17 inch book contains 56 pages and 40 maps. Learn more: www. press.uchicago.edu He also pointed out that "much of the world's coffee is grown in unsuitable places. That includes Brazil and Vietnam, for example. It is those places that will be impacted the most because they are potentially close to the tipping point," he said. Trees on some of the very best coffee lands are already un- der very severe environmental stress. "We discovered farms that were productive for many, many years that are dead," he said. "In Northern Ethiopia we encountered a family whose fore- fathers harvested every single year, then every two or three years and now they harvest every five years," he said. "Climate change happens slowly and it's been happening for a very long time," he said, illustrating the point with charts showing long-term decreases in rainfall with corresponding long-term increases in temperature, for Ethiopia's coffee lands. Half of the land in Africa above 2,000 meters can be found in Ethiopia, which makes it one of the largest highland areas in the tropics. Seventy-three percent of the lands over 2,000m receive 1,185mm mean annual rainfall during the main rainy sea- son, which is from June to September. Coffee is critical to Ethiopia There is no question that temperatures throughout East Africa are rising and that the trend will continue, threatening the live- lihood of 15 million Ethiopians (25% of the population) and putting at risk significant advances in recent years. Reforestation of marginal lands upslope from existing farms could increase the acreage and make Ethiopia's coffee lands sustainable despite severe increase in temperature The UNDP climate change profile for Ethiopia reveals a 1.3 O C increase since 1950, that's a rate of .28 O C per de- cade "which is really a dramatic increase that will become quite significant over decades," Da- vis explains. Ethiopia ranks 10th among the 10 poorest nations in the world, but "Ethiopia is one of Africa's success stories," writes Simon Baptist, chief economist at The Economist. "Personal disposable income growth has been increasing at an average rate of 6% over the past five years. We forecast that this will edge up to an av- erage of 7% a year from now to the end of the decade, with 2017 being the transition point when personal income grows faster in Ethiopia than in Chi- na," explains Baptist, adding that "for a country long beset by poverty, this rough doubling of real personal income over a de- cade is great news and is catalyzing investment into the country rather than aid flows." A healthy coffee industry is critical to maintain this momen- tum. Agriculture accounts for 47% of Ethiopia's gross domes- tic product and 85% employment. Coffee is the nation's largest foreign exchange earner at $350 million accounting for 30% of export earnings. It is the main provider of household income across the southwest. Ethiopia grows about 1% of the world's coffee and supplies 5% of global coffee exports. Genetic diversity There is more riding on the success of adaptation than just the local coffee industry. Ethiopia is the source of more than 95% of the world's ge- netic diversity for arabica coffee, according to the SCIP project, DFID/Norway/Denmark-backed fund which was established to build Ethiopia's capacity to cope with climate change across the public, private, and civil society sectors and to respond to the challenges of transitioning to a climate resilient green economy. The next phase of the project employs is to disseminate the products to its stakeholders and other beneficiaries, with the help of the summary report "Climate Resilient Coffee Economy Strategy," the Coffee Atlas, policy briefing documents, online resources and mobile apps. Davis concluded his SCAA presentation optimistically. It will take a least a decade for the coffee producing countries to fully understand what will happen in the years ahead, he predicted. "We are not facing Armageddon, we could ensure a sus- tainable future for coffee but — and this is a big but — we have to do the right work now and once that work is available and we are happy with it, we need to make the right decisions," he said.