Unfiltered Accountability

To transform the positive vision for people and planet outlined throughout this paper into reality requires each stakeholder – and individual entity – to accept their responsibility in the system, to take necessary action based on that responsibility in a transparent and collaborative way, and to hold themselves and be held accountable by others for continuous improvement.

This section directs accountability toward the actors with the greatest power to transform the coffee sector: industry, policymakers, and finance. Farmers are often asked to change their behavior, yet they already carry disproportionate burdens and receive significant attention in existing debates. By contrast, traders, roasters, retailers, governments, and financial actors shape the rules, incentives, and flows of capital that determine whether prosperity, dignity, resilience and environmental protection are possible. Focusing on these stakeholders reflects both their outsized influence and the urgent need for collective responsibility beyond the farm level.

RECOMMENDATIONS TO INDUSTRY

The coffee industry— in particular retailers, roasters and traders—holds immense power in shaping supply chains. Their trading, purchasing and investment practices have direct impact on producers and the planet. Industry’s power and profits must be directed toward ensuring prosperity, dignity, fairness, and environmental resilience for coffee producers and the planet.

Below are recommendations for retailers, roasters and traders:

• Be traceable: Ensure full supply chain traceability down to the farmer or farm polygon, starting with traceability to the first aggregator.

• Be transparent: Disclose sourcing regions and partners to first aggregator, related due diligence risks, procurement and sustainability-related investments and strategies, and share anonymized data about production and producers to enable efficient data-sharing and free capital from data collection for actionable investment.

• Enable living income & wages: Develop time-bound action plans across sourcing areas to deliver living incomes and wages. Begin with data collection and analysis to inform changes in purchasing practices such as a commitment to pay all farmers in the supply chain living income prices that guarantee living wages for workers. Report publicly on progress and failures, and share anonymized public data, including with producers. Leverage publicly available data and collaboration to maximize data-driven efficiencies so more capital is driven towards

• Share value and risk through responsible purchasing[1]: Some examples include paying living income prices and living wages, shortening supply chains, building direct long-term relationships with producers, formalizing trade relationships through long-term contracts that share upside between producers and buyers while protecting producers from downside shocks, strategically investing in producers’ communities based on their self-reported needs and desires, and more.

• Adopt robust human rights & environmental due diligence: Require transparent supply chains backed by independent audits to ensure coffee is produced in ways that protect ecosystems and natural resources. Guarantee access to grievance mechanisms and remedy for victims of abuses, and commit to eliminating forced labor, child labor, and other labor rights violations. Verify sourcing practices avoid harmful impacts on forests and biodiversity and work with suppliers for continuous improvement and risk mitigation.

• Commit to zero deforestation and conversion: Formally commit to a no-deforestation and no-forest-conversion policy as a core component of the due diligence process. This should include full supply-chain traceability and incorporate satellite monitoring to verify land-use practices and detect deforestation risks in real time. Establish a clear remediation process for non-compliant suppliers, including corrective action plans, timelines for improvement, and consequences for continued violations.

• Transition sourcing towards dynamic agroforestry production: Enable producers to improve their practices by paying them for ecosystem services as well as significant outcomes like improved soil health, sequestered carbon and increased biodiversity. Ensure producers and producer communities gain nutritionally and/or economically for on-farm diversification. Facilitate other financing as needed to reduce producers’ risk of change, and to enable financial and other benefits.

• Reduce agrochemical use: Ensure the phase out of pesticides defined as “highly hazardous” to humans or the environment in the supply chain (Pesticide Action Network International 2023). Provide financial and technical support for farmers in the transition towards agroecological pest and disease control, such as working with beneficial insects.

