So, what have we learned from Côte d’Ivoire?
- Significant efforts and innovative solutions are needed to scale up zero-deforestation cocoa production approaches being piloted in the context of private sector sustainability commitments. As smallholder farmers are at the heart of this transition, incentives and enabling frameworks should focus on improving their agricultural practices.
- Agroforestry can play a key role in addressing the critical situation of Ivoirian forests while ensuring the future of cocoa production, a major sector of the country’s economy. To that end, a national agroforestry definition including quantitative elements is needed to make sure investments are consistent with national policies and harmonised with socioeconomic and environmental objectives.
- Scientific data showing how the presence of trees on farms affects cocoa yields is lacking. This hinders an understanding of the profitability of cocoa production in agroforestry systems, making it more difficult to build robust business cases.
- Public and private actors need to provide economic and financial solutions to enable smallholders to embrace the short-term transition to sustainable production models. A thorough understanding of the economics of smallholder cocoa production must underpin these solutions.
- Small plantation owners in particular need funding to offset losses incurred in the early years of the transition to agroforestry. But local banks do not lend to smallholders. To address this, we identified several possible financing solutions for small producers. One solution could be long-term purchase contracts with the chocolate companies to smooth out small planter’s cocoa incomes and provide them with a steady income.
Over the next ten years, it will be crucial for Côte d’Ivoire to implement its zero-deforestation agricultural policy to achieve its international climate commitments, ensure the sustainability of cocoa production and lift farmers out of poverty. This will mean converting an estimated two million hectares of cocoa plantations to agroforestry. The EU REDD Facility and the UNEP Finance Initiative study suggests this would correspond to a financing requirement equivalent to EUR 671 million over the first three years.
Funding agroforestry and combining it with other solutions to effectively combat deforestation are critical. The mix will be key to ensuring that Côte d’Ivoire’s climate and zero-deforestation commitments are coherent with the sustainability strategies of actors in the cocoa sector —particularly through the Action Plan of the Cocoa and Forests Initiative — and with the harsh economic reality of small cocoa plantation owners. Côte d’Ivoire must take into account macroeconomic issues affecting the sector when considering scaling up agricultural intensification and agroforestry pilots in cocoa plantations.
If Côte d’Ivoire can strike the right balance, it may be possible within a decade to buy chocolate whose production is not only deforestation-free but also allows rainforests to spread once more. Ultimately, what could taste better than chocolate that is good for the climate, for biodiversity and for the farmers who produce it?
– This article first appeared on the OECD Development Matters blog
