Current thinking from COSA on sustainability challenges and practical solutions.
Taking Charge of Sustainability
Recently, Roberto Velez, the head of the National Federation of Coffee Growers in Colombia, and José Sette, Executive Director of the International Coffee Organization, skillfully framed the considerable challenges faced by the coffee sector […]
Stronger Cooperatives, Stronger and More Sustainable Farmers
Nearly one billion people around the world belong to cooperatives and producer organizations. Now, a quick diagnosis of their effectiveness and viability is possible with COSA’s POD: Producer Organization Diagnostic tool […]
Can the Private Sector Really Deliver a Public Good?
Sustainability has long been the domain of government and public agencies and NGOs. In a shift that portends a seismic change in how sustainability works, it is the private sector that is increasingly pushing the envelope. But are we seeing any real impact? […]
Can Intangibles make a Lasting Difference in Global Value Chains?
The essential question is: can new value substantially increase not only the total value of coffee beyond its current estimates of $200 billion but keep a fair portion of that value with the growers […]
The Universal Fight for Human Rights
This document seeks to define and declare those inalienable rights that we as humans, no matter our color, race, sex, or religion, are born with and entitled to. […]
SMART Indicators for Smarter Decision Making
When setting up a sustainability assessment system, no step is more critical for success than defining good indicators to measure. The COSA library of indicators for smallholder agricultural sustainability is crafted with […]
The Power of Performance Monitoring
For several years, the paradigm in development has been moving towards ensuring a future that is as sustainable as possible against a whole range of qualitative measures. GDP should count, but […]
Coffee in crisis offers a lesson in resilience
During the last outbreak, COSA was in the Verapaz and Oriente regions of Guatemala for an evaluation of a project aiming to improve the sustainability of Guatemalan smallholder farmers’ livelihoods by […]
Capturing an agricultural community’s real needs: a case in Vietnam
Across the world, an estimated 1.5 billion smallholders depend on agriculture for their livelihoods, many of them vulnerable to climate change, volatile markets, and conflict. A key aspect of development work lies in […]
The Shifting State of Sustainability: Can the private sector really deliver a public good?
The development community, with some notable exceptions, is waking up to the absurdity of measuring only their inputs and outputs like the number of farmers trained or the number of hectares certified as “farmed sustainably.” In many cases, missing is the measurement that matters most: […]