The
Underst ry A deeper look into the origin of the Rainforest Alliance
ISSUE 4
SPRING 2022
Welcome to The Understory The Rainforest Alliance’s newsletter for the passionate supporters who share our mission to create a better future for people and nature. un·der·sto·ry [noun]: A layer of vegetation beneath the main canopy of a forest
IN THIS EDITION: A MESSAGE FROM OUR ALLIANCE Daniel Katz, Founder & Board Chair SNAPSHOT Our History OUR ALLIANCE IN ACTION New Successes in the Maya Biosphere Reserve & Our Africa Cocoa Fund in Action FEATURE STORY A Brighter Future: Tackling Child Labor on Guatemalan Coffee Farms MEET OUR ALLIANCE MEMBERS Elysabeth Kleinhans & Eko Purnomowidi JOIN OUR ALLIANCE Our 35th Anniversary & Legacy Estate Planning CONTACT US
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SPRING 2022
ABOUT THE RAINFOREST ALLIANCE:
2.3 million +
farmers in our certification program
70
countries around the world with active projects and/or certified farms
68
active projects directly benefiting farmers, forest communities, and nature
OUR MISSION: The Rainforest Alliance is an international non-profit organization creating a more sustainable world by using social and market forces to protect nature and improve the lives of farmers and forest communities.
6.8 million +
hectares of global farmland certified against our sustainability standards
5,000 +
companies working with us to source certified ingredients and improve their business practices
Our multifaceted approach to shaping a more sustainable world:
CERTIFICATION We certify products that are grown in accordance with our standards, which support environmental, social, and economic sustainability.
SUPPLY CHAIN SERVICES We advise companies on how to drive sustainability within their supply chains, source responsibly, monitor progress, and innovate to accelerate transformation.
LANDSCAPE MANAGEMENT We work with farmers and forest communities to conserve and restore landscapes while improving livelihoods.
ADVOCACY We work with companies and governments to advance policies that promote sustainability improvements, human rights (such as gender equality), and youth education.
A MESSAGE FROM OUR ALLIANCE
a labor of love BY DANIEL KATZ |
RAINFOREST ALLIANCE FOUNDER & BOARD CHAIR
“I still remember our first 100-dollar donation—from Dr. Thomas Lovejoy in late 1987—and every milestone like that.” DANIEL KATZ
Back in 1987, a 24-year-old Daniel Katz co-founded the Rainforest Alliance, a tiny organization with a big mission: save the rainforests. Today, as we celebrate our 35th anniversary, Daniel chronicles our journey, from inspiration to global movement.
Click above to watch a message from Daniel Katz 4 | THE UNDERSTORY
Since day one, the Rainforest Alliance has been a labor of love. We were a small bunch of young idealists, concerned about the fate of tropical forests and all of the species that lived within them. We started the Rainforest Alliance with zero dollars, zero contacts, and zero donors, but I think we made up for that with sheer determination. I still remember our very first 100-dollar donation, which we received in 1987 from the late Dr. Thomas Lovejoy, a renowned ecologist who actually helped popularize the term “biodiversity.” We thrived because we had so many passionate people involved from the start—each bringing their talents and knowledge to the table. And our alliance has always been about bringing the right combination of people together—organizers, community leaders, farmers, workers, businesses, nonprofit organizations, consumers, and you, our supporters. We’re trying to change the world here, and that’s not something anyone can do alone.
DANIEL KATZ AND HIS FAMILY AT THE 2014 CLIMATE MARCH
Clearly, collaboration was key. In the 1980s, it was all but impossible to convince companies to work with us. Corporate social responsibility wasn’t a “thing” back then, and CEOs literally laughed at us. But we persevered. The Rainforest Alliance grew and evolved, expanding our scope to include other types of tropical forests and pioneering independent thirdparty certification as a way to drive sustainability transformation. Our work was groundbreaking. Certification, while not a silver bullet against deforestation, has helped companies recognize the impact of their sourcing choices and helped connect consumers with the farmers and forest communities who steward the world’s most precious landscapes. Over the years, we’ve expanded our sustainability toolbox: We’ve learned that certification works best in combination with landscape-wide programs and local-to-global advocacy efforts. And that our programs must evolve in line with today’s technical advancements. That’s why, in 2020, the Rainforest Alliance published a new Sustainable Agriculture Standard—one that reimagined certification as we knew it. On the ground, this means strengthened monitoring systems, more
investment and support for farmers, and new digital innovations—and perhaps most importantly, even more of a commitment to keep improving because sustainability is a journey, not a destination. I must admit that when I started the Rainforest Alliance, I was certain that one day we would close shop because our work would be done; the rainforests would be conserved. Thirty-five years later, it’s clear that the work of the Rainforest Alliance is still desperately necessary, and its mission grows more critical each day. But looking back on our own journey gives me hope. When we started out, our whole team could fit in one (very small) room. Flash forward to 2022 and our global alliance counts more than 600 staff members working all around the world and more than two million farmers in 70 countries. Millions of people trust our little green frog to lead them to a more sustainable choice at the supermarket—and a better future for our planet. What a privilege and joy it has been these past 35 years to help people understand that we really can thrive in harmony with nature.
