- It’s been reported that climate change is the reason for record high chocolate prices, but what’s received less attention is the root cause of the problem.
- Chocolate costs more now due to decades of deforestation by the cocoa industry in West Africa, where much of the world’s supply is grown, earning it the moniker of “cannibal commodity.”
- “The good news is that chocolate companies and producer governments still can address the problem. To contain the impacts of past deforestation and promote predictability in production, they must transform all existing monoculture cocoa to shade-grown or agroforestry cocoa,” a new op-ed argues.
While working for the NGO Mighty Earth, I broke open a shocking scandal: the Ivory Coast—the world’s top cocoa-producing country—lost 94% of its forests since 1990. The Ivory Coast is not a rinky-dink footnote for the chocolate industry: it’s the top global cocoa producing country in the world. In Ghana, the world’s second largest cocoa producer, 80% to 90% of forests were destroyed in that same time. Roughly a third of the deforestation in both countries was for cocoa.
Forests are essentially rain machines: kill forests, and the rains go haywire. Without forests, you lose the rainfall they make possible. You lose forests’ ability to buffer agricultural systems like cocoa from droughts by keeping soils moist. Air moisture that forests generate also vanishes.
Additionally, you lose forests’ air-conditioning effect, which keeps air cool and moist, thereby protecting nearby agricultural systems (like cocoa) from heat domes. Have you ever walked into a forest and felt a delicious moist coolness caressing your skin? Imagine losing that at an epic scale. Imagine losing 94% of a country’s forests.







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