Ethiopia’s natural coffee habitats are under threat, say researchers. Action is needed to save them and similar ones around the world from extinction.

Changing land use, adverse effects of climate change and growing commercial interests are threatening to disrupt the traditional socio-economic value of coffee within communities that have grown the crop for decades.

Researchers from the Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (ICRAF) in collaboration with experts from Dembi Dollo University in Ethiopia also found that coffee forests are fizzling out faster owing to commercial interests and competing land with ripple effects on forest cover and climate change. Their findings have been published in the journal Sustainability. 

With the rising demand for the once-luxury of occasional coffee turning into a daily habit in an ever-growing number of countries, threats to the crop’s natural habitats in places like Ethiopia continue to reduce the area of traditional coffee forests that were also known for many other uses.

Despite coffee’s widespread importance, argue the research team, the natural habitats where its gene pools exist are under threat from the expansion of other land uses that generate quick economic returns, such as short-term monocultures and plantation coffee. Wild coffee forests in southwestern Ethiopia shrank by almost 36 percent between 1973 and 2010. The underlying drivers of this loss include human activities, such as the conversion of coffee forests to low-shade coffee systems to boost productivity and production so as to reap more from coffee farming. This involves the removal of important shade trees, which gradually changes the vegetation canopy configuration below.

‘Human activity that has driven the expansion of coffee plantations — as opposed to forests and semi-forest coffee agroforestry systems — has also reduced forest cover,’ said Lalisa Duguma, second author of the study and a scientist researching sustainable landscapes and integrated climate actions with ICRAF’s Greening Tree Crop Landscapes research group. ‘Coffee forests are becoming like islands in converted landscapes, especially in areas where agriculture is expanding quickly.’

The researchers also noted that climate variability is another driver of the diminishing coffee forests, with evidence suggesting that if no action is taken, coffee may gradually shift its growing region, making some of the current growing areas unfit for production.

‘These findings are worrying, especially for communities such as those in Gomma in Ethiopia, the socio-cultural and livelihood practices of which are strongly anchored in coffee and the forests that harbour it,’ noted Duguma.

The wild variant of arabica coffee, now the world’s most popular coffee species, originated from Jimma Zone, Oromia, Ethiopia, where its natural gene pool still resides. Arabica is among the most threatened species.

For the local Gomma community, coffee is an integral element of their daily life: economically, socially, environmentally and culturally. They say, ‘Bunni keenya waan hundumaa keenya’, meaning, ‘Our coffee is our everything’. Coffee forests define them.

This suggests that the impact of human activities and climate change on coffee are threats to whole ways of life. To mitigate this, interventions are needed, such as promoting organic coffee, coffee-based tourism and coffee forest sustainable enterprises. These are critically important actions.

Read the journal article

Bulitta BJ, Duguma LA. 2021. The unexplored socio-cultural benefits of coffee plants: implications for the sustainable management of Ethiopia’s coffee forests. Sustainability 13(3912).