Accra, Feb. 22, GNA – Mighty Earth and EcoCare Ghana, both Non-Governmental Organisations concerned with on deforestation have recommended that the Cocoa and Forests Initiative (CFI) should publicly report on progress in reducing deforestation in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire.
The progress report was aimed at achieving zero new deforestation for cocoa within two years.
The report, titled “Sweet Nothings: How the Chocolate Industry has Failed to Honor Promises to End Deforestation in Cocoa Supply Chains” revealed that, after the industry published action plans in 2019, Ghana lost 39,497 hectares, or 152.5 square miles, amounting to a combined area equivalent to the size of the city of Madrid, Seoul or Chicago.
Côte d’Ivoire also lost 19,421 hectares or 74.9 square miles of forest within cocoa-growing regions.
The CFI is an active commitment of Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana and leading chocolate and cocoa companies to end deforestation and restore forest areas, through no further conversion of any forest land for cocoa production
Mr Obed Owusu-Addai, the Managing Campaigner, EcoCare Ghana, speaking at a press briefing in Accra, said the report recommended that Chocolate companies, cocoa traders, and governments must pool information about cocoa supply chains, and couple it with satellite data imagery to establish an open and transparent joint deforestation monitoring mechanism in 2022.
Such a mechanism, the report said, would provide the means for collective action to prevent forest encroachment from cocoa expansion, as well as to target initiatives aimed at improving the livelihoods of smallholder farmers in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire.
The report urged the Government’s Forestry Commission and the Ghana Cocoa Board to ensure that the emerging Cocoa Management System, intended to trace the cocoa supply chain, was designed in a transparent manner, for stakeholders to have trust and confidence in the data that would be produced.
Authorities in the European Union, Japan, and the United States should introduce legislation that required companies to conduct thorough due diligence checks to prevent cocoa or cocoa-derived products linked to deforestation from being imported into their consumer markets.
Mr Glenn Hurowitz, the Chief Executive Officer Mighty Earth, said the report unwrapped the unsavory side of the cocoa industry and showed the urgent need to break the link between chocolate products and deforestation.
“Chocolate companies like Nestlé, Hershey’s, Mondelez and Mars need to stop making empty promises and start working together with governments in the CFI to establish an open and effective joint deforestation monitoring mechanism this year,” he said.
“Cocoa and chocolate companies have a duty to protect the environment or risk losing the commodity they depend on forever because the current situation is unsustainable,” he said.
Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire were estimated to have lost 80 per cent to 90 per cent of their forested area over the last few decades, in large part to make way for cocoa farms.
Among the key findings, the report showed that in Ghana, the 2020 tree cover loss countrywide was 370 per cent higher since January 2019 than it was between 2001-2010, and 150 per cent higher than the average tree cover loss between 2011-2019.
Also, four and half years after chocolate companies and governments committed the CFI to a ban on establishing any new cocoa farms, overall levels of deforestation remained near record highs.
GNA