The Committee on Sustainability Assessment (COSA)
What's New in COSA?
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Seeking Sustainability: COSA Preliminary Analysis of Sustainability Initiatives in the Coffee Sector
(PDF - 687 kb)
The growing economic value and consumer popularity of sustainability standards inevitably raise questions about the extent to which their structure and dynamics actually address many environmental, economic and public welfare issues. The Committee on Sustainable Assessment (COSA) was formed, in part, to develop a scientifically credible framework capable of assessing the impacts associated with the adoption of sustainability initiatives. This paper examines the pilot phase of vetting and testing the COSA method, a farm management tool used to gather and analyze data using economic, environmental and social metrics.
The Committee on Sustainability Assessment was originally formed in response to the findings of the Sustainable Coffee Partnership's Implementation Taskforce (PDF - 71 kb). It identified the need for better information on the impacts of operative sustainability initiatives in the coffee sector as a virtual pre-requisite to the widespread implementation of sustainability initiatives in the coffee sector. The COSA project has since been unanimously endorsed by both the Executive Board (PDF - 192 kb) and the Council (PDF - 474 kb) of the International Coffee Organization.
The COSA project has developed a generalized set of indicators for applying a multi-criteria cost-benefit analysis across farms implementing sustainability initiatives across the three main coffee growing regions of the world. In a preliminary testing process published in Seeking Sustainability: COSA Preliminary Analysis of Sustainability Initiatives in the Coffee Sector (PDF - 687 kb), certified farms were compared with their conventional counterparts indicators including net income, biodiversity and soil health, market access, occupational health and safety, employment contracts and aggregate producer satisfaction.
Once complete, the COSA project aims to provide the first objective data and analyses on the social, economic and environmental costs and benefits of all of the major sustainability standards operative in the coffee sector.
The basic characteristics of the COSA project are as follows:
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the COSA project will measure the impacts of those sustainability initiatives most prevalent in any given country. In addition to measuring impacts on Fair Trade, Utz Kapeh, Rainforest Alliance, the Common Code for the Coffee Community, Organic and Café Practice-compliant farms, the COSA project will analyze the impacts of other locally applicable initiatives on a case-by-case basis;
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between 300 and 500 farms will be tested between six and nine coffee growing countries across Latin America, Africa and Asia;
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both small and large farms will be tested under each sustainability initiative; and
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farm measurements will follow a single farm from year one to year three of its participation in a given sustainability initiative to enable a continuous time series of changes and impacts.
Key Document
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Information Brief on the COSA Project: A Multi-criteria Analysis of Sustainable Practices in Coffee (PDF - 1.7 mb)
This document outlines the basic approach and methodology of the COSA project.
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