Coffee growers eager to obtain carbon credits

Domestic coffee growers have floated a proposal to the International Coffee Organisation (ICO) to appeal to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change to allow growers to obtain carbon credits from their plantations, a senior industry executive said.

"The growers have put up a request to ICO via the Coffee Board of India. We can easily obtain carbon credits due to the dense vegetations," Bose Mandana, former chairman of the Coffee Board, said.

The London-headquartered ICO is a body of coffee experts from the European Union and the US and frames guidelines addressing the sector-wise issues, covering production trends and consumption in the entire coffee chain. Developed countries are bound by the Kyoto Protocol to cut greenhouse gas emission between 2008-12 to at least 5 per cent of the 1990-level. One way of reducing this emission is by buying certified emission reductions of projects using environment-friendly methodologies in developing countries.

A project, for instance, becomes eligible to sell one credit if it reduces 1 tonne of greenhouse gas emission.

Another industry member said realisations from the carbon credits would enable growers to get additional income and help them obtain additional revenue in case of any price volatility.

However, Mandana, who is also a grower in Coorg, Karnataka, said the only glitch is that under the Kyoto protocol, only those plantations are eligible for carbon credits, which are planted after 2003. "In India, most of coffee plantations are old," Mandana said.