• Respect indigenous and community rights: Respect the free, prior and informed consent of Indigenous Peoples (as defined in international law), local communities and Afro-descendant peoples noting that it is a dynamic, and not a one-off process. Identify and respect the formal and customary rights of Indigenous Peoples, local communities and Afro-descendant peoples to lands, territories and resources, with the understanding that these rights represent a bundle of rights (including the rights of access, management, use and exclusion, etc.) and that they are not contingent on state recognition. Ensure that the terms of partnerships and agreements with Indigenous Peoples, local communities, Afro-descendant Peoples, and the women within these groups, provide for: (i) mutually agreed and equitable sharing of benefits; (ii) respect for traditional knowledge; (iii) fair compensation for any current and future impacts on their lands and resources; and (iv) the preservation of locally-defined livelihoods and priorities.

• Treat data governance as responsible sourcing, not an IT afterthought: Adopt clear data policies with defined roles and consistent processes. Prioritize data quality over quantity by investing in enumerator training and controls, and collect sensitive data only when essential. Contracts and onboarding should explain in plain language what data is collected, why, who can access it, how long it is kept, and what happens if consent is withdrawn—without retaliation or loss of services. Data and technology systems must be interoperable and technology‑neutral to avoid duplicative efforts and give farmer organizations real choice. Farmers must have practical access to records, an understanding of how their data supports brand claims, the ability to flag issues, and direct benefits. When data enables sustainability claims or adds brand value, farmers must also share in the financial benefits.

• Stop greenwashing and socialwashing: Commit to transparent and truthful communication about producer realities and production conditions to strengthen awareness among consumers, policymakers, and shareholders. End the practice of presenting isolated sustainability projects or siloes as if they represent a company’s entire sourcing and sustainability strategy

• No regulatory resistance: Companies must refrain from lobbying or advocacy efforts that undermine sound environmental and human rights regulations. Instead, they should actively support the development and implementation of positive mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence frameworks, contributing to stronger protections and accountability across the sector.

RECOMMENDATIONS TO REGULATORS

To create an enabling environment for coffee sector reform requires empowered and critical policymakers, enforceable laws that are consistently applied, and genuine collaboration across jurisdictions. At the same time, it is vital to acknowledge the diversity of needs and positions across the sector. While half of global coffee production comes from just two countries, coffee is cultivated in more than 70 nations across four continents, each with distinct regulatory and policy contexts. This diversity means that opportunities for shaping effective regulation and policy vary widely between producing origins and destination markets.

With diversity in mind, below are recommendations for all regulators and policymakers:

• Mandate sustainability regulations: Establish a level playing field for industry to procure and trade coffee in a way that prioritizes, protects and delivers on living income and wages, human rights and a healthy environment. These regulations must integrate a value and risk-sharing element where it is ensured that producers are not burdened with compliance risks and costs but are rather facilitated by their downstream partners who rely on their production to bring products to market. Companies should be required to produce time-bound action plans for which they will be held liable.

• Agroforestry and land‑use management policies: Promote land‑use policies that enable farmers to shift from monoculture systems toward dynamic agroforestry models. Support must include secure land tenure, technical assistance, and incentives that make regenerative, farmer‑centric practices viable and scalable.

• Inclusion of civil society: Ensure that rights holders, civil society and relevant industry associations and organizations who are often excluded – such as farmer organizations and worker unions – are actively involved in dialogue and policy making for the coffee sector. Facilitate civil society activities, including through co-financing, to enable their inclusion.

• Law enforcement: Laws covering human rights, business, trade and finance, marketing and consumer protection, natural resource use and protection, wages and employment, worker safety, freedom of association, and due diligence regulations must be rigorously enforced. Companies that fail to comply with these legal obligations must be held liable. Enforcement should ensure accountability across the supply chain and prevent corporations from evading responsibility for violations.

• Farm-level data governance: Establish clear (inter)national frameworks for farm‑level data governance, drawing on existing international codes to regulate agricultural data beyond personal information. These frameworks must make farmer rights enforceable in practice—requiring informed consent, genuine opt‑in/opt‑out choices, access to and portability of one’s own data, and effective redress mechanisms. Regulations should also mandate strict data minimization and purpose limitation, ensuring that only essential farm data is collected and used solely for stated purposes, thereby protecting farmers from exploitation and risks in fragile contexts.

