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C Illustration / Hanna Liu

There is mounting evidence that

climate change is affecting many

crops, not just coffee.
The situation is alarming...

––
Craig Hilton-Taylor, head of the IUCN
Red List of Threatened Species

H ow do you take your coffee? tion and biodiversity imbalance are
Rising temperatures, deforesta-
Instead of with milk (or
plant-based milk), cream or
just a couple of issues that have nega-
sugar, what if we could tively affected the coffee plants and the
simply ask for our coffee to just be land which these crops grow on. Other
sustainable? Or want it to have creat- climate-related disasters such as heat
ed a positive effect on our communi- waves, droughts, and heavy rainfall are
ties and our environment? You might also getting increasingly frequent in cru-
be thinking, how does a drink have cial harvesting regions. Currently, Arabi-
anything to do with making the world ca dominates the global market at 60-80
a better, more inclusive place? Well, percent of the world’s coffee. It’s mainly
it turns out – a lot. grown in the subtropical highlands of
Brazil, Central America, and East Africa,
Coffee and climate change all areas that are already experiencing
devastating impacts on weather due to
Humans love coffee. We’ve been human activity and interference. Re-
drinking it for hundreds of years and it’s searchers even estimate that the number
one of the most popular beverages of Arabica plants could drop as much as
worldwide with around 2 billion cups 80 percent over the next 70 years. Robus-
consumed every day. But lately, a dark ta, on the other hand, is the second most
truth has started to loom over us: as the popular coffee in the world. It’s considered
planet continues to be impacted by cli- to be more climate resilient, however, at
mate change and unstable working the rate of impact we’re currently seeing,
conditions, soon, we might have to they likely won’t survive the drastic tem-
PLEASE imagine a world where there is no coffee. perature drops or severe weather change
we’re bound to experience soon.
Or at least, way less of it.

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