Healthy Planet

Toward Forest Positive Cocoa

Top cocoa-producing countries and leading chocolate and cocoa companies have been working together since 2017 within the framework of the Cocoa & Forests Initiative to fight cocoa-related deforestation. In Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, the Cocoa & Forests Initiative focuses on forest protection and restoration, sustainable cocoa production and farmers’ livelihoods, and community engagement and social inclusion. In 2018, Colombia became the first country in Latin America to sign up to the principles of the Initiative and join the global effort to ensure deforestation-free cocoa.

These actions, which are aligned with the Paris Climate Agreement, play a valuable role in sequestering global carbon stocks and in preserving the precious ecosystem services that forests bring to local communities.

The Cocoa & Forests Initiative helps achieve Sustainable Development Goal 15, by protecting, restoring, and promoting sustainable management of forests.

Cocoa and Climate Change

Through our Climate Smart Cocoa program, WCF helped identify solutions to climate challenges, such as fluctuating weather patterns and prolonged drought, faced by smallholder cocoa farmers. With improved planting materials, professional farming techniques, and sustainable soil fertility management, cocoa productivity can be responsibly increased and farmers can better cope with climate change.

WCF’s Climate Smart Cocoa program helped achieve Sustainable Development Goal 13, by taking urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts in the cocoa sector.