Meet Etelle Higonnet, the Woman Fighting Coffee’s Hidden Crisis

The coffee industry is currently one of the world’s leading drivers of deforestation. It often depends on poverty wages, child labor, and environmentally destructive practices to keep prices low, allowing widespread human rights abuses and ecological damage to persist largely out of sight.

Etelle Higonnet is working to change that. A veteran of war-zone human rights campaigns and high-impact environmental advocacy, she founded the nonprofit organization Coffee Watch to confront the industry’s darkest realities. From satellite mapping deforestation to investigating labor conditions on the ground, Coffee Watch pushes for a future where coffee is produced ethically, sustainably, and with dignity for the people who grow it.

From Conflict Zones to Coffee Fields

Etelle’s early career placed her right among some of the world’s toughest human rights battles. She worked in Haiti, Guatemala, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Iraq, Lebanon, and beyond, often alongside communities facing violence, displacement, and political repression. Initially aspiring to be a war crimes prosecutor, she interned at international courts and worked at Amnesty and Human Rights Watch before realizing how environmental destruction was accelerating so rapidly that it threatened to wipe out the very conditions necessary for human rights to exist.

That insight led her to Greenpeace Southeast Asia, where she began as a volunteer and eventually became research director. There, she helped uncover how deforestation, illegal fishing, and land grabs went hand in hand with human exploitation, from indigenous displacement to forced labor at sea. Later, at Mighty Earth, she helped launch campaigns that aimed to spread awareness of deforestation in industries ranging from cocoa and rubber to the forest frontiers of palm oil.

These experiences armed her with the knowledge needed to tackle the injustices behind the production of a global commodity: coffee.

The Growing Human and Environmental Expense of Coffee

Coffee is the sixth-largest driver of deforestation worldwide, part of a group of seven commodities tearing through the planet’s remaining forests, with 37% of the world’s coffee production directly linked to deforested areas in Brazil, Colombia, and Vietnam, among others.

Yet compared to palm oil, soy, or cattle, coffee’s role remains underreported and largely overlooked. Thousands of workers are trapped in forced labor, millions of children are working on farms, and entire communities survive on low wages (sometimes as low as $1.25 a day) that barely keep hunger at bay. This injustice is exacerbated considering that many of those harvesting the world’s coffee are Indigenous or Afro-descendant communities, groups that have long had their environments destroyed and suffered economic marginalization.

As Etelle notes, “Almost everyone working in coffee is in poverty or extreme poverty,” a reality made even starker by the soaring profits enjoyed at the other end of the supply chain (projected at as high as $485 billion in 2025 alone).

But investigating these abuses brings its own dangers. Prominent coffee-growing regions often overlap with authoritarian states, violent rural territories, or areas controlled by organized crime. In Vietnam and China (two of the world’s largest producers), tight political repression makes independent scrutiny difficult. In Brazil, activists and labor organizers face routine threats and violence. And in Mexico’s Chiapas region, control is divided between cartels, local insurgents, and government forces, creating a volatile landscape that puts researchers and journalists at great personal risk.

Etelle argues that this means fighting the processes that lead to deforestation and labor exploitation. She also adds how certification programs for brands or pledges to establish more ethical practices might be good in theory, but they remain inconsistent and fail to establish practical actions for change.

Coffee Watch: A Blueprint for Change

Coffee Watch was founded in late 2024 as a response to the coffee industry’s existing behaviors. Led by Etelle, this nonprofit uses data-driven tools (the main one being satellite mapping of deforestation) and shares them with local investigative teams that document forced labor, child exploitation, and extreme poverty in regions with large coffee production. Their end goal is to transform coffee from a hidden driver of ecological and social harm into a model of ethical, sustainable production.

For Etelle, change is both urgent and achievable. She argues that two critical reforms (ending deforestation and paying farmers a living income) could be enacted even in the short-term if companies chose to act. “The industry could stop deforestation tomorrow if they chose,” she says, noting that giving farmers fairer wages would raise the price of a cup of coffee by only two or three cents while lifting communities out of poverty.

The organization’s long-term vision extends to establishing practices like regenerative agroforestry: replacing pesticide-soaked monocultures with biodiverse, farmer-centered systems that double carbon storage, boost biodiversity nineteenfold, and provide food security and income diversification for growers.

Inspired by the transformation of the palm oil sector across countries like Indonesia, where consumer pressure and corporate accountability campaigns drastically reduced deforestation in under two decades, Etelle believes coffee can follow the same path. “No deforestation. Living income. Agroforestry,” she says. “That’s my dream.”

Etelle’s Future for an Accountable Coffee Industry

For Etelle, change begins with awareness. Consumers, she argues, have more power than they realize. By choosing traceable, ethically certified coffee (brands using labels like Smithsonian Bird Friendly or committing to direct trade), buyers can reward companies doing the right thing. More importantly, they can pressure others to follow.

“Don’t be downhearted or hopeless. Your voice is so powerful,” she says. “You can vote with your wallet and your voice every day.” Posting on social media, emailing coffee brands, and even asking local cafés about their sourcing can push companies to clean up their supply chains. Institutions like universities, workplaces, and restaurant chains can be influenced the same way, magnifying individual action into systemic change.

Etelle Higonnet emphasizes that this isn’t about guilt, but about agency. “You don’t have to be perfect – but just please try and join the fight in any way you can.” People should learn what’s wrong with coffee production, not to despair, but to act. Because once consumers demand ethical coffee, the industry will have to respond.

And once coffee changes, it can inspire reforms across other commodities, proving that environmental and human rights victories are possible even in the face of global challenges.