What is Rainforest Alliance certification?

Rainforest Alliance is an international NGO founded in 1987 in New York, whose coffee certification — recognised by its green frog logo — guarantees farming practices that are environmentally, socially and economically sustainable. In 2018 Rainforest Alliance merged with UTZ, another major sustainability label, unifying their standards under a single scheme in 2020.

Rainforest Alliance was founded in 1987 in New York by Daniel Katz, initially to protect tropical rainforests. The red-eyed tree frog (Agalychnis callidryas), an indicator species of healthy forest ecosystems, inspired what is now one of the most visible sustainability seals in the global food system. The coffee certification emerged in the 1990s through the Sustainable Agriculture Network (SAN), a coalition of Latin American tropical NGOs steered internationally by Rainforest Alliance.

In January 2018, Rainforest Alliance merged with UTZ Certified, a Dutch-origin label launched in 2002 by the NGO Solidaridad together with Belgian-Guatemalan entrepreneur Nick Bocklandt (one of the few publicly documented individuals in this story). UTZ — from the Mayan word 'uts' meaning 'good' — had grown into a large sustainability label for coffee, cocoa, tea and hazelnut. The merger gave rise to a unified framework: the Rainforest Alliance 2020 Certification Standard, published in June 2020 and rolled out from July 2021. It rests on three pillars: environment (forest and biodiversity protection, zero deforestation, integrated pest management), society (human rights, decent work, zero child and forced labour), and economics through two contractual add-on payments — the Sustainability Differential and the Sustainability Investment — paid on top of the agreed price by certified buyers.

Unlike Fairtrade, Rainforest Alliance does not set a fixed minimum price but requires those additional contractual payments plus a very strong focus on biodiversity and chain-of-custody traceability. A detail often missed: Rainforest Alliance certifies not only cooperatives but also large privately held estates, which is why volumes dwarf Fairtrade — more than 6 % of the world's green coffee carried the Rainforest Alliance / UTZ seal in 2022. By tonnage, it is the largest sustainability label in coffee.

For Belgian roasters, Rainforest Alliance lives mostly on retail shelves, café chains and foodservice. Brussels and Ghent specialty roasters usually lean on direct traceability (farm or cooperative named on the bag), sometimes layering Rainforest Alliance on top, but rarely as the headline argument. The scheme remains a significant lever for decarbonising coffee supply and preventing deforestation — a topic now central under the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) which phases in through 2024-2025 for commodities linked to forest loss.

Rainforest Alliance — key facts