Cocoa has been cultivated for centuries and is a commodity upon which more than 20 million people directly depend on for their livelihood and consumption of cocoa products is on the rise.

Scientist Christophe Kouame explains the chronic problems pushing up global chocolate prices. The Legacy Programme will play an important role in the solution.

‘Production of cacao, the main ingredient of chocolate, in Cote d’Ivoire, the world’s Number One producing country, is facing enormous challenges owing to massive degradation of landscapes caused by poor management of soil health, reduced forested land and attack by pests and diseases,’ said Christophe Kouame, agronomist and Côte d’Ivoire country director of the Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF). ‘This situation has been exacerbated by the climate crisis.’

Kouame was speaking at the Fifteenth Conference of Parties to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (COP15) in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire on 18 May 2022.

Restoration of cocoa-production landscapes is the key to reversing the dramatic degradation of soil, widespread use of unsustainable agricultural practices, diminishing rural livelihoods, and reduced ecosystem services in the cocoa belt of Côte d’Ivoire.

‘In the past 50 years, the country has lost nearly 90% of its natural forests,’ said Kouame. ‘During the same period, Côte d’Ivoire led production of cocoa worldwide, contributing about 40% of yearly production, supplying the chocolate market with product estimated in 2019 to have a value of USD 44 billion.’

In Côte d’Ivoire, the sector accounts for 15% of GDP; an estimated 1 million smallholders and over 6 million other people are active along the crop’s value chain. Yet despite its importance, the cocoa sector is besieged with challenges caused by the degradation of cocoa landscapes, such as a recent outbreak of the devastating cocoa swollen shoot virus, climate variations, and unsustainable farming practices.

All of these factors have led to poor yields from cocoa farms, increased prices globally yet impoverishment of the smallholders who do not have enough to sell to make ends meet.

‘Because of these issues, there is a need to revitalize the cocoa community and restore cocoa landscapes for a sustainable future,’ said Kouame.
In this context, under the leadership of the Government of Côte d’Ivoire, an ambitious multi-partner Abidjan Legacy Programme was launched at COP15 to boost long-term sustainability across major value chains while protecting, and restoring, forests and lands and improving communities’ resilience to climate change.

The Legacy Programme is intended to be a virtuous cycle wherein governments and the private sector mutually escalate ambitions for sustainability in major commodity value chains, such as cocoa, and also palm oil, rubber, cashew, coffee and cotton. The Programme will call on member states to reassess, and reinforce, their commodities’ value chains to be more sustainable and resilient in Côte d’Ivoire and beyond.

Activities to address the situation that the Programme could well encourage include supporting increased adoption of ‘Mercedes’ cacao, an improved variety of Theobroma cacao, the tree from which chocolate is made, which is produced by Côte d’Ivoire’s Centre National de Recherche Agronomique under an agreement with Conseil du Café et du Cacao. This variety has several advantages: precocity, high yield and resistance to pests and diseases.

Much of World Agroforestry’s work in the cocoa sector has been carried out in close partnership with Mars Inc, a company that in 2009 committed to only buy certified cocoa by 2020; and is the only large confectioner to work with all three major certification organizations: UTZ, Rainforest Alliance and Fairtrade International.

‘Our collaboration with Mars on the transformation of the sector has been expressed in the Vision For Change project, a Mars-funded initiative that was implemented by World Agroforestry,’ said Kouame, who led the project in Côte d’Ivoire. ‘Vision For Change helped cocoa producers sustainably boost their productivity and profitability and contributed to the sustainable development of their communities.’

The approach pursued by Vision For Change was to focus on the restoration of degraded cocoa orchards, which led to rapid and massive boosts in the productivity of old cocoa stands. The inclusion of shade trees selected for fruit, timber, honey and other non-timber forestry products boosted smallholders’ incomes and offered a hedge against fluctuating cocoa prices as well as insurance for large expenses, such as marriages or funerals.

‘The transformational potential of these largely biophysical interventions has been shown at convincing scales,’ said Kouame. ‘The challenge now is to develop ways for smallholders to capture a bigger share of the cocoa value chain. It will take the integration of biophysical, social, tenurial and economic measures to reverse current trends in low productivity, high rates of deforestation, low farm gate price and high prices of chocolate.’

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Science Day, UNCCD COP15