With coffee and cocoa, Ecuador is a world pioneer in deforestation-free production

Ecuador It has established itself as one of the pioneer countries in the world in sustainable and deforestation-free production and has at coffee and to cocoa like its great emblems, products that have made their way into the European Union (EU) by demonstrating that its farmers have prevented the clearing of thousands of hectares of Amazon rainforest.

With more than 93,000 hectares dedicated to coffee, cocoa, palm oil and cattle ranching (the four legal activities that cause the most deforestation in the Ecuadorian Amazon), the country has shifted to sustainable production by avoiding the clearing of more than 86,000 hectares for new crops.

The first shipments of coffee and cocoa from Ecuadorian plantations that have not been previously deforested have arrived in Italy and Belgium, as part of the PROAmazonía and Payment for Results programs, developed under the international mechanism for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+).

So far, 34.5 tons of coffee have been purchased by the Italian firm Lavazza, which will present the first deforestation-free coffee brand on September 30 in Turin (Italy); and 10.8 tons of cocoa have been purchased by the Belgian company Silva Cacao.

“The characteristics of coffee and the way the crops are maintained means that Lavazza sets a higher price than coffee from Colombia or Peru,” said the president of the Regional Federation of Associations of Small Ecological Coffee Growers of Southern Ecuador (Fapecafes), Víctor Yanangómez.

93% less deforestation

This is the result of Ecuador being the first country to receive international funding for REDD+, recalled Ángel Sandoval, Undersecretary of Climate Change of the Ministry of Environment, Water and Ecological Transition of Ecuador,

The Ministry, together with the Ministry of Livestock and Agriculture, developed the PROAmazonía program (2017-2023), with the technical support of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).

“People don’t deforest for fun, it’s out of necessity. If someone who lives in a rural area needs to expand their crops or pastures to improve their well-being and that of their family, they will continue to do so, and the best thing we can do is give them alternatives,” Sandoval said.

To this end, training actions were carried out with more than 16,000 farmers that between 2021 and 2023 allowed them to increase their productivity by 24% and improve their income by 42%, so that deforestation was reduced by 93% in the areas affected.

A total of 2.3 million dollars were also granted in 360 loans (41% to women), with the possibility of reducing interest by achieving deforestation-free goals.

Reference in Latin America

For the third consecutive year, Ecuador is “the country with the best results and the highest organic production in the world”highlighted the Undersecretary of Agricultural Marketing at the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock, Nelson Yépez.

To recognize the results, it has been proposed that the country become a benchmark in this area in Latin America and, in September, Quito will host the First Regional Workshop on Sustainable Production Free of Deforestation, where representatives from Brazil, Costa Rica, Peru and Colombia, among other countries, will participate.

In this sense, for the person in charge of the Environment and Energy Area of ​​the UNDP in Ecuador, Mónica Andrade, the key to success has been inter-institutional cooperation and the shared vision of the different actors on a vision of the country that began to be worked on as a policy since 2009, and that makes it “a world pioneer.”

Now the project Payment for Results, financed by the Green Climate Fund (GCF), has taken over. It seeks to expand and deepen this strategy at the national level with an impact on other Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), such as reducing poverty, conserving forests and gender equality.