Climate change that is.

“Change” is a big buzz word these days, but in the case of the climate, sometimes change is NOT a good thing. That’s why the Catholic Relief Services (CRS) Fair Trade program is asking you to voice your support for a project that will help CRS and coffee farmers better understand and plan for the impacts of climate change.

Our CRS program in Latin America is responding to a recent climate change “Request for Proposals” from Green Mountain Coffee Roasters. You can help the proposal by voting for our submission, which we are developing with our partners at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT). CIAT will be gathering data to generate sophisticated maps showing how crop patterns are changing over time due to climate change. CRS will bring this critical information to the more than three dozen coffee cooperatives that are participating in our CAFE Livelihoods project in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua. Together we will conduct qualitative research to make sure the data matches what the coffee farmers are experiencing. Then CRS will work with the cooperatives to design strategies that help them to respond effectively to the major changes occurring in the world around them. In a way, then, you CAN vote for positive change: helping coffee farmers anticipate and shape change for their benefit!

Casting your vote for the work of CRS/CIAT is easy. On a dedicated microsite at JustMeans, Green Mountain has created a voting function as a kind of “People’s Choice award” that will feed into the company’s decision-making processes. When you click on the project you’ll be ask to register–we don’t want voter fraud you know–and that takes just a few seconds. Then you can cast your vote for CRS/CIAT (and actually you have a total of 10 ballots so check out the other ideas too!). Please also help us spread the word. Tell your colleagues, friends, families, neighbors, dentists, babysitters, yoga instructors, baristas, etc. that they can vote for coffee farmer empowerment in the face of climate change!

Thanks for your vote and we’ll be sure and keep you updated on the proposal process. Voting ends soon! We’ll also use this space to share resources for how you can act to prevent the worst ravages of climate change in the first place!

Tags: catholic relief services, climate change, Coffee, environment, fair trade

This entry was posted on Friday, March 13th, 2009 at 7:54 am and is filed under Stewardship. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.