COSA History

Brief History of the Committee on Sustainability Assessment (COSA)

2005
- First discussions take place conceptualizing the approach to design quantifiable indicators for social, environmental, and economic aspects that can be measured along common lines i.e. monetized.

2006
- First institutional partners meet to refine the COSA indicators: CATIE, CIMS-INCAE, CIRAD, IISD; University of Florida.
- Global Advisory Panel of esteemed experts is formulated with participation from producer groups, standard or certification initiatives, government agencies, academic institutions, trade groups, and NGOs.
- International Coffee Organization endorsement of the COSA program (unanimous) notes that COSA builds management capacity with local partnerships in producing countries to facilitate an understanding of the effects (costs and benefits) of the many sustainability initiatives.
- Scientific Committee is established: Lawrence Busch - Lancaster University and Michigan State University; Alain DeJanvry - University of California at Berkeley; Jeremy Haggar, Centro Agronómico Tropical de Investigación y Enseñanza (CATIE), Steven Jaffee - World Bank; Sietze Valeema - Wageningen University.

2007
- Growing participation in COSA development involves hundreds of stakeholders representing academia, companies, NGOs, producer groups, government agencies, certification initiatives, and donors.
- Agreement to ensure globally comparable and neutral indicators resulting in data that can serve for multi-criteria analyses.
- First tests of the indicators are designed.
- Partnership is signed with United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) as part of the Sustainable Commodity Initiative (SCI) with the International Institute for Sustainable Development.

2008
- First pilot tests are conducted in Kenya, Peru, Nicaragua, Honduras and Costa Rica.
- Publication of results from pilot studies: "Seeking Sustainability: COSA Preliminary Analysis of Sustainability Initiatives in the Coffee Sector".
- Centro de Estudios Regionales, Cafeteros y Empresariales (CRECE) signs partnership with support of ACDI/VOCA, USAID, and the Colombian National Federation of Coffee Growers and begins training.
- Centro Agronómico Tropical de Investigación y Enseñanza (CATIE) begins assessment of ECOM-Nestle supply chains as part of IFC project.
- Centro de Intelegencia sobre Mercados Sostenibles (CIMS) begins assessment of producers participating in the Nespresso supply chains.
- Refined COSA indicators better account for counterfactuals and include more neutral metrics; this improves quality and reduces average field survey in Africa to ca. 1.5 hours.

2009
- COSA methodology undergoes revision to improve rigor with enhanced control group selection (Propensity Score Matching).
- Full implementation begins in the coffee sector with nearly 1000 datasets gathered in Tanzania (with SECO support) and 2500 producers in Colombia with CRECE partnership.
- Partnership agreement signed with International Trade Centre (UNCTAD-WTO) to develop a platform for worldwide sustainability information based on COSA data
- First development of COSA for cocoa.
- First surveys of cocoa sector in Côte d'Ivoire supply chains for Cargill and ECOM with Rainforest Alliance and Utz Certified farmers (with support of RA-Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Utz-Solidaridad, respectively).
- Partnership agreement with the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF).

2010
- CATIE with CIRAD support begins implementation of COSA in Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica.
- Michael Hiscox - Harvard University and Krislert Samphantharak - University of California at San Diego join the Scientific Committee.
- Improved data quality controls and field surveyor training methods implemented.
- First surveys of cocoa sector in Ghana.
- First surveys of coffee sector in Vietnam.
- COSitA is born. A simplified set of indicators reflecting the learning of past field work to yield a more manageable set of basic data.
- Agreement with World Bank and IFAD co-financed project to design COSA based indicators into an innovative form of project M&E that can better capture the effects of the projects and investments along social, environmental, and economic lines.

For more information on the Committe on Sustainability Assessment (COSA) contact: info@sustainablecommodities.org