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SNAPSHOT: OUR HISTORY
The Conference that “Launched” the Rainforest Alliance In 1987, the world was at the peak of the global deforestation crisis. Determined to act, a diverse group of young people came together in New York—among them, tropical forest enthusiasts, an expert on China, a toxicologist, a Peace Corps volunteer, and a masseuse. Inexperienced but driven, these volunteers stood on Manhattan street corners selling “Save the Rainforest” t-shirts and talking to passersby about biodiversity loss. Soon, the group officially founded the Rainforest Alliance. Later that year, one of the co-founders, Daniel Katz, organized a conference called “Tropical Forests: Interdependence and Responsibility”—the world’s first major international event on tropical forest conservation. Held over three days at Hunter College in New York, it featured over 50 speakers and 700 attendees. At the heart of the discussions was the challenge that has driven the Rainforest Alliance for 35 years: the nexus of rural poverty and deforestation within the context of an increasingly global
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economy. The answer was as clear to us then as it is today (and the clue was right there in the name of the conference): Life on Earth is a delicately balanced web of interdependence. If we are to thrive, we must all work together—farmers, businesses, consumers, governments, and scientists alike—and recognize our responsibility to preserve that balance. The event essentially “launched” the Rainforest Alliance, garnering significant donations and enabling our teams to venture into fieldwork in tropical forest landscapes. The Rainforest Alliance continues to grow and evolve today, but we remain true to the spirit of interdependence that guided our founding.
1987
The Rainforest Alliance is founded by volunteers in New York.
2000: The Rainforest Alliance begins working with cocoa farmers in Ghana’s Juaboso-Bia region, setting up a Landscape Management Board (LMB) with 36 communities to oversee conservation and agriculture activities in the area. 2001: The first coffee farm becomes UTZ certified in Guatemala. 2009: UTZ expands into the cocoa sector, starting with two farming cooperatives in Côte d’Ivoire.
1989: The first Rainforest Alliance office is established in Costa Rica.
2010: The first tea farms become UTZ certified in Indonesia and Malawi.
1992: First banana farms achieve Rainforest Alliance certification in Costa Rica and Hawaii.
2015: The Rainforest Alliance begins working with the Karya Bersama cocoa cooperative in Indonesia, expanding sustainable agriculture training program to more than 900 farmers to protect Lake Poso, an important biodiversity hub at the heart of Central Sulawesi.
1993: The Rainforest Alliance becomes a cofounder of the Forest Stewardship Council.
1995: First coffee farms achieve Rainforest Alliance certification in Guatemala. 1997: Dutch coffee roaster Ward de Groote and Belgian-Guatemalan coffee farmer Nick Bocklandt create a new sustainability program for coffee—UTZ—which later merges with the Rainforest Alliance in 2018.
1999: The Rainforest Alliance begins working with nine forest communities in Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve to implement a Community Forestry model to tackle deforestation and promote more sustainable rural livelihood opportunities.
2016: The Rainforest Alliance and UTZ become co-founders of the Global Living Wage Coalition. 2018: The Rainforest Alliance merges with UTZ. 2019: The Rainforest Alliance raises US $1.2 million for frontline organizations impacted by the Amazon fires in 2019. 2020: We publish our strengthened 2020 Certification Program.
We celebrate our 35th anniversary!
2022
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OUR ALLIANCE IN ACTION
Photo: Sergio Izquierdo
New Successes in the Maya Biosphere Reserve
The Rainforest Alliance works alongside forest communities around the world to transform local, rural economies in ways that safeguard nature, address climate change, and advance human rights. In Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve—the largest tropical forest north of the Amazon—our partner communities have maintained a near-zero deforestation rate for almost 20 years. And all while creating more sustainable livelihoods that work in harmony with nature. More than two decades ago, nine communities were granted 25-year land contracts that allowed them to manage their part of the forest, as long as they did so responsibly. Only one tree is extracted per hectare every forty years, based on annual plans that safeguard seed trees (which provide seeds for natural regeneration). Meanwhile, local businesses— 8 | THE UNDERSTORY
often women-led—collect ramón nuts and palm fronds from the forest floor to sell locally and abroad. All told, these forestry concessions support 100 locally owned businesses, generating more than 12,000 jobs and millions in annual revenues. Poverty rates are significantly lower here than in other parts of Guatemala, proving that when the forest thrives, so do the communities who rely on it! The Maya Biosphere Reserve concessions have been widely celebrated as a shining beacon of conservation. And last year, the Guatemalan government recognized this success in the best way possible: creating two new concessions, adding 71,255 hectares to the 353,000 hectares already under community management.
