Gunter Pouli, economist and author of The Blue Economy | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
It’s important to look beyond the coffee bean as the commodity has evolved and emerged much bigger today with diverse dimensions of empowerment, economics, inclusivity, livelihood and sustainability, said Professor Gunter Pouli, economist and author of The Blue Economy.’
Under this scenario, if coffee farmers round the globe wanted their children to take up coffee cultivation as a career, they have to make coffee farming a sustainable livelihood by making friends with tiny melipona bees (to enhance coffee pollination), planting plenty of bamboos (to create own water source) and growing 72 varieties of shade trees in plantations (to trigger bio-diversity that resulted in coffee with better aroma and flavour), he admonished.
Mr. Pouli, who is also the founder of ZERI (Zero Emissions Research and Initiatives), was in the city to attend the 5th World Coffee Conference that began on Monday.
“There’s too much greenwashing happening today, too much blah, blah, blah and too many beautiful pictures there around with nothing real behind them,’‘ he said, candidly referring to half-hearted commitments certain corporations and governments make globally towards sustainability.
“We say zero accidents, that means we are instantly working towards zero accidents. That’s real. But when it comes to emissions, we say zero emission by 2050. Is there any logic in making such statements when you know the earth is going through a terrible climate change? It only means we are not serious about our talk,” he quipped.
He also wondered how it was possible for ‘less polluting’ companies to win international awards, when there was nothing called ‘less polluting’, rather it has to be ‘polluting’ or ‘not polluting’. “This is nothing but masquerading and a serious absence of sustainability ethics in business,” he lambasted.
Mr. Pouli said corporations have to focus on innovation and change their business models as existing business models allow them to focus only on core businesses. “When you have coffee plants, you will also have coffee husks and coffee prunings. If you are in cafes you will have coffee grounds. All suitable stuff for growing mushrooms to beat malnutrition and hunger, instead of staying adamantly focused on the core,’‘ he commented.
According to him, a global coffee brand which outrightly rejected his suggestion to grow mushrooms saying that was not its core business is now helping 4,000 women in Zimbabwe to grow mushrooms on coffee waste and buying mushrooms back from them to make its large selling instant broth/soup.
So, it was important for every industry to become ethically functional. Human beings were the only species living on Earth, who were capable of generating waste and it was critical that they revisited their intelligence to make themselves sensitive to sustainability requirements of today, he added.
“Five years down the road, I want to see factories in India, Indonesia, and Vietnam, that make cosmetics, functional chemicals or perfumes, all from the refuse of coffee,” he anticipated.
