A new international initiative aimed at addressing coffee related deforestation has been launched with an East Africa pilot that includes Ethiopia, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda. The Coffee Canopy Partnership, initiated by JDE Peet’s and developed with a group of major coffee companies, seeks to create what is described as the world’s first comprehensive and openly accessible map of global coffee production. The project is intended to improve the identification of deforestation risks, support landscape restoration and protect the livelihoods of smallholder farmers across coffee growing regions.
The partnership brings together several large coffee sector players, including Louis Dreyfus Company, Sucden, Neumann Kaffee Gruppe, Touton, Sucafina and Tchibo. Airbus is providing satellite imaging and mapping services, using high resolution imagery and artificial intelligence to identify coffee farms, track forest loss and help establish accurate land-use data across coffee landscapes. The East Africa pilot will cover 1.2 million square kilometers, with deliveries set to begin in April 2026 and the full pilot dataset expected by June 2026.
The initiative comes at a time when the coffee sector is under increasing pressure to comply with the European Union Deforestation Regulation, which restricts the entry of coffee grown on land classified as forest after December 2020. One of the challenges the partnership aims to address is the frequent misclassification of shade grown coffee and agroforestry systems as natural forest. This has created risks for smallholder farmers who could lose access to key export markets despite using sustainable production methods.
To respond to this problem, the partnership plans to develop two key datasets: a 2020 - 2021 baseline map showing the actual extent of coffee cultivation, and a 2024 - 2025 updated map showing changes in coffee production land and areas where forest change has taken place since 2020. These maps are expected to be integrated into an open geospatial platform that can be accessed by governments, farmers and coffee industry actors for planning, monitoring and forest protection purposes.
The pilot phase is being supported by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and has received endorsement from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. Over time, the partnership aims to expand its coverage to all major coffee-growing regions worldwide by 2027 through broader industry and institutional investment. The wider goal is to improve data transparency, support deforestation remediation, reduce future forest loss and strengthen the long-term sustainability of the global coffee sector.
Source: Yahoo Finance