Photo: Giuseppe Cipriani
Our Africa Cocoa Fund in Action
KOLE MINRIENNE BOARD CHAIR, SCAFRA Back in 2021, the Rainforest Alliance announced the launch of our US $5 million Africa Cocoa Fund (ACF) as part of a broader suite of measures to strengthen sustainability across the West African cocoa sector. The goal of the ACF was clear from the start: to help farmers in need of assistance to implement key requirements of our certification program, from increasing on-farm tree cover through agroforestry to tackling urgent human rights challenges. One of the organizations that has received ACF funding is SCAFRA (Société Coopérative Agricole Fraternité d’Adzopé), an inspiring women-led cocoa cooperative that is working hard to tackle child labor in south Côte d’Ivoire. SCAFRA’s board chair, Kole
Minrienne, explained that the ACF enabled her co-op to implement our certification program’s “assessand-address” approach to tackling child labor. This holistic approach involved training co-op members in understanding and mitigating child labor risks, running awareness-raising activities in the wider community, and surveying local families to learn if they have children who should be in school. Finally, the ACF helped the co-op purchase 3,000 hens as a way of increasing the incomes of their members’ families—money that helps parents pay school fees and hire help for farms instead of using children. “The Africa Cocoa Fund helped us a lot,” Minrienne said.
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FEATURE STORY
A Brighter Future
Tackling Child Labor on Guatemalan Coffee Farms BY CLAUDIA MEDRANO | RAINFOREST ALLIANCE SENIOR MANAGER FOR STANDARDS AND ASSURANCE IN LATIN AMERICA
“I’m so proud of the work we’ve done to make these Child Labor Prevention Centers replicable in coffee landscapes across Guatemala.”
Growing up in rural Guatemala, I knew I was lucky to go to school and focus on my studies—after all, my father had to start working on my grandparents’ farm when he was just seven years old. Even so, he managed to get an education, become an agronomist, and spare his own children from working in the fields. But his story is unusual. Poverty is so severe in Guatemala that many farming families must put their children to work just to make ends meet. For children like these, getting an education and rising out of poverty, as my father did, remains a distant dream.
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Given my family background, I am passionate about tackling child labor in farming, especially in coffee, which is Guatemala’s principal export. That’s why I was so pleased when the Rainforest Alliance introduced the “assess-and-address” approach to child labor in the 2020 Certification Program. Child labor is explicitly prohibited on certified farms, but now farms are also required to set up internal committees to prevent, monitor, and remediate child labor causes—and we support them in doing so.
Children gather with Rainforest Alliance and Funcafé staff at a Coffee Kindergarten in Conguaco, Juitapa, Guatemala, in 2021.
This is an important advance for our programs, but it is also essential to go beyond certification and support other pathways to end child labor. And that’s why the Rainforest Alliance partnered with Funcafé (the social development foundation of the national coffee association, Anacafé) on extending the reach of their innovative child labor prevention programs. Fun For Kids: Coffee Kindergartens and Coffee Camps Funcafé initially created these programs for the children of temporary workers, recognizing that because the coffee harvest coincides with kids’ school vacations, and parents have nowhere to leave their children, kids are more likely to end up working on the coffee farms. So Funcafé launched Coffee Kindergartens for children ages four to six in 2010, and Coffee Camps for kids seven to 13 in 2015, using Guatemala’s Ministry of Education methodology. During the harvest, children learn and have fun, and importantly—since Guatemala has the highest chronic malnutrition rate in Latin America— they receive a healthy meal.
Scaling up an effective child-labor prevention model In 2020, the Rainforest Alliance joined forces with Funcafé to create an accessible, concrete way of replicating this model on farms all over the country. Together we created an extensive guide to provide farms with step-by-step instructions on how to set up their own Coffee Kindergartens and Camps (collectively called Child Labor Prevention Centers). We translated this guide into local languages such as Mam, Q’eqchi, and Tz’utujil and made it available to all farms, not just certified farms. We also launched a large-scale campaign to raise parents’ awareness of the benefits of keeping children in school and created short videos and radio spots explaining the laws on child labor. I’m so proud of the work we’ve done to make these Child Labor Prevention Centers replicable in coffee landscapes across Guatemala: During the 2021-2022 coffee harvest, 82 centers are in operation, offering a safe (and fun!) space for more than 1,700 children.
