The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is a global authority specialising in species assessment through the “Red List”.
Toyota has established global cooperation with IUCN to double the number of species assessed, to understand which species are in danger of extinction. From 80,000 species on the list in 2015, the plan is to increase the number to 160,000 by 2020.
In Europe, this partnership is supported by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Kew’s most recent research covers coffee species, and it reveals that 60% of all wild coffee species are under threat of extinction due to deforestation and climate change. This includes Coffea arabica, the world’s favourite and most widely traded coffee.
Kew's work is not undertaken to present bleak prospects for crop species like Arabica coffee, but is instead about understanding risk so that appropriate intervention and planning measures can be put in place.