A Guilty Pleasure

Where are cacao beans from?

Cocoa farming is a major contributor to the economies of several West African countries. The last piece of chocolate you ate likely had its roots in West Africa, where two-thirds of cocoa beans are produced.

Biggest Cocoa Supplier

Most likely it’s grown up in Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) where cocoa sales accounting for approximately 10% of the country's GNP.

Geolocation

Ivory coast is gifted with an advantageous location in the forest belt where the savanna reaches down to the sea and the seasonal dryness of the climate precludes the planting of drought-sensitive crops like cocoa. It has the highest level of biodiversity in West Africa.

Ivory Coast's Exports

Worldwide, 90% of cocoa is grown on small family farms of 2 to 5 hectares. In Ivory Coast, cacao accounts for 40% of their total exports and up to 90% of the farmers rely on cocoa for their primary income.

Cocoa & Ivory Coast's Economy

When we are discussing the impacts of cocoa production and the potential solution in response to minimize deforestation, it’s not just to solve problems with a big number, we also need to address the qualitative data that’s involved in the process which is someone’s day to day livelihood, solutions for deforestation doesn’t necessarily lie in the complete cut off cocoa plantation.

GDP & Employment

On the other hand, the introduction of cocoa farming brought many economic opportunities to this land, also marking the beginning of deforestation.

A study focusing on what factors have caused deforestation in one of the classified forests Haut-Sassandra has pointed out that there are twelve kinds of disruption that might cause deforestation. These plantations are between a few months and under ten years old. To sum it up, the most frequent types of disruption are cacao plantations with a frequency rate of 23.32%, around 95% of the disruptions recorded are of anthropic origin and 5% of natural origin.

Deforestation Rate

Forest Cover Loss: Hectares of forest cover loss at a national level, between 2001-2018, categorized by percent canopy cover.

A research paper published by the Anthropology Department at The Ohio State University has revealed that there is a significant positive correlation between cocoa farming and the absence of primate species inside Ivory Coast’s national parks and reserves. Additionally, one of the explanations for the biodiversity reduction is the disappearance of forests caused by cocoa farming.

23 Forests

Of the 23 forest reserves, 16 of them have exceeded 65% degradation quotients. 93%of illegally grown agricultural products in these surveyed national parks is cocoa. Of the approximately 4,392 km² surveyed, 3,239 km² have already been transformed into cocoa plantations.