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MEET OUR ALLIANCE MEMBERS
Elysabeth Kleinhans “I’ve been a longtime supporter of the Rainforest Alliance and the organization’s collaborative approach has always resonated with me. We are all interconnected; to tackle the urgent environmental and social challenges we face as a global society, we really do need to work together.” ELYSABETH KLEINHANS RAINFOREST ALLIANCE SUPPORTER
Elysabeth has been a dedicated supporter of the Rainforest Alliance since the very beginning. In fact, she helped us set up our first office space back in 1987. Two years later, she stepped in again to help us create the Kleinhans Fellowship which awards a two-year academic stipend to early career researchers. The fellowship was designed to research non-timber forest products to help rural communities make a living without having to cut down trees. More recently, the fellowship has narrowed in focus to support Community Forestry—a proven model for sustainability transformation that has long been championed by the Rainforest Alliance and the forest communities we partner with. To date, we have awarded 18 fellowships to a diverse group of researchers, who have each set out to address the real- world challenges—economic, social, and environmental—that our community partners face on the ground. Last year, Elysabeth’s generous support allowed us to launch our Community Listening Program—a new initiative that formalizes our longstanding approach to gather insights and feedback directly from the farming and forest communities we work with. Listening is the key to learning and learning to the key to making a bigger impact, so stay tuned for more news on this exciting new program. Community Listening Program launch ceremony in Ghana.
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Eko PurnomowidI Back in 2004, Eko Purnomowidi’s village in West Java, Indonesia, was destroyed when heavy rains sent massive amounts of mud sliding down Mount Mandalawangi. The cause: deforestation. Without the native trees and vegetation, there was simply nothing to hold down the soil. Determined to act, Eko and a group of fellow volunteers set up the Klasik Beans coffee cooperative, which promotes agroforestry as a way to preserve and restore local tree-cover while also improving farmers’ livelihoods.
Over the years, Klasik Beans has gone from strength to strength, winning international recognition as a leader in agroforestry—and achieving Rainforest Alliance certification too! Last year, Eko joined us and renowned chef Dan Barber for a live panel discussion on regenerative agriculture. We leave you with this inspiring clip from that talk where Eko offered a beautiful reframing of farming as a “healing” process—a sentiment we hold on to at the heart of our mission.
Agroforestry is a regenerative farming practice where shade-loving crops, like coffee, are grown under the protective canopy of taller trees. The shade provided by the trees helps regulate temperatures and humidity, helping the coffee to ripen slowly and develop their characteristic depth of flavor. Meanwhile, the trees also contribute to soil health, create carbon storage, and provide lush habitat for birds and other wildlife. And to top it all off, farmers can plant fruit-bearing shade trees, creating an additional source of income.
“Farming is healing.”
EKO PURNOMOWIDI RAINFOREST ALLIANCE PARTNER & SENIOR ADVISOR, KLASIK BEANS CO-OP
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JOIN THE ALLIANCE
This year marks our 35th Anniversary! As we embark on our 35th year, the Rainforest Alliance invites you to join us in accelerating our efforts to protect the planet and our entire global family. No matter where we live, the Earth is our ultimate home, one we share with every living being. Nature comforts and sustains us, but it also depends on us to keep it safe. The same is true for the people who share this home with us: We need each other to thrive. That is why the Rainforest Alliance works tirelessly to advance the rights and livelihoods of the rural communities that cultivate the land and care for the natural world. The next decade will be absolutely crucial for protecting our planet against climate change and stopping—and even reversing—biodiversity loss. By 2030, we envision a future where the world’s most important landscapes are stewarded by thriving farming and forest communities. Together, we can scale, deepen, and accelerate our collective impact. We are so grateful for your donations, your responsible purchasing choices, and the many ways you have spread the word about our vital work. Now is the time for us to go even further. As we honor our 35th anniversary, we invite you to join us in stepping up our commitment and accelerating our efforts to protect the planet and our entire global family. Join us in honor of our 35th anniversary and donate here!
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Leave your Legacy Have you included the Rainforest Alliance in your estate planning? By making a planned gift to the Rainforest Alliance, you can create a meaningful legacy for future generations. Donors who include the Rainforest Alliance in their estate plans or wills are among our most dedicated supporters and are welcomed into the Judith Sulzberger Legacy Society. Join today and receive lifetime benefits including updates on our work, invitations to special events, and recognition in our annual report. To learn more, visit www.rainforest-alliance.org/giftplanning or contact Gabriela Sanchez at gabrielasanchez@ra.org.
To help make planned giving easier than ever, the Rainforest Alliance has partnered with FreeWill, a platform that allows you to write a will online for free and walks you through the process step by step. It only takes 20 minutes to complete your legally valid plans! Visit freewill.com/rainforestalliance to get started today.
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THANK YOU FOR BEING A PART OF OUR ALLIANCE.
STAY IN TOUCH
We’d love to hear from you!
Please reach out directly to Gabriela Sanchez at gabrielasanchez@ra.org.
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