• Address platform power and build trust in coffee data systems: Regulate dominant data platforms and brokers to prevent unfair dependency and lock‑in effects, using competition rules and mandatory data portability to ensure farmers retain choice and control. At the same time, strengthen trust infrastructure by promoting independent data stewards or trusted intermediaries. Require standard contract terms that make rights, responsibilities, access, and permitted use explicit and auditable.
• Require data system interoperability and benefit sharing: Require farm data systems be interoperable and easy to access, built on open standards and AP connections so farmers and local institutions can share and use data seamlessly. When farm data generates value – through sustainability claims, premium marketing, or analytical insights – guarantee farmers receive a fair share of those benefits and the information produced from their data. Burdens of data extraction, duplication of efforts, and excessive compliance should be minimized to ensure data systems empower rather than exploit producers.

Policies specific to destination governments

• Invest in producing country capacity: Provide sustained financial and technical support to help producing countries tackle farmer poverty and climate change while enabling effective implementation of mandatory human and environmental rights due diligence and corporate accountability. Strengthen transparency and institutional capacity by supporting the establishment of sector‑specific national traceability systems and other tools that ensure transparency, accountability and resilience.

• Stop exploiting origins: Governments must eliminate tax loopholes and abolish corporate tax havens that allow coffee profits to escape producing countries. Trade barriers such as tariffs on green and processed coffees should be dismantled to enable fair market access and value addition at origin. Regulation of commodity exchanges is essential to ensure transparent price discovery, equitable access to hedging tools, and prevent speculative practices that entrench poverty among producers and workers. Cancel or restructure national debts and structural adjustment programs to liberate existing financial and other resources.

• Democratize global systems and sector management: Global governance of coffee must be restructured to ensure producing countries, civil society, and smallholder farmers have equal voice in decision‑making. Voting powers in institutions such as the World Bank, IMF, and UN Security Council must be rebalanced to guarantee fair representation for coffee‑producing nations. Within the sector, politics and institutional dynamics should be opened to farmer organizations and grassroots groups in a way that incorporates their voice and actual influence of decisions and outcomes, not just corporations and consuming‑country governments. Democratization must also extend to data, intellectual property, and compliance systems, so producers and communities can access and use information equitably to shape the future of coffee.

RECOMMENDATIONS TO FINANCIAL ACTORS

Finance shapes the coffee sector by providing liquidity, risk management, and long‑term investment. Banks, investors, and development institutions control who has access to finance and on what terms. Significantly, financial actors determine whether farmers can access credit, adopt climate‑resilient practices, and build dignified livelihoods. With this power comes responsibility to make finance work for people and the planet.

• Make sustainability a baseline, not a niche: Every investment decision must account for environmental, social, and governance realities as standard practice—no carve‑outs, no exceptions.

• Demand universal disclosure and accountability: All companies must provide clear, comparable data on sustainability performance. Investors should treat non-disclosure as a red flag, just like opaque financials.

• Align portfolios with long-term value creation: Short-term gains that ignore sustainability erode future returns. Investors must prioritize strategies that deliver durable growth and societal benefit together.

• Treat agriculture as a core asset class: Investors must stop labeling smallholders as “high risk” outliers. Agriculture underpins global food security and climate resilience, and financing it should be mainstream practice.

• Redesign lending models for producers: Move beyond outdated collateral‑based banking. Risk profiling must reflect agricultural realities—supply chain norms, trade relationships, and natural capital—not just inventory, assets or credit scores. Offer fit‑for‑purpose financial products that provide longer repayment periods, grace periods, and terms that match crop cycles and climate variability. Finance must adapt to farmers, not force farmers into rigid structures.

• Enable climate‑positive transitions: Extend affordable, long‑term products that support agroforestry, carbon capture, and regenerative practices. These investments reduce systemic risk across the supply chain while creating new revenue streams for producers.

• Mainstream resilience into portfolios: Affordable finance at origin is not charity—it’s a strategy for long‑term value creation. Investors must embed farmer resilience into all portfolios as a hedge against climate and market shocks.