Today, we are pleased to share our latest Cocoa & Forests Initiative (CFI) report which discloses our progress made in 2022. Since this year concludes the first phase of CFI, the report also outlines overall efforts from 2018-2022, where we set ambitious action plans to help end cocoa-based deforestation. We are also announcing our phase two action plans in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana from 2022 to 2025.

Land use change, principally deforestation, contributes to global greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) – and is a key challenge facing the cocoa sector. Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana are two key producing countries supporting the global cocoa supply; however, farmers in West Africa are already experiencing climate change with more erratic rainfall, higher temperatures and drought, pushing them to expand into new areas and triggering this vicious cycle all over again. If the cocoa sector does not take action, current cocoa-producing regions may not be viable in the future.

Protecting and restoring forests has been core to Cocoa Life since its inception in 2012. Our integrated approach aims to work with implementing partners and governments to help farmers grow more cocoa on less land and applying agricultural practices which help reduce pressure on cocoa landscapes. In 2017, Mondelēz International (MDLZ) became a founding member of the Cocoa & Forests Initiative (CFI) alongside the governments of Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, and other world-leading chocolate and cocoa companies. Joining CFI was crucial to help accelerate progress in collaboration with others: this partnership brought all key stakeholders to the table and created a framework for collective action.

FOUR YEARS ON: CFI PROGRESS

2022 marks the end of the first four-year phase of CFI (2018-2022). During this time, vital foundations were laid, and partnerships initiated to help lift the people and protect the landscapes, helping to bring dynamic change to communities and forests where the cocoa bean grows. Alongside our partners and guided by shared learnings, we have worked to move cocoa forward

• Scaled up farm mapping, farmer training and tree distribution activities: Together with our partners, across Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire, we trained ~105,000 farmers in Good Agricultural Practices, distributed ~2,129,000 trees for on- and off-farm planting and mapped ~126,000 farms from October 2021 to September 2022.
• Piloted the Payments for Environmental Services (PES) program in three countries Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Indonesia since 2019, the first of its kind in the cocoa sector, offering farmers innovative incentives to plant non-cocoa trees and help restore forests.
• Piloted the Modified Taungya System (MTS) in Ghana, an extension of PES which supports reforestation and income diversification by rethinking tree ownership structures.

WHAT’S NEXT?

As the second phase of CFI (2022-2025) gets underway, to help solve the systemic issues facing the cocoa sector we aim to achieve transformational impact through radical collaboration and smart innovation. Through ‘radical collaboration’ we aim to connect key sector actors to pilot and scale landscape-wide environmental initiatives that work for everyone, and through ‘smart innovations’ we aim to pioneer tailored interventions which fit farmers’ diverse needs and help tackle systemic challenges through farm mapping technology, agroforestry techniques and on and off-farm tree planting.

Our three-pillared integrated approach will focus on scaling up what works, working collaboratively in landscapes and identify new partnership opportunities:

• Protect: Helping to protect forests by scaling farm mapping and distributing trees for on- & off-farm planting.
• Produce: Helping to grow more profitable cocoa businesses while restoring forests.
• People: Helping to lift cocoa communities continues to remain at the core of what we do. We facilitate investments to build capacity in communities so they can shape their own future and make community decisions that reflect their diverse needs.

Our ambition is to help end deforestation on all Cocoa Life farms. We call on all CFI signatories to look beyond their own supply chains to collectively scale solutions together in a more impactful way. Only together can we implement the important changes needed to tackle deforestation. Only together can we build a more sustainable cocoa sector. And only together can we make cocoa right.

To learn more, follow #CocoaAndForests and #CocoaLife on social media, or visit the websites of our partners IDH and the World Cocoa Life Foundation at cocoandforests.org and WorldCocoa.org.