We provide a review of sustainable coffee certifications and results from a quantitative analysis of the effects of Fair Trade, organic and combined Fair Trade/organic certifications on the livelihood strategies of 469 households and 18 cooperatives of Central America and Mexico. Certified households were also compared with a non-certified group in each country. To analyze the differences in coffee price, volume, gross revenue and education between certifications, we used the Kruskal-Wallis (K-W) non-parametric test and the Mann-Whitney U non-parametric test as a post-hoc procedure. Household savings, credit, food security and incidence of migration were analyzed through Pearson's chi-square test. Our study corroborated the conditions of economic poverty among small-scale coffee farmer households in Central America and Mexico. All certifications provided a higher price per pound and higher gross coffee revenue than non-certified coffee. However, the average volumes of coffee sold by individual households were low, and many certified farmers did not sell their entire production at certified prices. Certifications did not have a discernable effect on other livelihood-related variables, such as education, and incidence of migration at the household level, although they had a positive influence on savings and credit. Sales to certified markets offer farmers and cooperatives better prices, but the contribution derived from these premiums has limited effects on household livelihoods. This demonstrates that certifications will not singlehandedly bring significant poverty alleviation to most coffee-farming families. Although certified coffee markets alone will not resolve the livelihood challenges faced by smallholder households, they could still contribute to broad-based sustainable livelihoods, rural development and conservation processes in coffee regions. This can be done by developing more active partnerships between farmers, cooperatives, certifications and environmental and rural development organizations and researchers in coffee regions. Certifications, especially Fair Trade/organic, have proven effective in supporting capacity building and in serving as networks that leverage global development funding for small-scale coffee-producing households.

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El XVIII Seminario Internacional sobre Territorio y Cultura, llevado a cabo en la Universidad Católica de Oriente (Rionegro, Antioquia, Colombia) entre el 20 y el 23 de noviembre de 2019 consolido un debate científico y social en torno a temas emergentes que involucraron la territorialidad y la cultura en diversos campos del conocimiento científico. En dicho seminario, la propuesta del análisis central fue el concepto de territorio en los ejes de medioambiente, cultura, educación, provincia, metropolización y derechos humanos. Particularmente, durante el debate de las temáticas que se desarrollaron en el eje de medioambiente, hubo un intercambio de experiencias e intereses, en relación a la dinámica y gestión de ecosistemas, que permitió ampliar las perspectivas de trabajo de la sostenibilidad ambiental, además de generar un debate científico y social en torno al estado y manejo de recursos naturales de diversos territorios. Algunas de las contribuciones de dicho debate son ahora plasmadas en esta obra escrita, en la cual se recopilan investigaciones que evidencian que actualmente estamos en una cuenta regresiva en cuanto a nuestra supervivencia y la de las demás especies de nuestro planeta y que las acciones que estamos tomando son imperceptibles en esa escala de trasformación territorial de los ecosistemas, hasta tal punto, que ya el concepto de cambio climático se transformó al de emergencia climática. La pobreza, la corrupción, la falta adecuada de una educación ambiental y los errores en la planificación territorial, han llevado a que nuestros territorios estén siendo transformados abruptamente, y a que nuestras comunidades se estén desplazando no solo física, si no culturalmente por el extractivismo desmedido.

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