Promoting an Integrated Approach to Climate Adaptation: Lessons from the coffee value chain in Uganda

The document analyzes how climate hazards like drought and floods affect all actors in Uganda's coffee value chain, from farmers to exporters. It finds that while adaptation efforts exist, they are often uncoordinated, unsustainable, and hindered by a lack of trust and communication between stakeholders. The report highlights a critical gap in agricultural financing and recommends improving networking, developing flexible financial products, and investing in climate-resilient infrastructure to enhance the sector's resilience.

• Climate hazards, specifically drought, floods, and changing rainfall patterns, negatively impact every actor in the coffee value chain. These hazards cause physiological disruptions to coffee trees, increase pests and diseases, damage seedlings, disrupt bean-drying, and destroy processing and transport infrastructure. Indirectly, they raise costs for human labor at the production level, increase equipment breakdown at the transformation level due to high bean moisture, and increase vehicle repair costs for distribution due to road deterioration.
• Vulnerability to climate hazards is most concentrated at the production end of the value chain. Coffee farmers and processors are generally more vulnerable than traders, middlemen, and exporters due to limited diversification capacity, weak organizational capacity, and a policy environment where losses are often passed down to farmers through lower bean prices.
• Existing risk management responses are often uncoordinated and unsustainable. Some actors engage in malpractices to compensate for climate-driven losses, such as farmers using expired inputs for quick cash, traders using inaccurate scales or adding foreign objects to coffee, and processors smuggling coffee from neighboring countries to maintain quality and quantity.
• A significant lack of communication and trust between value chain actors hampers effective climate adaptation. The chain is fragmented by many intermediaries, leading to mutual distrust; for example, farmers blame input suppliers for adulterated chemicals, while exporters attribute low coffee quality to a lack of ethics and discipline among other actors.
• Limited access to agricultural finance is a cross-cutting barrier that exacerbates climate impacts. Total agriculture lending by regulated financial and microfinance institutions declined by 21.6% between 2007 and 2010. Farmers face prohibitively high loan interest rates between 12% and 36%, while processors and exporters struggle with a lack of start-up capital and insurance for infrastructure damage.

APA

Dekens, J., & Bagamba, F. (2014). Promoting an Integrated Approach to Climate Adaptation: Lessons from the coffee value chain in Uganda. International Institute for Sustainable Development. https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/value_chains_coffee_uganda_briefing_note.pdf

Chicago

Dekens, Julie, and Fredrick Bagamba. Promoting an Integrated Approach to Climate Adaptation: Lessons from the coffee value chain in Uganda. International Institute for Sustainable Development, 2014. https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/value_chains_coffee_uganda_briefing_note.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Dekens |first1=Julie |last2=Bagamba |first2=Fredrick |title=Promoting an Integrated Approach to Climate Adaptation: Lessons from the coffee value chain in Uganda |publisher=International Institute for Sustainable Development |date=February 2014 |url=https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/value_chains_coffee_uganda_briefing_note.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{dekens2014promoting, author = {Dekens, Julie and Bagamba, Fredrick}, title = {{Promoting an Integrated Approach to Climate Adaptation: Lessons from the coffee value chain in Uganda}}, institution = {International Institute for Sustainable Development}, year = {2014}, month = feb, url = {https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/value_chains_coffee_uganda_briefing_note.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }