Impact Assessment: COSA

What is COSA?
The Committee on Sustainability Assessment (COSA) is a project of the Sustainable Commodity Initiative (SCI) that has overseen the development of an independent measurement tool that analyses the social, environmental and economic impacts associated with the implementation of specific sustainability practices and programs.

What are COSA's Goals and Objectives?
The primary goal is to provide a tool with which farmers and policy-makers can use to make rational choices about sustainability, based on their own particular local conditions and needs. COSA facilitates this by enabling them to accurately calculate their own relative costs and benefits of becoming involved in any sustainability initiative.

What are COSA's Core Activities?

• Development of a rigorous cost-benefit methodology.
• Application of the methodology to 500+ farms across a number of commodity producing countries.
• Development of a practical business or decision-making tool for use by farmer groups and extensionists.
• Training of farmers and extensionists in basic farm management and cost-benefit assessment.
• Facilitation of policy development based on country or regional findings.

What is COSA'S Geographic Focus?
The tools developed by the COSA project are applicable to a diverse range of commodity supply chains and regions globally. Implementation priorities of COSA tools to date have focused on:

• Coffee: Tanzania, Honduras, Colombia, Peru, Ethiopia, Costa Rica, Indonesia, Vietnam, Brazil, Mexico, Kenya.
• Cocoa: Ghana, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Dominican Republic.
• Tea and Cotton: Regions being determined.

What is the Project Status and Timeline?

Phase One:
Tool has been developed and tested in five countries; Kenya, Peru, Nicaragua, Honduras and Costa Rica.

Phase Two:
1) Full implementation in the coffee sector will begin in Tanzania in late 2008.
2) Negotiations on-going to implement in Colombia, Peru, Brazil (coffee), Ivory Coast and Ghana (cocoa) in 2009.

Phase Three:
Adaptation to Tea and Cotton sectors, roll out in six countries in 2009-2010.

For more information on COSA Contact:
info@sustainablecommodities.org