Decades of unchecked deforestation for coffee production has devastated Vietnam’s Central Highland forests, according to a new investigation by the Berlin-headquartered watchdog group Coffee Watch.
Vietnam is currently the world’s second largest coffee producer, supplying nearly 40% of the world’s exports of Robusta coffee (Coffea canephora).
The investigation, which analyzed satellite data and government records, found that tropical forest cover in Vietnam’s Central Highlands region, which produces 95% of the country’s coffee, plummeted from 42.8% in 1990 to just 19% by 2020.
Forest loss was most rapid between 1995 and 2010, and stabilized at low levels in the 2020s, the investigation found. Much of the remaining tropical moist forest is now confined to “steeper, less accessible terrain, often at higher elevations and within formally designated protected areas,” the Coffee Watch’s report notes.
Historically, government policy and international development financing incentivized the rapid expansion of coffee in the Central Highlands, according to Coffee Watch. The ecological cost has been severe, the nonprofit adds, resulting in fragmented habitats, accelerated soil erosion and a “nutrient treadmill” where farmers must use increasing amounts of fertilizer to maintain yields in exhausted soils.
The Coffee Watch report notes that forest loss has affected water flow and recharge, soil stability and moisture, carbon storage and pests in the Central Highlands. It warns that 50% of Vietnam’s robusta belt could become unsuitable for coffee owing to the added impacts of climate extremes such as rising temperatures and erratic rainfall.
Ly Thi Minh Hai, Vietnam country director at the international environmental nonprofit RECOFTC, who wasn’t involved in the report, told Mongabay by email that historically, “coffee expansion was indeed one of the major drivers of forest loss in parts of the Central Highlands”. She said, however, that the coffee sector is now shifting focus toward “improving the productivity, resilience, and sustainability of existing coffee-growing landscapes” rather than further expansion.
Minh Hai agreed that climate change is putting increasing pressure on coffee production in the region and that coffee farmers there need help to adapt to the pressures of climate change.
“This entails rejuvenating or replanting aging coffee plantations and introducing intercropping (such as shade trees) to avoid monoculture; adopting climate-smart and regenerative farming practices; improving water-use efficiency; and helping farmers boost yields and income from existing plantations rather than expanding into natural forests,” she said.
RECOFTC is currently working with local communities to promote agroforestry and secure forest tenure, which provides an essential foundation for preventing further encroachment, Minh Hai said.
“Vietnam’s coffee sector should not be defined by the deforestation challenges of the past,” she said. “The future of Vietnam’s coffee sector will not be measured by how much land we cultivate, but by how well we manage the landscapes we already have.”
Banner image of a coffee landscape in Gia Lai province, Central Highlands, Vietnam. Image courtesy of Stef vnmq via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
