Global coffee companies are coming together to tackle one of the sector’s most complex challenges: deforestation linked to coffee production.

Launched in April, the Coffee Canopy Partnership is a sector wide collaboration initiated by JDE Peet’s and powered by Airbus. Using high resolution satellite imagery with artificial intelligence, the partnership is creating the world’s first comprehensive, openly accessible map of global coffee production. This will provide a clearer picture of where coffee is grown, where forests are under pressure, and how the sector can collectively support a transition towards deforestation free coffee.

Developed in collaboration with leading traders and roasters including Louis Dreyfus Company, Sucden, Neumann Kaffee Gruppe, Touton, Sucafina and Tchibo, the initiative marks an important step away from fragmented, company led approaches and towards coordinated action at landscape scale.

Laying the Foundations through Partnerships for Forests

Partnerships for Forests (P4F), a UK government funded programme managed by Palladium in partnership with Systemiq, is playing a key role in supporting the foundations of the Coffee Canopy Partnership’s first phase.
P4F’s support is helping to establish an open and transparent monitoring platform that can verify deforestation free coffee production and underpin long term sustainability across coffee growing landscapes. This includes supporting approaches to data transparency and joint planning between companies and local governments using shared mapping data.

Since 2017, Partnerships for Forests has worked across Africa, Asia and Latin America to demonstrate how public finance can catalyse private investment into sustainable land use. Over its first phase, the programme mobilised more than £1.3 billion in private finance, brought 8.6 million hectares under sustainable management and directly benefited more than 326,000 people.

Crucially, much of this impact is delivered by connecting companies, investors, governments and communities to test and scale new business models that reduce pressure on forests while strengthening livelihoods.

“The solutions were never going to come from one set of stakeholders alone,” says Kate McCoy, Team Leader for Partnerships for Forests. “The challenge now is to move from pilot projects to scalable mechanisms that can boost forest friendly business and serve thousands of producers.”

Mapping Coffee Landscapes to Protect Forests and Livelihoods

Phase one of the Coffee Canopy Partnership will deliver clear, accurate maps showing where coffee is grown and where forests are under pressure across six East African countries—including P4F priority countries in the region - Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, covering around 1.2 million square kilometres of coffee growing landscapes. This work will help identify deforestation risk, support landscape restoration and protect the livelihoods of millions of smallholder farmers.

Accurate data is particularly critical in this context. In many coffee growing regions, shaded and agroforestry systems can be misclassified as forest loss when viewed through low resolution or inconsistent datasets. This creates a real risk that smallholder farmers could be unfairly excluded from EU and UK markets as deforestation regulations come into force.

The Coffee Canopy Partnership aims to provide a more accurate picture of coffee production systems, helping to distinguish sustainable agroforestry from deforestation and enabling more proportionate, inclusive responses from governments and buyers.

Why Coffee is Increasingly at Risk

Research consistently shows that coffee production is highly vulnerable to climate change, land use pressure and ecosystem degradation. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimates that by 2050, land suitable for coffee production could decline by around 50%, driven by rising temperatures, shifting rainfall patterns and more frequent droughts, particularly in tropical regions where coffee is grown predominantly by smallholders.

These pressures are already being felt. Some recent studies indicate that climate change is reducing yields, degrading bean quality and increasing the incidence of pests and diseases, with yield losses of 10 to 50% reported in some coffee growing regions under climate stress scenarios. Without adaptation, these impacts risk accelerating forest conversion as farmers seek new land or are pushed out of production altogether.

From Shared Data to Collective Action

Partnerships for Forests’ years of work on the ground shows that access to better data is only part of the picture. Turning commitments into impact requires trusted partnerships, locally led approaches and incentives that work for smallholders as well as global supply chains.

Across commodities including coffee, P4F supports companies to improve traceability, invest in agroforestry and regenerative practices, and work with farmers and local institutions in complex, multi use landscapes. These lessons are directly relevant as the coffee sector looks to respond to new regulatory requirements while maintaining inclusive markets.

The Coffee Canopy Partnership reflects this logic. The initiative will map where coffee is grown and where forests are under pressure. This data can be used by governments and companies to target restoration and investment, instead of relying on individual firms or farmers to act alone.

It also demonstrates how pre competitive collaboration can help entire sectors respond to systemic risks, from deforestation and biodiversity loss to market exclusion.

As global demand for coffee continues to grow, initiatives like the Coffee Canopy Partnership will play an increasingly important role in aligning production with forest protection and climate goals.

The launch highlights the value of partnership driven solutions that bring together technology, finance and local expertise and the shift towards sustainable commodity supply chains that protect forests while creating economic opportunity for the people who depend on them.